Orangutan Outreach Website - Saving the Orangutan

David Gow in Brussels
October 26, 2007
The Guardian

The EU and America are expected to agree early next month international standards for trading biofuels that could see a huge expansion in the global market for alternative sources of power such as jatropha, senior US diplomats said yesterday.

C Boyden Gray, US ambassador to the EU, said he expects the two sides to signal the adoption of “pretty firm” international standards at a meeting of the new Transatlantic Economic Council (TEC) in Washington on November 9. These could be fully adopted by the end of the year.

The agreement would be a significant boost to efforts by biodiesel producers such as D1, chaired by former Shell chairman Lord Oxburgh and partnered by BP, to refine thousands of tonnes of oil produced from the seeds of the jatropha curcas grown in poor, dry soil in Africa and the Caribbean as well as India.

Last month D1 cut back its expansion plans, including an increase in refining capacity at a Merseyside plant to 320,000 tonnes by the end of 2008, because of subsidised imports of soya-based biodiesels from the US. The European Biodiesel Board, a trade group of EU producers, has threatened legal action over the $1 a gallon subsidies for biodiesel. US exports to the EU have soared from 90,000 tonnes in 2006 to 700,000 tonnes so far this year. The EU has set a target of 10% use of biofuels by 2020 as part of its campaign to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 20%. Mr Gray accused the EU in turn of precluding other feedstocks for biofuel in favour of rapeseed oil - prompted, he claimed, by the German farming lobby.

He said he was confident the TEC, the brainchild of President Bush and the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, designed to speed up common US-EU regulatory measures and spur investment “to prevent us both being run over by China,” would back common technical standards.

The EU is under pressure from green campaigners to limit the use of feedstocks such as palm oil for biofuel because of their impact on deforestation. It has also attacked the growing subsidies given by the Bush administration to corn (maize) farmers in the US to produce ethanol, arguing that these have caused disruption to world grain markets and use too much CO2 in their production. Mr Gray insisted that the US was already switching to second-generation bio-ethanol.

James Randerson, Science Correspondent for The Guardian

Photo copyright: Michael DeYoung/Corbis

Sri Lanka’s Horton Plains slender loris has been seen just four times since 1937. Miss Waldron’s red colobus monkey was not found in an exhaustive six-year study ending in 1999 and there have been no definite sightings since. Vietnam’s golden-headed langur and the Hainan gibbon in China both number in the dozens.

These are the primate species on the edge of oblivion and, according to a report commissioned by three leading conservation charities, scores of others of our closest relatives are poised to suffer the same fate. It names the top 25 species most in need of help but concludes that 114 primate species are also close to extinction.

The 25 species most at risk include two of our closest great ape cousins, the Cross River gorilla of Cameroon and Nigeria and the orang-utan from Sumatra. Miss Waldron’s colobus also makes it on to the list, although more by hope than expectation. Conservationists declared it officially extinct in 2000, but a photograph taken since then of a similar-looking creature has been tentatively identified by scientists.

The document was compiled by 60 leading primatologists from the world conservation union, the International Primatological Society and Conservation International. The list includes 11 species from Asia, seven from Africa, four from Madagascar and three from South America.

“You could fit all the surviving members of these 25 species in a single football stadium; that’s how few of them remain on Earth today,” said Russell Mittermeier, the president of Conservation International.

“The situation is worst in Asia, where tropical forest destruction and the hunting and trading of monkeys puts many species at terrible risk. Even newly discovered species are severely threatened from loss of habitat and could soon disappear.”

The report follows assessments in 2000, 2002 and 2004. “Overall the problems are increasing,” said Eckhard Heymann at the German Primate Centre in Goettingen, one of the report’s authors. Common problems are habitat loss due to logging for timber or oil and mineral extraction, plus bushmeat hunting. The two issues are related because roads cut through tropical forests for logging trucks help give hunters easier routes to wildlife. “Every additional access to remove areas increases the access to hunters,” Dr Heymann added.

