We, the undersigned, call for an immediate moratorium on Australian incentives for biofuels from large-scale monocultures and a moratorium on global trade of such biofuels, including importation of biofuels and biofuel feedstocks into Australia.

This includes the immediate suspension of all state and federal mandated targets and incentives such as tax breaks, tariffs and subsidies that benefit and promote biofuels from large-scale industrial monocultures. Financing of biofuel development through carbon trading mechanisms, international development aid or loans from international financial institutions must also be suspended.

This call responds to the expansion of the biofuel industry in Australia, driven by biofuel targets, and to the growing number of calls from the Majority World (“developing” world) against the expansion of biofuel monocultures.

The term 'biofuels' in this call for a moratorium refers to large-scale industrial monoculture production of agrofuel crops such as soy, oil palm, sugar cane, jatropha, canola etc. We do not include small scale, sustainably grown fuel crops that benefit local communities and do not employ genetically engineered varieties (GE).

Biofuels will worsen global warming

Biofuels are promoted as a solution to global warming, but accurate life-cycle assessments show that most increase carbon emissions by increasing deforestation and degradation of peatlands and soils, while also creating more nitrous oxide emissions from fertilizer use.

Biofuels seriously threaten food and land rights of indigenous people and the rural poor

Turning food into fuel is a significant contribution to the crisis in global food security, driving up the price of grains and other agricultural commodities. The diversion of lands formerly used to produce food for local consumption into production of biofuels, especially for export to wealthy countries of the North, is a major cause of this crisis. Promoted as a benefit to the rural poor, biofuels are instead causing the displacement, often violent, of indigenous people and local communities.Workers are often subjected to poor conditions, chemical exposures, and other abuses.

Biofuels cause deforestation and environmental damage

Industrial monoculture production has significant negative impacts on the environment. These include soil depletion and erosion, contamination and depletion of waterways, increased use of nitrogen fertilizers and toxic agrichemicals and an increasing reliance on a small number of GE varieties at the expense of diverse and sustainable agriculture systems. Monocultures of soy and sugar cane in Latin America and palm oil in Indonesia and Malaysia have led to massive deforestation and the loss of invaluable biodiversity.

Urgent and effective measures other than biofuels are available

The International Energy Agency estimates that over the next 23 years, the world could produce as much as 147 million tons of biofuels. This fuel will barely offset the yearly increase in global oil demand, now standing at 136 million tons a year, without offsetting any of the existing demand. Is this worth it?

Most second-generation biofuels retain many of the dangers of current biofuel production and will for the same reasons not be able to solve the energy and climate crisis.

Biofuels are not the solution to peak oil and climate change. Instead we need to shift to a new mass based transport model and infrastructure, powered by renewable energy and not reliant on petroleum or biofuel substitutes.

Friends of the Earth Australia