Wednesday 27th March: While welcoming the European Commission’s ambitions on climate and energy presented today in a Green Paper, the EC has covered up the negative social impacts of Europe’s biofuel policies by severely underestimating the amount of biofuels-related land grab in Africa and the impacts on global food prices in an EC report also out today, claims international anti-poverty agency ActionAid.
EC officially recognises biofuels problem: but what next?In mid October, the European Commission released a key legislative proposal that seeks to amend the Renewable Energy Directive (RED) to take...
ActionAid’s Head of Campaigns Belinda Calaguas is available for interview by contacting Laura Sullivan on 0032 (0)485 781255
Belinda will speak at a press briefing at 8.30am at Mi-Figue Mi-Raisin, Rue Archimede 71, Brussels and on a European Development Days panel at 2pm today.
In 2008, ActionAid started campaigning to remove biofuels targets that are having a detrimental effect on poor and marginalised communities around the world. We did so in response to calls from...
Over the last few years we’ve been showing how the European Union’s biofuels targets have led to land grabs and food insecurity in developing countries. Europe’s thirst for fuel has had a huge...
News that the EU is planning a limit on the use of food-based biofuels has been welcomed by ActionAid. But the anti-poverty agency warns that without a total ban on food and land based fuels, millions will still go hungry because food prices will continue to be affected and land will still be grabbed.
By Clare Coffey, ActionAid UK. Most experts are now agreed that the expansion of land devoted to raising crops used in biofuel production has been a significant factor in high and volatile food...
ActionAid Identifies the Ingredients to a Successful Summit
Rio de Janeiro – The 15th of June, Brazil assumed the role as host of the UN Sustainable Development Conference (Rio+20), and with it the responsibility to ensure that the negotiations are concluded successfully. Brazil takes leadership at a critical moment, when agreement on issues around food security have all but stalled. With only three days of negotiations left before the heads of state arrive, the question is if Brazil can move countries to agreement on food and agriculture issues that will protect the right to food.
Europe’s demand for biofuels could drive up food crop prices by as much as 36% by 2020, helping to push millions more into hunger, a new report from ActionAid reveals. But despite this and other widespread evidence that biofuels are a major contributor to global hunger, the G20 will yet again avoid the issue when it meets in Mexico next week.