Another problem is habitat destruction to make space for biofuel plantations such as oil palm. Developed economies such as the US and Europe are pledging to use more sustainable energy sources to combat climate change, but this is having a knock-on effect on tropical wildlife. “It is creating a huge market and now in several countries politicians are thinking of converting tropical forest areas to palm plantations,” he said.

This particularly affects orang-utan populations. Although they still number in the low thousands, they are disappearing as a faster rate than any other primate species.

Dr Heymann said there had been some successes since the previous report. The golden lion tamarin from eastern Brazil, for example, had benefited from a concerted conservation campaign which involved protecting fragments of forest where it lives and breeding it in captivity. “There are still not much more than 1,000 but they are stable and no longer declining,” said Dr Heymann. “The species is not yet safe but still it’s a success story.”

Most endangered

Madagascar
Greater bamboo lemur (Prolemur simus); White-collared lemur (Eulemur albocollaris); Sahamalaza Peninsula sportive lemur (Lepilemur sahamalazensis); Silky sifaka (Propithecus candidus)

Nigeria, Cameroon
Cross River gorilla (Gorilla gorilla diehli)

Ivory Coast, Ghana
Miss Waldron’s red colobus (Procolobus badius); Roloway monkey (Cercopithecus diana roloway)

Tanzania
Rondo dwarf galago (Galagoides rondoensis); Kipunji (Rungwecebus kipunji)

Kenya
Tana River red colobus (Procolobus rufomitratus)

Equatorial Guinea
Pennant’s red colobus (Procolobus pennantii pennantii) (Island of Bioko)

Colombia, Venezuela
Variegated spider monkey (Ateles hybridus)

Colombia, Ecuador
Brown-headed spider monkey (Ateles fusciceps)

Peru
Peruvian yellow-tailed woolly monkey (Oreonax flavicauda)

Bangladesh, India, Burma
Western Hoolock gibbon (Hoolock hoolock)

Sri Lanka
Horton Plains slender loris (Loris tardigradus nycticeboides); Western purple-faced langur (Semnopithecus vetulus nestor); Pig-tailed langur (Simias concolor)

Indonesia (Mentawai Islands)
Indonesia Pig-tailed langur (Simias concolor) (Mentawai Islands); Sumatran orang-utan (Pongo abelii) (Sumatra); Siau Island tarsier (Tarsius sp.)

Vietnam
Delacour’s langur (Trachypithecus delacouri); Golden-headed langur (Trachypithecus poliocephalus poliocephalus); Grey-shanked douc (Pygathrix cinerea); Tonkin snub-nosed monkey (Rhinopithecus avunculus)

China
Hainan black-crested gibbon (Nomascus hainanus) (Hainan Island)

Bill Guerin
26 October 2007

With its rampant forest fires to clear land for plantation agriculture, Indonesia, has become one of the world’s top carbon dioxide emitters, according to a World Bank study. Now it is asking rich countries to stump up compensation to developing nations to not cut down any more of their forests, along with supplying the resources, technology and financial support to overcome the negative impact of climate change.

In the developing world, greenhouse gas emissions mainly originate from agriculture and land use changes such as deforestation. The recent report “Indonesia and Climate Change” published by the World Bank and the British government in March 2007 argued that Indonesia, despite its relatively small economy, is the world’s third largest CO2 emitter after the United States and China because of deforestation.

Whether Indonesia could pull off the initiative it has suggested to deal with the issue if the rich countries agree is questionable. Jakarta has shown little ability to stop the annual fires that spew millions of tons of carbon into the atmosphere from burning forests for palm oil and pulp wood plantations. The environmental group Greenpeace points out that Indonesia destroyed an area of forest the size of 300 soccer pitches every hour between 2000 and 2005, the fastest pace of deforestation in the world. Also, in a bid to reduce its overdependence on oil, the government is rapidly switching oil-fired power plants to coal-fired ones, a move that will produce even more carbon emissions.

Nonetheless, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono made the plea on behalf of other tropical forested nations when he opened a two-day meeting in Bogor last week in which ministers representing 191 signatory states to the Kyoto Protocol met to discuss ways to tackle global warming.

