TRICKY TRAJECTORY

Indirect emissions from land-use changes, overexploitation of water resources must not be ignored in the pursuit of biofuel

- 

BY NOW, it is clear that food crops and feed crops are the major sources of biofuels worldwide. Growing these feedstocks also require an enormous amount of land and water. As India navigates its own biofuel ambition, looking abroad can offer some lessons on striking the right balance between energy security and food security.

Brazil is one of the first few countries which started commercially producing biofuels in the form of ethanol from sugarcane in the 1970s, as an outcome of the global oil price shocks. However, as the country leans heavily on crop-based biofuels, the expansion of its ethanol industry has raised serious climate concerns from time to time—especially given the fragility of its rainforests and tropical savanna. The link between biofuels and induced land-use changes has been a flashpoint in the biofuel debate in Brazil. “Because of ethanol production, there has been an increasing pressure on land. Biofuel policies over the past 30 or 40 years have driven indirect land-use changes in the country. Over the long run, this has increased the inflation in sugar, although this varies year by year,” says André Campos, manager of Repórter Brasil’s Research Program, an investigative journal. Campos has closely followed local impacts of biofuel production in Brazil.