PRESS CONFERENCE ON SUSTAINABLE ENERGY REPORT

 

Modern bioenergy could help to meet the needs of 1.6 billion people who lacked access to electricity and 2.4 billion people who relied on the use of traditional biomass, Alexander Muller, Assistant Director-General for the Sustainable Development Department of the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), told correspondents at a Headquarters press conference today.

Presenting the latest report of UN-Energy, entitled Sustainable energy:  A framework for decision-makers, he added that, while bioenergy presented great opportunity, especially for the world’s rural poor, a political framework was needed to ensure that they benefited from bioenergy.

UN-Energy was established to help ensure coherence in the United Nations system’s multi-disciplinary response to the World Summit on Sustainable Development (Johannesburg, 2002) and to ensure the effective engagement of non-United Nations stakeholders in implementing the Summit’s energy-related decisions.

Biofuels, stated Mr. Muller, accounted for the fastest-growing market for agricultural products around the world and was a billion-dollar business.  Increasing oil prices in recent years had had devastating effects on many poor countries, some of which spent six times as much on fuel as they did on health.  In that regard, the modern form of bioenergy could create great opportunity.  The report provided a framework for the worldwide use of bioenergy, not only for developed and industrialized countries in mitigating the effects of climate change, but also for the poorest countries to gain access to modern forms of electricity.

UN-Energy Chairman Mats Karlsson said it was still the case that one quarter of the world’s population did not have access to power.  Bioenergy, a source of energy that took sunshine and water and transformed it into power through photosynthesis, brought with it many challenges.  In that regard, the report put together different perspectives on bioenergy’s role in the future.

Conceived at the Johannesburg Summit as a collaborative mechanism to bring the United Nations system together, UN-Energy took its method of work from the new wave of understanding of inter-agency work, or “one United Nations”, he said.  While UN-Energy had no address, budget or staff, all of the United Nations agencies working in the area of energy cooperated in its work.  The report -- the United Nations most comprehensive review of the likely impact of the emerging bioenergy market -- was intended to contribute to international discussions on the strategies and policies needed to ensure economic, sustainable and equitable development of bioenergy in the years ahead.

The origin of the report was the realization that UN-Energy could contribute to the international discussion on the topic, Gustavo Best, UN-Energy’s Vice-Chairman, said.  Describing the report’s format, he said the document provided a framework for discussing -- at the same time -- nine key sustainability issues facing bioenergy development including the implications for food security, health and gender, trade, foreign exchange balances and energy security and climate change.  Unless new policies were enacted to steer bioenergy use, the environmental and social damages could in some cases outweigh the benefits.

Regarding the issue of food security, he noted that the availability of adequate food supplies could be threatened by biofuel production to the extent that land, water and other productive resources were diverted away from food production.  The dangers, however, needed to be seen in light of the enormous benefits presented by bioenergy.  Modern bioenergy could make energy services more widely and cheaply available in remote rural areas, supporting productivity growth in agriculture or other sectors with positive implications for food availability and access.  To some extent, the report showed how food security risks were the mirror image of opportunities.

Regarding the impact of bioenergy growth for farmers, there were both winners and losers, he said.  At their best, liquid biofuel products could enrich farmers by helping to add value to their products.  At their worst, however, biofuel programmes could result in concentration of ownership that could drive the world’s poorest farmers off their land and into deeper poverty.

Bioenergy, he added, bridged two complex worlds, the energy world and the agricultural world.  The report provided key areas of discussion that countries could look at in making decisions in a more informed and solid manner.  Given the need for a high degree of policy integration, the report identified several ideas for international cooperation, including cooperation between regions and countries.  UN-Energy hoped the report would contribute to a multi-stakeholder approach to bioenergy, resulting perhaps in a code of conduct.

Responding to a question on the issue of palm oil production and deforestation, Mr. Karlsson said the difficulty was that what worked in one country did not work in another.  Planting palm oil was good in one country, but not in another.  There was no straightforward answer.

Also responding, Mr. Muller stressed the need for an international framework with sustainability indicators to decide if biofuel was produced in an environmentally and socially friendly way.  Issues such as food stocks, water usage and labour standards needed to be considered.  The report’s core message was the need to assess the concrete situation in different regions of the world in terms of sustainability.  Bioenergy had the potential to reduce poverty, but done in the wrong way, the opposite would happen.

Regarding the issue of food security and pricing, he said there was a close link between energy prices and prices for agricultural products.  The energy market actually drove the prices of agricultural products.  A main concern was the need for a framework to avoid an additional threat on food security as a result of biofuel production.

Mr. Best added that, while the use of bioenergy was growing quickly, its present use was quite small compared to any other energy source.

Any bioenergy strategy must ensure that poor people did not end up paying for the fact that the industrialized world needed more bioenergy, Mr. Muller said.

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For information media • not an official record