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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE |
CONTACT: Global Justice Ecology Project Anne Petermann, +1.802.578.0477 (in Bonn, Germany) Orin Langelle, +1.802.578.6980 (in the U.S.) |
New Report Reveals Major Threats to Forests and Communities from Bioenergy
Forest Advocacy groups from three continents released a new report today that reveals the threat bioenergy poses to forests and forest-dependent peoples. The report warns that U.S. plans for wood-based bioenergy, biochar and genetically engineered trees (GE trees) will worsen a dangerous situation.
BONN, Germany - June 2 - Global Justice Ecology
Project, Global Forest Coalition and Biofuelwatch [1] released Wood-based
Bioenergy: The Green Lie, [2] at the UN climate talks today in
Bonn, Germany. The report shows that increased support for the burning
of wood to produce energy (bioenergy) is triggering increased logging
and expansion of industrial tree plantations in the U.S., Ghana, the
Congo, Brazil and West Papua. U.S. plans for large-scale expansion of
bioenergy and the U.S. Climate Bill promotion of biochar [3], combined
with the recent USDA approval of a large-scale release of GE trees in
the U.S. South, threaten to devastate forests and communities.
The demand for trees for so-called "renewable energy" from wood in the
form of wood-fired power stations as well as the co-firing of wood with
coal is massively increasing. It will further escalate with an entirely
new market for biochar through subsidies and carbon offsets. It
coincides with a USDA decision to allow the planting of over a quarter
of a million GE eucalyptus trees across seven states in the U.S. South.
[4]
"In spite of global opposition to GE trees, the USDA has approved
planting of 260,000 cold-tolerant eucalyptus trees in the southern
U.S.," stated Anne Petermann of Global Justice Ecology Project.
"Eucalyptus is invasive, flammable, and depletes water. This will set a
dangerous precedent that could lead to large-scale releases of GE
versions of native trees like poplars-which would contaminate native
forests. Trees spread pollen and seeds for hundreds of miles and once
contamination occurs it is irreversible."
Wood is projected to become the main source of renewable energy in the
U.S., and is already intensifying logging in U.S. forests. GE tree
plantations are being promoted on the pretense that they can help meet
the fast growing demand for wood, but they pose unacceptable risks
including the destruction of native forests to make room for new GE tree
plantations. Biochar is also a threat.
"The Senate version of the U.S. climate bill, the American Power Act has
alarming provisions that will dramatically increase production of
biochar," explained Rachel Smolker, of Biofuelwatch in the U.S. "The
idea that we can heal the climate by burning trees and burying charcoal
is unfounded, untested and dangerous. A letter to Congress from 90 top
scientists this past week challenged industry claims that burning trees
for energy is 'carbon neutral.'"
Fiu Elisara Mata'ese, Director of the Samoan NGO Ole Siosiomaga Society
expressed his concerns about the impacts that this new demand for wood
will have on Indigenous Peoples: "Large scale demand from the North will
have serious impacts on Indigenous communities, that will lose their
forests to legal and illegal logging, as well as conversion to tree
plantations. The argument that these plantations will be on 'marginal'
lands, and will not compete with peoples' livelihoods or food production
is false. So-called 'Marginal' lands play a vital role in rural
people's livelihoods, providing medicinal plants, grazing, food and
shelter."
"As the U.S. and other nations turn to burning plants for energy,
changing use of land will have global ramifications," stated Simone
Lovera, Executive Director of Global Forest Coalition. "For example,
agricultural lands are shifting to grow bioenergy crops instead of
food. New agricultural lands come at the expense of forests. The
process ends with displacement of forest dependent Indigenous Peoples
and massive land grabs. Wood-based bioenergy is an absolutely false
solution to climate change."
[1] Global Justice Ecology Project (GJEP) www.
GJEP coordinates the STOP GE Trees Campaign www.nogetrees.org .
Biofuelwatch www.
Global Forest Coalition: www.
[2] To download the report "Wood Based Bioenergy: The Green Lie" go to: http://www.
[3] Biochar is fine-grained charcoal added to soils. It is a byproduct of a form of bioenergy production called pyrolysis. Advocates claim that biochar can help raise soil fertility and mitigate climate change, but there is no clear evidence to back up these claims. There is evidence, however, that biochar could damage soils and climate, accelerate logging and increase demand for industrial tree plantations.
[4] For more information on the USDA approval of genetically engineered eucalyptus trees: http://www.
2 Comments so far
Show AllI welcome the holistic approach to organising. I find that food activists, forestry activists and energy/climate activists very often know very little about each others' subject areas.
Unfortunately this failure to understand other peoples' disciplines is apparently also true of Dr Smolker and biofuelwatch. I have read a number of that organisation's publications criticising biochar, I have noted a number of errors of understanding, and I have yet to see a credible answer to the urgent question which everyone seriously concerned with climate change mitigation is asking: how do we REDUCE the atmospheric CO2 concentration from the present 390ppm (or the significantly higher level which it will reach before we manage to stabilise it) to the likely safe level of 350ppm and then REDUCE it further to the pre-industrial level of about 270ppm?