Indonesia has around 120 million hectares of forest, all that remains following decades of destruction as well as unsustainable industrial logging. This still puts it in third place among the world’s largest forested countries, after Brazil and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The meeting, which ended Thursday, was also meant to set the stage for the biggest-ever global climate change conference, to be held in Bali in December with delegates expected from 190-odd countries, including the United States, which initially refused to attend until pressured by the European Union. The Bali talks will focus on post-Kyoto 2012 agreements. Further meetings are planned in Warsaw in 2008 and in Copenhagen in 2009.

Indonesia says developing countries should seek from US$5 to US$20 for every hectare of forest under a global framework on “avoided deforestation.” This is a term used to describe the prevention or reduction of future forest loss. The concept stems from the Stern Review on Climate Change headed by the economist Sir Nicholas Stern, which was commissioned by the UK government, and released in October 2006. It proposed that any post-Kyoto protocols should include “avoided deforestation” measures. The idea is that developing countries will attract funds from industrialized nations, at least those who have agreed to meet commitments under international agreements like the Kyoto Protocol, to pay them to prevent any further deforestation.

The World Bank also has released details of its proposed Forest Carbon Partnership Facility, a market-based mechanism that would compensate developing countries for avoided deforestation. It comprises a Readiness Fund, aimed at building carbon inventories for developing countries; and a Carbon Fund of avoided deforestation payments for a few selected countries. The proposed size for the Readiness fund is US$100 million and for the Carbon Fund, $200 million. The Bank will rely heavily on contributions from governments and the private sector to put the scheme into practice.

The 1997 Kyoto Protocol requires 36 industrial nations to reduce CO2 emissions by 5.4 percent by 2012, compared to 1990 levels. The protocol has not been ratified by either Australia or the US. Developing countries, including Indonesia, which ratified the protocol in 2004, do not have to reduce emission levels.

Indonesia prefers the option of including restoration of degraded forest areas along with voided deforestation, which it will propose at the Bali conference. Some of the other countries, however, have sought a consensus on restricting the scheme to avoided deforestation only, on the grounds that trying to measure degradation and ensuing restoration efforts would be impossible.

Climate change knows no borders and Indonesia risks a great deal because of global warming. Visiting Indonesia in March this year, Stern warned that, as an archipelago, the country could be among those most affected by climate change. The floods that hit Jakarta a month earlier were indicative of the problems the city itself could face from rising sea levels driven by climate change, Stern told local reporters. The country can also expect threats to food security due to the effects of climate change when sea levels rise and inundate productive coastal zones, affecting farming, and fish and shrimp farms.

The Stern report says that if unchecked the overall costs and risks of climate change will be equivalent to losing at least 5 percent of global GDP each year, now and into the future. If a wider range of risks and impacts is taken into account, the estimates of damage could rise to 20 percent of global wealth, around US$5 trillion.

Conversely, the costs of action – reducing greenhouse gas emissions to avoid the worst impact of climate change – could be limited to around 1 percent of global GDP each year or US$250 billion. Thus it would be cheaper for the rich nations to invest in helping developing countries to protect their forests rather than cutting their own emissions, which would mean shutting down factories and losing jobs.

Australia, one of the largest per capita producers of greenhouse gases, has been one of the first to recognize this simple reality and in July this year announced a US$160 million fund for both avoided deforestation and reforestation in the Asia-Pacific.

Yvo de Boer, head of the United Nations Climate Secretariat, said Thursday he was confident that the Bali conference in December would launch negotiations to be completed by 2009. Entrenched US opposition to mandatory emissions targets had attracted widespread criticism in the past.

Australia may also be about to reverse its stance on Kyoto. Prime Minister John Howard’s unswerving support for US President George W. Bush and his refusal to ratify the Kyoto Protocol have put the Liberal Party leader on the wrong side of public opinion. Elections due in late November could see a change of government to the pro-Kyoto Labor Party.

Nonetheless, the US and Australia are expected to demand that industrializing countries such as China and India to share the pain of cutting emissions.

Greenpeace is far from convinced about the Bogor meeting, noting in a press release that recent initiatives that promote “aspirational” targets and a voluntary regime are distractions from the real business of protecting the climate by strengthening and deepening the Kyoto Protocol post-2012.

