Industry Pushes For 25% Agrofuel Target
UKWatch.net - 21 Apr 2008
Despite clear warnings about the impact of agrofuels (commonly referred to as biofuels) on the world food supplies, those within the industry think that Europe?s 10% target is not high enough. They are pushing for a 25% target by 2030 [1] ? and some members of the European Commission appear to be listening to what they have to say. Corporate Europe Observatory attended the launch of the European Biofuels Technology Platform (EBTFP) Strategic Research Agenda and Strategy Deployment Document (SRA & SDD) in Brussels to find out more about how industry is using this important document ? it is set to influence future EU spending on agrofuel research ? to push for a bigger guaranteed market and the opportunity to boost its profits, to the detriment of the environment and the world?s poor. What is the EBFTP? The European Biofuel Technology Platform was set up by the European Commission to look at the future needs of the agrofuel industry, particularly in terms of research. It has around 145 members, mainly from industry, with members from research institutes and just two from NGOs.[2] The Platform receives funding from the Commission. It is, in effect, a descendant of the Advisory Research Council for Biofuels (BIOFRAC) and continues its work. BIOFRAC?s chair, Anders Roj of Volvo, together with the vice chairs were asked to work with the European Commission to select members for EBFTP?s steering committee.[3] The Platform represents a range of industries interested in agrofuels ? from car makers to biotech companies. The steering committee was chaired by Luis Cabra from the oil and gas giant Repsol, which is developing ambitious plans for agrofuels in co-operation with Bunge and Acciona. In January this year he handed over to another oil company rep, Vronique Hervouet from oil company Total. Five Working Groups, drawn from interested players from the world of industry and research, were set up to develop the research agenda (SRA). Drawing on BIOFRAC?s agenda, they have taken the proposal for a 25% target ? originally put forward by BIOFRAC ? as their overall aim. Their draft proposals were published online for a brief public consultation and some 600 responses were submitted, Birger Kirkow from EBFTP?s secretariat explained to stakeholders that these had been taken into consideration ?where appropriate?. In reality very little of substance changed at all. Technology Platforms Technology Platforms like the EBFTP, were set up by Science and Research Commissioner Janez Poto?nik to allow industry to influence research and development priorities on strategic issues. They play an important role in developing European research policy and are seen as a way of ensuring that Seventh Research Framework Programme (ie EU public-funded research) better meets the needs of industry. The EBFTP, which is the youngest of all the technology platforms dealing with agrofuels, sees its role as in building ?synergies? with others platforms, such as the Forest-Based Sector Technology Platform (FTP), the Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technology Platform (HFP), the European Road Transport Research Advisory Council (ERTRAC), and the Biotechnology Platform (Plants for the Future) ? creating a ?knowledge based bio economy?. This move towards industry-driven research fits in with the European Union?s Lisbon Agenda, which aims to make Europe ?the most dynamic and competitive knowledge-based economy in the world.? Priority is being given to research into new areas of industry ? with little opportunity to question the wider impacts of this work. In a letter to CEO, Commissioner Poto?nik justified the dominance of industry saying: "European Technology Platforms have been conceived as a means to help realise the Lisbon Strategy. The platforms can play a key role in better incorporating industry’s needs into EU research priorities by bringing together stakeholders, led by industry, to define a Strategic Research Agenda and to suggest possible directions for its implementation. This is the underlying rationale for the deliberate industrial focus of technology platforms, which was indeed, as you note correctly, reflected in BIOFRAC and is also manifest in the composition of the Biofuels Technology Platform." The problem with targets The European Commission is already pushing an agrofuel target of 10% by 2020.