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Aktie tegen EU plan agrobrandstoffen
Rob/Regenwald - 04.07.2008 14:33
Help Regenwald met haar lobbyaktie richting Europarlement over Europese plannen voor meer gebruik van agro-brandstoffen. Meer productie verergert de huidige onherstelbare milieuvernietiging en negatieve gevolgen voor de bevolking in het zuiden. Regenwald en ruim 200 andere organisaties willen een moratorium op agrobrandstoffen van grootschalige monoculturen.
Op 7 juli zullen de leden van het Milieu Committee van het Europarlement stemmen over de Richtlijn Hernieuwbare Energie (Renewable Energy Directive).
Regenwald (www.regenwald.org) geeft aan dat afwijzing door het Europarlement van de 10 % agrobrandstof-norm wordt geblokkeerd door het sociaaldemokratische blok geleid door het Nederlandse PvdA-lid mv. Dorette Corbey.
Daarom vraagt iedereen en met name Nederlanders om mv. Corbey aan te schrijven om bij de stemming van 7 juli tegen de Richtlijn te stemmen.
Dat kan door de weblink  http://www.regenwald.org/protestaktion.php?id=276 te activeren.
En/of door te bellen of mailen naar:
 dorette.corbey@europarl.europa.eu
00 32 2 284 5236
http://www.corbey.nl/
Ook media-aandacht is welkom. Dus als u uw plaatselijke krant of radiostation hiervoor kunt interesseren is dat geweldig.
Reinhard Behrend
Rettet den Regenwald e. V.
Friedhofsweg 28
22337 Hamburg
040 4103804
info@regenwald.org
www.regenwald.org
On 7th July, the members of the Environment Committee will be asked to vote on the Renewable Energy Directive, and on 16th July there will be a vote in the Industry Committee.
I urge you to vote against any biofuel targets and incentives if you are a member of either committee. If you are not on one of those committees, please use your influence to raise the serious concerns about the impacts which EU biofuel policy is having on communities, access to food, climate change, rainforests, biodiversity and human rights. And please support a call for an immediate EU moratorium on agrofuels from large-scale monocultures and in particular on agrofuel targets and incentives
Europe’s current biofuel targets and incentives – and the plans to further increase them up to 2020, are already leading to large-scale investment in new monoculture plantations, new infrastructure investment, including in the world’s last large continuous tropical forests, and new refineries which causing major and irreversible destruction now. Those investments are happening today, and they cannot be reversed by any future ‘sustainability criteria’.
Some of those destructive agrofuel investments include:
+ The accelerated destruction of the Brazilian Cerrado for sugar cane and soybean: According to the Brazilian NGO Instituto Sociedade, População e Natureza, 152,000 hectares of land designated by the government as ‘conservation areas’ are being converted to sugarcane plantations. According to an IUF report, half of the Cerrado has already been converted to monocultures and all of the rest is likely to be destroyed before 2030. This will have cause the extinction of very large numbers of species, destroy the livelihoods of large numbers of people, including indigenous communities, and accelerate climate change by releasing large amounts of carbon held in the soil and vegetation and destroying an essential watershed for the Amazon forest.
+ High soya prices, guaranteed by government support for agrofuels, are encouraging investment in new waterways and ports in South America: In Paraguay, for example, Cargill have been granted permission for a mega-port in Asuncion, which is likely to pollute the drinking water supply on which more than a million people depend. It will also lead to major biodiversity losses and to further soya expansion inland.
+ In Tanzania, large areas of community land are being handed over to foreign companies to plant jatropha for biodiesel. This includes 9,000 hectares of land which have been handed over to the UK firm Sun Biofuels plc. This is land on which over 2,800 families – over 11,000 people – depend for their livelihoods. Compensation payments are being made to the families but are unlikely to be sufficient to access new land.
None of the ‘sustainability criteria’ being discussed can prevent any of those investments. They do not currently include social criteria but, even if they did, they could not address indirect impacts and the wider investments encouraged by high commodity prices. The greenhouse gas default values which have been proposed do not in any way reflect the real climate change impacts: Two recent peer-reviewed studies, by T Searchinger et al and J Fargione et al show that, at present, virtually all agrofuels result in higher greenhouse gas emissions than the fossil fuels they replace, provided indirect impacts are considered. Yet the default values being discussed suggest that virtually all agrofuels save emissions – something not backed up by any peer-reviewed study.
Only a moratorium on agrofuels from large-scale monocultures can prevent further harm being caused by EU biofuel policy. Over 200 organisations from North and South support a call for such an EU moratorium. All targets and incentives must be dropped because right now, sustainability cannot be guaranteed.
 Website: http://www.regenwald.org/protestaktion.php?id=276
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