Governments should not allow themselves to be led down this “road to nowhere,” it says.

Adianto P. Simamora, The Jakarta Post, Bogor

In front of 40 international parties in Bogor on Thursday, Indonesia tabled a new pilot project that would see developing countries adopt REDD - an incentivized program to better manage forest emissions.

REDD (Reducing emissions from deforestation in developing nations) is an alternative to Kyoto Protocol’s clean development mechanism (CDM) and would see forested countries reap more financial benefits by remanaging their forestry sector.

Many forested countries have not been able to adopt Kyoto’s CDM into their forestry sector, which was one the main incentives behind the development of REDD.

The government said it would select four forests from across the country to pilot the project, which involves financial incentives for better managing forestry activities.

Senior advisor on partnership affairs at the forestry ministry Sunaryo said, “We will select (the) forests for the project and hopefully we can show them to the world in Bali,” Sunaryo said.

“We hope the Bali meeting can adopt the concept,” he said.

The four forest projects would be located in South Kalimantan, South Sulawesi, North Sumatra and Southeast Sulawesi.

Included in the proposal is the Heart of Borneo, a total of 220,000 square kilometers of equatorial rainforest encompassing Brunei, Malaysia and Indonesia on Kalimantan island.

Bali is set to host the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Conference from Dec. 3 to 14.

The REDD mechanism has been proposed by Indonesia for the world’s rainforest countries and should see some financial benefits arise for efforts made to better manage deforestation.

The government said it was hopeful other developed countries would accept the concept.

It said REDD would help significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions and would help address climate change.

The Kyoto Protocol on CDM only acknowledges aforestation and reforestation projects.

The protocol defines aforestation as converting land unforested for a period of at least 50 years to forested land via proactive seeding and planting management.

Reforestation is defined as the conversion of land area to a forested area after December 1989.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said Wednesday countries that adopted the REDD program would be eligible for financial incentives from developed countries to help cope with any economic losses.

“The carbon market for REDD should provide a better price for each ton of carbon saved, and that price should be determined by the market so that the tropical rain forest countries do not have to shoulder the burden of opportunity costs,” he said.

A ton of carbon dioxide stored by a forest is priced at US$3 to $5 and CDM from the energy saving sector is currently worth between $5 and $10.

Yudhoyono also said multinational companies in developed countries should play a crucial role in efforts to forest and prevent deforestation.

Forestry has long been a primary source of income for Indonesia. Data from the forestry ministry said the deforestation rate in Indonesia was 1.8 million hectares between 1987 and 1997.

The rate rose to 2.8 million hectares per year until 2000. Between 2000 to 2006 deforestation fell to 1.08 million hectares per year.

Emissions caused by changes in forests represent about one-fifth of the world’s total emissions.

Indonesia currently has 120 million hectares of forest — the world’s third largest after Brazil and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Some 24 CDM projects have been developed across the archipelago, most of which have focused on alternative energy sources but none of which have been UN-approved for carbon trade to-date.

Source: The Jakarta Post

By Michael Casey
The Associated Press

25/10/2007

BANGKOK, Thailand - Almost a third of all apes, monkeys and other primates are in danger of going extinct because of rampant destruction of their tropical habitat, the commercial sale of bush meat and the trade in illegal wildlife, a report released Friday said.

Twenty-five of the most endangered primates are singled out in the report, which was to be presented at the International Primatological Society in Hainan, China.

Among those most at risk are the Miss Waldron’s red colobus of Ivory Coast and Ghana, the Golden-headed langur of Vietnam and Chi­na’s Hainan gibbon, whose numbers have dwindled to 17. The Horton Plains slender loris of Sri Lanka has been sighted just four times since 1937.

“You could fit all the surviving members of the 25 species in a single football stadium; that’s how few of them remain on Earth today,” said Conservation International President Russell A. Mittermeier, who also chairs the World Conservation Union’s Primate Specialist Group which prepared the report with the Inter­national Primatological Society.