[4], much to the alarm of environmental and poverty campaigners. The vast majority of NGOs working on the issue have condemned the target because of the damaging social and environmental consequences and in April 2008 the European Environment Agency?s Scientific Body [5] called for the target to be dropped. International bodies including the UN and IMF have warned on the impact of agrofuels on food supplies. A wide range of studies, including some from the EU?s own Joint Research Committee (JRC), have highlighted problems around the impacts of agrofuels ? including the impact on food production and prices already being seen, the problems created for small landowners and workers in producer countries and the damage to the environment. Research has shown that large scale changes in land use will be needed to grow agrofuels, and that doing so will result in an increase in greenhouse gas emissions exacerbating climate change instead of mitigating it. Agrofuels are not a sustainable form of energy ? and many question whether they ever can be so. But the EBFTP has ignored these concerns ? raised by many in response to the consultation ? and proposed increasing the target to 25%. Campaigners outside the stakeholder meeting, angered by the proposed target, greeted delegates with a banner saying: ?Agrofuels ? no solution for oil addiction? and handed out popcorn from a petrol pump. With food prices already rising as farmers switch from growing food to growing fuel, how, they asked, can an increase in agrofuel production be justified? Civil society groups, including Corporate Europe Observatory, Friends of the Earth Europe, WDM and the Transnational Institute, also wrote to Commissioner Poto?nik ahead of the SRA stakeholder meeting to condemn the role of the EBFTP.[6] Why, they asked, should this undemocratic body ? which effectively excluded the input of all those who did not support the call for a 25% target ? be allowed to determine the EU?s research agenda or hold such influence? Sustainability on the agenda? Inside the meeting, the issue of sustainability was less prominent ? although many of the speakers seemed keen to show that it was an issue they were aware of. Martin Kaltschmitt of the German Institute for Energy and Environment referred to sustainability as ?a critical, very emotional issue?. Using non-food crops, such as jatropha, was put forward as one solution by Harri Turpeinen from Finnish transport fuel company Neste Oil. His company?s aim was ?to get out of the food chain,? he said. ?We are completely in line with the tune of the demonstrators outside the building,? he added, completely ignoring the social and environmental threats posed by large scale jatropha plantations, which are as damaging as any other form of monoculture. ?Sustainability indicators? and ?sustainability criteria? were put forward as essential to allow industry to show the wider world that what they are producing is acceptable. But the sustainability criteria used by European Commission ? outlined by Ariane de Dominicis, from DG Environment ? will not guarantee any degree of sustainability ? they fail to take account of the big picture concerns around land and resource use (the displacement effect) and ignore many of the environmental impacts, such as the effect on water and soil. Monitoring future land use patterns and food prices is like waiting for the patient to die before the doctor is called. Many of the so-called solutions being put forward by industry ? such as the use of GM technology to produce more efficient crops and ?second generation biofuels? ? raise even more environmental and social concerns. Ulrich Schuur, Director of the Institute Phytosphere in Germany shared his vision of how genetically modified plants could allow improvements in germination or increase the rate of photosynthesis for example. Some in the audience were left to wonder whether GM plants ? rejected as a food source by many European consumers ? be allowed to spread across the countryside for use as fuel? Jos Manuel Silva, Head of DG Research warned that industry must learn the lessons of the GM debate. ?We cannot repeat other cases, like GMOs, where the debate happened after the research actually started,? he said. Ralph Sims from the International Energy Agency was one of the few to sound a note of caution, warning that scientists had been talking about second generation biofuels since the 1970s but there were no guarantees that they would ever materialise at a low production cost. ?Put stricter speed limits on the highways,? he said. ?It?ll cost nothing and you?ll get huge greenhouse gas reductions.? Industries? Dream But for many speakers at the stakeholder event, technology was the way to improve the efficiency and sustainability of agrofuels. Markku Karlsson from the Finnish wood and paper company UPM Kymmene, illustrated new ways of exploiting biomass residues and waste for ethanol. Dirk Carrez from the Technology Platform for Sustainable