Sustainability certificates for agroenergy

Guardrail or lubricant for trade with regrowing energy resources?

Date and time: Tuesday, November 4th of 2008 from 1.30 p.m. to 7.00 p.m.
Place: Dietrich-Bonhoeffer-Haus (Kirchsaal), Ziegelstrasse 30, 10117 Berlin

Please register until October 25th: info(at)fdcl.org

Conference languages: English, German

Organized by: Bread for the World, Center for Research and Documentation Chile-Latin America (FDCL)

Sustainability certificates for agroenergy

Guardrail or lubricant for trade with regrowing energy resources?

Background and objectives of the conference
While there is a basic agreement regarding environmental and social risks of the expanding trade with biomass as energy, opinions on the necessary regulation of this market broadly differ. Systems of certification for agroenergy or agrofuels brought forward by governments and some civil society intitiatives are a special cause for conflict.
 
In the framework of the current debate hardly anyone questions anymore that regrowing energy resources only make a small contribution to the mitigation of climate change and that in some cases their climate footprint is even negative. The risks contained by the expansion of monoculture energy plantations into valuable ecosystems (like e.g. rainforests, wetlands, savannahs) are widely recognized as well as the existence of indirect crowding-out effects, the so-called “leakages�. Last but not least, the risks for food security caused by price effects and the increasing competition in the use of scarce resources like water and land can be observed daily. The debate in this case is only about the extent of the responsibility that agroenergy has regarding the recent price increases for basic food products.

The discussion about the characteristics of the evident necessity to regulate this expanding mass market, however, is far more complicated. While demands for modification or abandonment of political promotion measures (subsidies, compulsory blending quotas) are on the rise, doubts about the regulatory capacity of systems of certification – which are being currently elaborated by some governments – are rather increasing. These sustainability certificates, however, are being presented to the public as a broad guarantee for sustainable production in order to satisfy the widespread demand for ethical forms of consumption.

The currently existing certification schemes, however, present considerable deficits. The following essential risks remain unconsidered: a.) Price effects of the increasing demand for biomass and the resulting risks for food security, b.) indirect changes in land use and the expansion of the agricultural frontier, and c.) the – many times forgotten – concentration processes in the agricultural, food and energy sectors.

Transnational corporations strongly influence the design of public and private certification initiatives. For them, it is essential that certificates do not lead to constraints for the growing trade volumes of biomass and constant supply is guaranteed. The awareness, that the growth of trade volumes presents a structural conflict with sustainability pretentions, however, is on the rise. The increasing resource quantities demanded by corporations can hardly be produced in a sustainable manner. In this context, it has to be feared, that certificates may rather contribute to a rising trade volume and not to the necessary reduction.

The fact that industrialized countries, which strongly depend on imports of regrowing resources, at the same time ask for sustainability proofs also gives reason to doubts. European states like Great Britain, the Neatherlands and Germany, as well as the European Commission, are currently presenting first drafts for certification schemes. In order to comply with their politically set targets to increase the proportion of renewable energies on the basis of biomass, these governments will hardly limit their own import options by introducing ambitious and strictly enforced sustainability standards.

European non-governmental organizations understandably criticize this self-interest for weak and patchy certifications. At the same time they are confronting the dilemma of demanding “better� certificates while social movements in the producing countries often categorically reject the certifications. They doubt that standards can be supervised and enforced effectively in their countries. The state many times is too weak, too dependent and too closely linked to the interests of agrobusiness. Therefore the question arises, whether this represents a contradiction in the political practise of non-governmental organizations in the North and in the South or whether this is rather the expression of some kind of division of work.

A second dilemma refers to the dominance of the certification debate. The necessity for regulation demanded by the market for agrofuels beyond the issue of certification often remains unconsidered. The inflation of food prices, for example, cannot be controlled by certifying individual plantations. The consecuences of rising prices for food security demand measures that go beyond the framework of certification schemes. Nonetheless, certification seals are currently dominating the debate, or are nearly the only instrument that is being discussed.

A third dilemma arises due to the fact that certificates only serve international trade. They are explicitly an instrument of trade policy. National sustainability standards, however, may be far more important than instruments that aim at satisfying international demand. If the producing countries were to define ambitious social and ecological standards and enforce them effectively, the sustainably producible and exportable resource volumes would be much smaller than those that the industry and governments want to make believe.

In the framework of our symposium, we would like to debate these and other dilemmas of the certification of agroenergy with interested actors from non-governmental organizations, relief-agencies and environmental and development groups and institutions. The different perspectives and experiences with certification as an instrument of trade policy will be discussed by representatives and participants from the North and the South. It is our aim to debate the scope and the limitations of this instrument with regards to the regulation of the agroenergy market and to reflect the respective lobby-work of civil society groups in the North and the South.

More information about biomass & agroenergy

This conference was made possible through the generous support of Brot für die Welt,  Deutsche Behindertenhilfe - Aktion Mensch e.V.,  European Union and InWEnt GmbH.