“The situation is worst in Asia, where tropical forest destruction and the hunting and trading of monkeys puts many species at terrible risk,” he said. “Even newly discovered species are severely threatened from loss of habitat and could soon disappear.”

Overall, 114 of the world’s 394 primate species are classified as threatened with extinction by the World Conservation Union or IUCN.

The 25 most endangered primates include 11 from Asia, seven from Africa, four from Madagascar and three from South and Central America. The list includes well-known primates like the Sumatran orangutan of Indonesia and the Cross River gorilla of Cameroon and Nigeria as well as lesser known species such as the Greater bamboo lemur from Madagascar.

Six species are on the biannual report for the first time, including a recently discovered Indonesian tarsier that has yet to be formally named and the Kipunji from Tanzania, which was discovered in 2003.

“Some of the new species we discover are endangered from the get go because they are living in restricted areas,” Mittermeier said. “If you find a news species and it’s living in an area heavily impacted by habitat destruction and hunting, you recognize it’s in trouble.”

Habitat loss due to the clearing of tropical forests for agriculture, logging, and the collection of fuel wood continues to be the major factor in the declining number of primates, according to the report.

In addition, climate change is altering the habitats of many species, leaving those with small habitat ranges even more vulnerable to extinction, it says.

Hunting for subsistence and commercial purposes is another major threat to primates, especially in Africa and Asia. Live capture for the pet trade also poses a serious threat, particularly to Asian species, the report found.

Four primates species on the list from Vietnam have been “decimated” by hunting for their meat and bones, according to Barney Long, a conservation biologist based in Vietnam for WWF Greater Mekong Program.

“All four species are close to extinction,” Long said, of Delacour’s langur, Golden-headed langur, Grey-shanked douc and Tonkin snub-nosed monkey. “The key populations have been stabilized. But there needs to be a lot more law enforcement and work to persuade local communities to support conservation for those numbers to increase.”

But the news, the report says, is not all bad.

Nine primates from the last report in 2004 were taken off mostly because of bolstered conservation efforts to save their populations. Among them are the Eastern gorilla from Africa, the Black-faced lion tamarin and the Buffy-headed tufted capuchin from Brazil and the Perrier’s sifaka from Madagascar.

“If you invest in a species in a proper way and do the conservation measures needed, you can reduce risk of extinction,” Mittermeier said. “If we had resources, we would be able to take every one of the species off the list in the next five or 10 years.”

Source: http://mnweekly.rian.ru/news/20071025/55285544.html

Dutch ecologist Willie Smits says he will never forget the day in October 1989 when he saw the desperately sad eyes of an orangutan baby looking at him from a dark cage on a market in the Indonesian seaport of Balikpapan.

Smits was so disturbed that he returned to the market that same evening, just in time to find the limp body of the orangutan lying on a rubbish heap where the trader had dumped it.

During the next 24 hours Smits managed to just save the orangutan from certain death, feeding it droplets of milk and water.

It was the start of a lifelong mission to save one of the world’s last surviving great apes from extinction and to preserve its rainforest habitat that is rapidly being destroyed in Borneo.

“Time is running out. We have less than two years to save the last 40,000 wild orangutans from extinction,” Smits said during an interview in the German port city of Hamburg, pointing that there were once more than three million of the apes.

Smits is on a promotion tour of his book Think of the Jungle which he co-authored with German journalist Gerd Schuster. The spectacular pictures illustrating the text were taken by Indian-born photographer Jay Ullal.

“There are books you can do and there are books you just have to bring out,” says Herbert Ullmann, the managing director of Ullmann Publishing that is also bringing out the English-language edition of the book in March next year.

Smits says the book highlights not only the plight of the orangutan but how closely the fate of the great ape is interlinked with clearing of rainforests for oil palm plantations.

According to World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) the Kalimantan region is losing 1.2 million hectares of its 26 million hectares of forest annually.

Smits, who is a microbiologist and forester by profession, says most of the land cleared is unsuitable for palm oil plantations and the burning of the forests is not only making Indonesia one of the worlds largest emitters of carbon dioxide but destroying biodiversity on a mass scale.