Chemistry (SusChem) showed how in the United States, energy efficiency and renewable energy research funding from the Department of Energy is being used to support a range of companies working in agriculture, transport, biotechnology and the chemicals industry. In effect, European funding is providing an opportunity for the oil and petrochemical industries to diversify into new areas. As Swedish MEP Lena Ek said at the opening of the event: ?The market is there. Market potential is huge for the industry.? Although without a European target, the market would not be there ? as in the current market place agrofuels cannot compete with fossil fuels in terms of price. The EBFTP in fact represents a no risk strategy for industry ? persuade the European Union to create guaranteed demand and then persuade them to partly fund the costs of developing new products to meet this demand. Poto?nik?s support Having set up the EBFTP and encouraged industry?s involvement, Commissioner Poto?nik seems prepared to ignore all criticism, however well-supported by evidence. In his reply to campaigners, he did not even respond on the key issue of the 25% target and did not address questions regarding the fundamental sustainability of agrofuels, accepting wholesale EBFTP?s reassurances that technology can solve any problems they face. He also said he was reassured by the open and transparent process adopted by EBFTP, despite the limited involvement of civil society ? and despite the EBFTP?s failure to listen to concerns raised by many people in the consultation exercise. Indeed many campaigners see involvement in the EBFTP process as futile ? and for that reason have chosen not to become official stakeholders. Despite its claims, industry is not interested in considering whether agrofuels can ever be sustainable ? it wants to create security for investors. Concerns, it wants us to believe, can be overcome with the power of science. The only real concern is the need to ensure that public opinion does not turn against them ? which again (as with GMOs) they seem to think they can achieve by a selectively promoting some of the science and promising greater technological improvements for the future. In whose interest? The Commission is spending public money on agrofuel research, providing private interests with a Platform to ?advise? how this money should be spent. Seizing this opportunity, industry has proposed a research agenda based on an absurd 25% agrofuel blending target by 2030. The European Commission says that it is ?not in any way bound by the views, results or recommendations arising from the activities of any of the technology platforms?, yet previous evidence suggests it is only too willing to listen to what they have to say.[7] There needs to be a public debate on the role being played by technology platforms. Corporate Europe Observatory and others are calling on Commissioner Poto?nik and the rest of the European Commission to face up to the problems agrofuels cause and impose a moratorium on agrofuel targets ? including the target of 10%. The EBFTP should be dissolved. Research priorities should be determined through discussion between stakeholders without commercial interests, and must not be allowed to be at the expense of societies outside the EU. Research on the real impacts of new fuels, on developing sustainable electric transport systems, and on the relation between trade liberalisation and increased transport demands would all be good places to start. Notes Strategic Research Agenda & Strategy Deployment Document, European Biofuels Technology Platform, January 2008. WWF and the European Environment Bureau (EEB). For more detailed information on BIOFRAC and the EBFTP see The EU?s agrofuel folly: policy capture by corporate interests, Briefing paper, Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO), June 2007. Proposal for a directive on the promotion of the use of energy from renewable sources, European Commisison, 23 January 2008. Suspend 10 percent biofuels target, says EEA’s scientific advisory body, press release, European Environmental Agency, 10 Apr 2008 For the full correspondence between CEO and Commissioner Poto?nik see: Corporate Europe Observatory, Letter to Commissioner Poto?nik, 1 June 2007 Reply Commissioner Poto?nik, 27 June 2007 Corporate Europe Observatory and others, Letter to Commissioner Poto?nik, 15 January 2008 Reply Commissioner Poto?nik, 28 February 2008. The car lobby for example has successfully blocked a proposed restriction of 120g/km CO2

Indie?s new editor means bad news
UKWatch.net - 21 Apr 2008
