Abstract

Biofuel development not only condemns the poorest of the poor to famine, it also deprives peasant communities of their property rights - think of the 10 million acres of land robbed by Columbian paramilitaries for conversion into oil palm estates. Biofuel development takes place at the expense of biodiversity, it finishes off the last of the pristine rainforests, as in Indonesia where the ecosystems catering for orang-outangs are disapearing. And it also savages the floral resources within the European Union. And yet, only two years ago, biofuels were hailed as the miracle solution to dwindling petroleum reserves and to the problem of global warming, with the European Union adding one ambitious biofuel initiative to the next! The near-unanimous change of heart we have been witnessing over the past months is surely a first victory, but we should definitely not slacken in our efforts