“People in Europe need to know where their palm oil comes from and say: We don’t want to contribute to the death of the orangutans,” Smits says pointing out that the palm oil can be found in 10 per cent of supermarket products such as soaps and shampoos.

“Losing the orangutan would indeed be a sad loss,” says Smits. “They are so closely related to us. I have seen them holding butterflies and flowers, simply enjoying the beauty of their surroundings.”

Meanwhile the organisation founded by Smits, the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation (BOS) has created a home for 1,000 orangutans on 2,000 hectares of reforested land.

Smits recalls that Indonesian schools made the start donating 0.01 euro cent per child per month to save the great apes.

More information at: www.sambojalodge.com, www.createrainforest.org

Source: http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/242758/Two_years_left_to_save_wild_orangutans_from_extinction

October 26, 2007

BEIJING: Mankind’s closest relatives are teetering on the brink of their first extinctions in more than a century, hunted by humans for food and medicine and squeezed from forest homes, a new report on endangered primates says.

There are just a few dozen of the most threatened gibbons and langurs left, and one colobus may already have gone the way of the dodo, warned the report on the 25 most vulnerable primates. “You could fit all the surviving members of these 25 species in a single football stadium - that’s how few of them remain on earth today,” said Russell Mittermeier, president of the US-based environmental group Conservation International.

Primates include great apes such as chimpanzees and gorillas, as well as smaller cousins ranging from gibbons and lemurs to monkeys. They are sought after as food, pets, or for traditional medicines, and a few are still trapped for medical research.

Others are victims of competition for living space and resources as forests that make their habitat are chopped down.

In Central and West Africa primate meat “is a luxury item for the elite,” Mr Mittermeier said. In South-East Asia it is sought “for medicinal purposes, with most of the more valuable species going to markets in south-eastern China”.

Sumatran orang-utans, one of two great apes on the list along with cross-river gorillas, are also threatened by a pet trade into Taiwan.

But just a few thousand dollars could be enough to push up numbers of the most vulnerable animals, Mr Mittermeier said.

Reuters

Source: http://www.smh.com.au/news/environment/the-decline-of-the-species-some-primates-face-extinction/2007/10/25/1192941241440.html

The Indonesian government is considering giving permission to five palm oil companies to convert 7% of the national park into oil palm plantations.

According to the world’s experts on orang-utan conservation, oil palm development in Indonesia poses the biggest threat to the survival of the orang-utan.

The conversion of parts of the national park would deeply damage the credibility of Indonesia’s commitment to biodiversity conservation.

There are already vast areas of abandoned land in the region, outside the national park, that have already been cleared of rainforest.

We believe that the development of oil palm plantations should only occur in these areas so long as:

* the rights of local communities are respected
* no more rainforest is converted to set up plantations

In this way the twin goals of economic development and conservation can both be met for Indonesia.

Please visit the Friends of the Earth website to learn more and email the letter to Indonesian Ambassador in the UK and ask him to pass on these concerns to the President of Indonesia.

Orangutan Island will be listed in the “For the Family” section of TV Guide’s Oct. 29-Nov. 4 issue.

Biofuels bring hope, but problems follow from the Amazon to Asia to Latin America

October 18, 2007

First came the boom. Now, the backlash.

Biofuels have gotten a bad name around the globe, despite their ability to reduce oil use.

Whether the blame is fair or not, a negative image could limit the potential to create more environmentally beneficial fuels, experts say.

Biofuels appear at the root of examples of environmental and humanitarian abuses around the world:

- Scientist Jane Goodall says the rush to grow biofuels is threatening primate habitat in Uganda and Indonesia.

- Brazil is trying to crack down on near-slave labor conditions that have helped keep down the cost of ethanol production.

- Paramilitary groups are forcing peasants from their land in Colombia to make room for palm oil plantations, raising the specter of “blood biofuels.”

These problems and others mean the biofuels boom could lead to unrest and uprising in some nations, one study says.

The dark side of biofuels could potentially overshadow their positive effects, said Raya Widenoja, biofuels researcher with the Worldwatch Institute, an environmental group. Benefits include cooling an overheating climate and boosting developing economies.