Roger Alton’s move from the Observer to edit the Independent is as shocking as Tony Blair’s appointment as Middle East envoy, and marks a set-back for the anti-war movement. To understand why, we must look at the Indie’s stance on Iraq, why Blair hated the paper, Alton’s politics and what he did at the Observer. Alton was a crusader for the invasion of Iraq. As Johann Hari, who himself backed the invasion at the time, put it on the eve of the war: “There is now a considerable school of British centre-left thinkers and commentators who are lobbying hard for war, so that the Iraqi people can be freed: Christopher Hitchens, Nick Cohen, John Lloyd, Julie Burchill, Roger Alton and David Aaronovitch.” In other words, Alton was up there with the worst of British journalists in terms of craven support of Bush and Blair and contempt for the anti-war case. Hari’s observation is backed up by Nick Davies, who discovered that Alton had an intimate lunch with Blair in autumn 2002 “from which, according to colleagues, Alton returned full of determined support for the campaign against Saddam”. With the Observer’s home affairs correspondent David Rose being fed “sheer disinformation” by MI6, and its political editor Kamal Ahmed deep in Alastair Campbell’s pocket, readers of Alton’s newspaper were, as Davies catalogues in some detail, “slowly soaked in disinformation” about Iraq. Yet Alton carried on with his support for the invasion. When columnist Richard Ingrams quit the paper in 2005, he insisted that the Observer’s stance on Iraq was damaging the paper: “It’s particularly noticeable on the whole Iraq issue. In the Indie, you had a very strong attack on the whole thing from the beginning. But The Observer’s got it wrong about Iraq, which goes on and on, and you’re clobbered by that unless you get up and say: ‘We got it wrong’.” Ingrams was right that the gap between the Observer and the Independent was huge. On the day after the Hutton report came out in January 2004, the Independent produced a totally white front page with a one-word headline: “WHITEWASH”. In Blair’s last major public speech as prime minister, he attacked the Independent, after which the paper splashed with: ?Would you be saying this, Mr Blair, if we supported your war in Iraq?? Beneath that headline, the paper’s editor Simon Kelner hit back brilliantly at Blair: “After 10 years of the Blair administration, a decade of spin and counter-spin, of dodgy dossiers, of 45-minute warnings, of burying bad news, of manipulation and misinformation, we feel that the need to interpret and comment upon the official version of events is more important than ever.” Kelner saw it as a “badge of honour” to be singled out by Blair. Will Alton take a similarly brave and principled stand against Gordon Brown and George Bush? It is enough just to ask the question to see what an absurd proposition that is. But if you need more proof, here it is from the horse’s mouth. Alton on Blair: “Blair is fucking good.“ And again: “I think he’s a very good prime minister and an exceptional politician who will be much missed when he’s gone. Some of the hostility to him is quite baffling. I just can’t understand it. It doesn’t logically relate to things.” Alton on editorial priorities: “Absolutely have your environmental horrors in Sudan, but you might put it on page four. On page three you might well have, as we did, inside Sven’s five-star England football World Cup love nest ? just because it’s more visual.? On the prosecution of BNP leader Nick Griffin: “ludicrous? should never have been brought”. On Kamal Ahmed: ?Kamal is one of the best journalists I have ever worked with and of the highest integrity, so if anybody impinges his integrity I?ll go and punch his fucking face in.? What Alton’s editorship of the Independent means is this. Every pro-war editor will feel safer in his or her job, and more confident in their editorial line. Piers Morgan and Greg Dyke, sacked over Iraq, are still in the news media wilderness. But Alton has taken over the Indie. The message couldn’t be clearer. Every other editor will feel under even more pressure to give in to the dominant pro-war assumptions: our leaders’ intentions in the “war on terror” are noble; Iraq is yesterday’s story and our audience doesn’t want to hear about it; the anti-war movement is beyond the pale, an unrepresentative rump that is stuck in a rut. Every journalist will feel it that more difficult to stand out against the notion that the Iraq WMD fiasco is behind us, we can carry on as if nothing had happened. Alton’s appointment at the Indie is a disgrace. The anti-war movement should watch closely what happens to the paper and be ready to mobilise against Alton in support of the Indie journalists who have made their paper the conscience of the British media.

