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'EU biofuel-use targets must be abandoned' - Dr Andrew Boswell, Biofuelwatch

Sir,
Concerning Wood, food or biofuels?, concerns about biofuels go beyond those your article mentions.  On 31 January 2007, a letter  was sent by 19 EU NGOs, calling for targets to be abandoned for biofuel use in Europe.

We are extremely concerned by the plans as presented by the European Commission to adopt a mandatory target for biofuel use in transport. Implementing these measures means that the EU will risk breaching its international commitments to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions and protect biodiversity and human rights.  The proposed targets will, among other things, promote crops with poor greenhouse-gas balances, trigger deforestation and loss of biodiversity and exacerbate local land use conflicts. 

Other key points are:

• Biofuels will increase pressure on world food supplies and further erode food sovereignty; 
• human rights violations related to monoculture expansion will increase;
• targets will fuel GM expansion, and;
• incentives and subsidies to biofuels would also further intensify all the pressures that we foresee from the targets.

We therefore call on member states to reject the biofuel target for transport and halt all other incentives for biofuel production which could encourage in any way the use of biofuels linked to the problems described above. Instead, the focus should be on drastic reduction of energy use and support for genuinely sustainable renewables.
Dr Andrew Boswell, 
Biofuelwatch
UK

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