“Biofuels do have the potential to herald in a brighter, more sustainable future - if they are developed wisely,” she said.

Widenoja and others worry the biofuels backlash could threaten that future if public outcry persuades politicians to cut research money or projects. Funding is critical to develop the next generation of biofuels. Ethanol from sources other than corn and soybeans could address some of the negative aspects, Widenoja said.

“It would be rather unfortunate if the public stopped supporting anything to do with biofuels. It would mean we lose the chance to develop high potential and sustainable energy sources,” she said.

The problems aren’t limited to Third World nations. Corn ethanol production requires the burning of fossil fuels, and threatens water quality and availability, according to a new study by the National Academy of Sciences.

“What we do here triggers impacts around the world,” including raising the price of grain, said Chad Hart, an agriculture economist at Iowa State University.

Widenoja said biofuels have intensified agricultural methods that rely on a single crop and damage the environment through fertilizer and pesticide use. These practices also perpetuate “social injustices that tend to keep rural areas poor, agricultural laborers exploited and poor migrants flooding to cities in search of a better life,” she said.

She cited a list of problems, from deforestation in Asia to the growth of the fishery dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico, caused in part by nitrogen fertilizers that flow from the Midwest down the Mississippi River.

“But these are all typical agriculture/commodity industry problems. … Biofuel producers and consumers haven’t invented them, they just haven’t solved them,” she said.

A July study by Jane’s Intelligence Review, a British analytical firm, said the demand for biofuels could lead to tensions in Southeast Asia, Latin America and other areas as armed groups compete for land and water resources.

The demand “could also expose governments to rising social unrest, as food prices rise and poorer members of society reap few benefits from the new ‘wondercrop’,” wrote Anna Gilmour, an analyst for Jane’s.

Blaming biofuels may be fashionable, but the issues aren’t simple.

For example, the demand for palm and other vegetable oils has damaged rainforests and other areas, Hart said. But biofuels are only one factor in that demand. China, India and other rapidly growing nations are consuming more vegetable oils in their diets, he said.

Achim Steiner, head of the U.N. Environment Program, has warned Brazil to prevent ethanol demand from threatening the Amazon. U.S. and Brazilian officials say it is a misconception that biofuels are destroying the rainforest. Widenoja said expanding soybean production for feed and cattle ranching is more to blame than biofuels for eating away the Cerrado savannah and the edges of the Amazon.

Hart and Widenoja agreed that governments, biofuels producers and others can foster better, more sustainable biofuels by encouraging:

New feedstocks: Most ethanol is made from two crops: corn and sugarcane. Most biodiesel is made from soy or palm oil. Scientists are studying the energy potential for plant life not considered a crop, such as algae.

Widenoja said policies should discourage the use of palm oil, because many nations can’t stop growers from destroying tropical rainforests.

New fuels: Other biofuels may hold greater promise than ethanol. DuPont and BP plan to produce butanol from sugar beets in Great Britain. The fuel can be transported by pipeline - reducing energy consumption - and can offer better fuel economy than ethanol, the companies say.

“I hope people don’t get hung up on ethanol and think that’s the only biofuel you can create,” Hart said.

Cellulosic: Ethanol from biomass - switchgrass, cornstalks, wood waste and other plant matter - would answer many critics’ concerns about corn ethanol.

“The great thing about cellulosic ethanol is that it can be developed so that land will remain valuable and farmers can profit from growing food or fuel - and the fuel sources can be grown in a much more sustainable way than the food crops have been grown traditionally,” Widenoja said.

Subsistence farmers would increase incomes and improve farming practices, she said, and land- and labor-rich developing countries could export biofuels and boost economies.

Subsidies for sustainability: An ethanol plant fueled by coal gets the same subsidy as one powered by a renewable source, such as methane. Hart said if politicians want to encourage sustainability, they could base incentives on how much a distiller reduces greenhouse gases.

Widenoja called for criteria to rate biofuels. One example: No subsidies would go to biodiesel from a palm oil plantation that replaced rainforest and orangutan habitat.

Source: http://desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071018/BUSINESS01/710180389/1030