The Great Catastrophe
UKWatch.net - 21 Apr 2008
In the coming months, the same event will be commemorated by two different groups in starkly contrasting fashions. May 15 sees the 60th anniversary of the birth of the State of Israel. In Britain, the programme of celebrations includes a gala fund-raising dinner at Windsor Castle in the presence of the Duke of Edinburgh (the Queen’s husband), a variety show at Wembley Stadium and street parades for Israel in London and Manchester. Remembering a tragedy Meanwhile, Palestinians and their supporters will be recalling the same event in entirely different tones, and without the benefit of State support or vast sums of money. In meetings, conferences and exhibitions they will seek to remind the world of the Nakba — catastrophe in Arabic — that accompanied Israel’s birth in 1948. In 1947, there were 12,93,000 Arabs and 6,08,000 Jews in Palestine. Though Jews made up 32 per cent of the population, the U.N. partition plan assigned them 55 per cent of the country, including the economically developed citrus growing plains. Israel’s Declaration of Independence was preceded by several months of civil war between Jewish and Palestinian forces, and followed by more months of war between the new State and its Arab neighbours. When the fighting finished in early 1949, the Jewish State had acquired 78 per cent of Palestine. 1,80,000 Palestinians found themselves a minority within the expanded borders of the Jewish State. 7,00,000 to 9,00,000 had been made refugees. In April and May, before the expiry of the British mandate, the cities of Haifa and Jaffa fell to Jewish forces, and more than 1,00,000 Palestinians fled. To the north, in Galilee, the Haganah — the mainstream Zionist defence force — systematically conquered clusters of villages, emptying them of inhabitants and often levelling them. In June, the Israelis advanced further into territory designated for the Arab State, capturing the towns of Lydda and Ramle where they killed 250 Palestinians and expelled almost all the rest — 40,000 — at gunpoint. In 1948, 500 Palestinian towns and villages were abandoned, evacuated or destroyed. More than 70,000 Palestinian houses were demolished. In the Jaffa area, 96 per cent of the villages were totally destroyed. As Jewish forces proceeded with the ethnic cleansing of territories both within and outside the U.N.-allotted borders of the Jewish State, a British army of 70,000 refused to intervene, despite being charged under the mandate with the protection of the civilian population. Expansionist State At the onset of the conflict, Jews owned 1,159 sq. km. of land (6 per cent of the total). By July 1949, thanks to the Absentee Property laws passed in haste by the new Israeli parliament, they owned more than 20,000 sq. km. In 1954, more than one third of Israel’s Jewish population lived on absentee property. Of 370 new Jewish settlements established between 1948 and 1953, 350 were on absentee property. For many years, Zionists claimed that the Palestinians had left voluntarily at the behest of Arab leaders. That myth has been repeatedly disproved: there’s no evidence of so much as a single broadcast or leaflet telling people to abandon their homes. There is, on the other hand, a great deal of evidence that the Zionists used the war to alter the demographic facts on the ground. On April 6, for example, Ben Gurion told a Zionist meeting: “We will not be able to win the war if we do not, during the war, populate upper and lower, eastern and western Galilee, the Negev and Jerusalem area, even if only in an artificial way, in a military way…. I believe that war will also bring in its wake a great change in the distribution of Arab population.” The facts of the Nakba are now well documented and beyond serious dispute. Yet Nakba denial remains widespread, and is as vile as denial of any other historic crime. Acknowledgement of the Nakba is resisted because it undermines the moral foundations of the Israeli State. It’s a handicap in the Israelis’ global propaganda battle with the Palestinians, and a challenge to their own self-definitions, a truth that simply cannot be assimilated. The Nakba is no mere historical controversy. It’s an unresolved issue. The Palestinian refugee population — descendants of those driven out in 1948 — now numbers more than 4 million, one half of whom live in Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. One million remain Stateless, with no form of identification other than a card issued by UNWRA, the United Nations refugee agency. Each year since December 1948, the U.N. General Assembly has reconfirmed Resolution 194, which enshrines the refugees’ right of return. Any peace treaty that leaves these people out would be neither just nor lasting. Shocking perversion As if experiencing a Nakba wasn’t enough, the Palestinians are now being threatened with a Shoah, the Hebrew word for the Holocaust. In a shocking perversion of a historical legacy, the word was used by an Israeli defence minister to describe the punishment that would be meted out to the people of Gaza — who are there because they were driven there in 1948 — in response to the Qassam rocket attacks. Already, as I write, in the past four days alone, more than 100 Palestinians, including 49 unarmed civilians, among them 25 children, have been killed. Another 250 have been injured. As the furious assault on Gaza continues, Israel’s 60th birthday celebrations look increasingly unpalatable.