This is a vitally important question, which holistic organisers ought to be asking themselves and coming up with some answers. Some of the options out there (primarily solar radiation modification methods) are hazardous in the extreme, others (e.g. carbon capture & storage) are questionable for economic and to some extent technical reasons. That leaves reafforestation (not viable on the scale required because of population and agricultural pressure) and biochar.
I think biochar is in principle a great technology - a soil fertility stabiliser and enhancer as well as a carbon sequestrator. Though I do acknowledge that great ideas can be implemented in stupid ways that do more harm than good.
So wouldn't it make more sense to figure out a strategy and a set of policies for optimum implementation of biochar technology? Surely more constructive than the current bfw stance, which seems to be based on (i) assuming everything that can go wrong will, and (ii) probably a lack of understanding of the basic science underlying the technology.
Or are bfw and its allies more interested in opposing things than in coming up with real options to stop us from driving headlong over the cliff?
In my opinion, Rachel Smolker and her organization BioFuelWatch are engaged in an intentional disinformation campaign regarding biochar, and at this point, their motivation is an absolute mystery to me. I have responded in depth to many of the concerns raised and terms they use to describe biochar. They ignore facts and continue to misrepresent the technology in very fundamental ways.
For instance, they always describe the production of biochar with the term "burning trees". Nothing could be further from the truth, and I have pointed it out to them on various occasions. Biochar can only be produced in a heated, closed vessel, in the absence of oxygen. The term used for the process is “pyrolysis”. Properly done, there is no smoke produced whatsoever. At scale, it takes a significant investment to set up and operate a pyrolysis plant.
"Burning trees" makes it sound like you light them on fire and it's cheap and simple. Burning trees make it sound like air pollution is created and the energy is wasted. I am sure Rachel knows what a pyrolysis reactor is and how it functions. She certainly has read sufficient literature to understand it, or at least she claims to have. And yet she chooses an inflammatory expression that is an intentional distortion of the truth.
Secondly, not only the “burning” part is a distortion, but the “trees” part is a misrepresentation. Economic analysis has shown that in almost all cases, it is only economically feasible at scale for biochar projects to utilize on site agricultural residues. This is common sense to anyone actually working in the field.
Anyone can claim anything without regard to facts or common sense, as Rachel Smolker continues to do. Real farmers however have to take economics into account, to a very high degree. They simply don't have the money or time to run around plundering forests for biochar feedstock, perhaps in the middle of the night the way Rachel makes it sound, and they aren't foolish enough to even consider it as an option. It is such a ridiculous idea in the context of an actual agricultural business, I cannot understand for the life of me why Rachel continues to believe it might happen. Farmers have to use on-farm waste streams if a biochar operation is to be viable, and even then, the economics of an on-farm biochar producing pyrolysis plant are not certain. There are many variables to take into account, among them soil quality, climate, crop, and the value of excess energy use within the operation before a farmer can determine whether an investment in pyrolysis technology to make biochar from their agricultural waste streams would be profitable.
I've asked Rachel directly in an email to her to find a farmer near her, she lives in Vermont so it shouldn't be hard, and ask him if he would consider making biochar from wood, perhaps from a neighbor's forest, or consider planting his fields with trees to produce biochar (and wait 20 years for the harvest!). Such ideas are immediately discarded by a farmer. He knows that the wood is valuable to his neighbor and he’ll have to pay for it. He knows how much work it is to harvest, split and dry the wood, and how much energy it takes to transport it. And if you suggest to him that an outside company could produce it and he could simply purchase it, he’d lift his cap, scratch the back of his head and say “Well, I reckon that would be rather expensive”. And he would be right.
Rachel and BFW can ignore real world economics, simple legal constraints such as land ownership and that many forest lands are protected by law, or the fact that carbon markets would not finance the decimation of forests for the production of biochar. The carbon accounting math simply does not work to produce a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, rather the reverse. They can spew misinformation about biochar in copious amounts, distort the conclusions of hundreds of scientific studies, discard them as if they do not exist, and claim any fantasy their imaginations can conjure up.
However, those of us working to implement biochar in a sensible way in the real world cannot ignore economics, legal constraints or market realities. Nor can we just make stuff up and pretend it is fact. It simply isn’t feasible for a farmer to run around pillaging forests. It is a well-established fact that charcoal is already present in soils all over the world from wildfires that have burned since plant life first began on earth. Rich black fertile earth is often black because of charcoal. It is a well established fact that in the vast majority of studies, biochar has had a positive effect on soil fertility, sometimes to a very significant degree when soil carbon levels are low. Rachel Smolker and BFW misrepresent hard working, diligent, honest farmers all over the world as deceptive miscreants out to destroy the world’s forests. Their characterization is utterly divorced from the reality of farmers and agricultural researchers all over the world working to better understand the natural links between charcoal and soil fertility, and how we might optimize the use of charcoal to enhance soil fertility, especially in areas of the world where hunger and food shortages are a constant, pressing concern.