Reconciling food security and bioenergy: priorities for action

Abstract

Understanding the complex interactions among food security, bioenergy sustainability, and resource management requires a focus on specific contextual problems and opportunities. The United Nations' 2030 Sustainable Development Goals place a high priority on food and energy security; bioenergy plays an important role in achieving both goals. Effective food security programs begin by clearly defining the problem and asking, 'What can be done to assist people at high risk?' Simplistic global analyses, headlines, and cartoons that blame biofuels for food insecurity may reflect good intentions but mislead the public and policymakers because they obscure the main drivers of local food insecurity and ignore opportunities for bioenergy to contribute to solutions. Applying sustainability guidelines to bioenergy will help achieve near-and long-term goals to eradicate hunger. Priorities for achieving successful synergies between bioenergy and food security include the following: (1) clarifying communications with clear and consistent terms, (2) recognizing that food and bioenergy need not compete for land and, instead, should be integrated to improve resource management, (3) investing in technology, rural extension, and innovations to build capacity and infrastructure, (4) promoting stable prices that incentivize local production, (5) adopting flex crops that can provide food along with other products and services to society, and (6) engaging stakeholders to identify and assess specific opportunities for biofuels to improve food security. Systematic monitoring and analysis to support adaptive management and continual improvement are essential elements to build synergies and help society equitably meet growing demands for both food and energy.Keywords: bioenergy, biofuels, energy, flex crops, food insecurity, food security and nutrition, natural resource management, poverty reduction, sustainable development goals Received 23 December 2015; accepted 8 March 2016The most serious mistakes are not being made as a result of wrong answers. The truly dangerous thing is asking the wrong questions.-Peter Drucker (1971)

Bioeconomy Strategies: Contexts, Visions, Guiding Implementation Principles and Resulting Debates

“…This would ultimately increase the external land footprint of industrialised countries. More generally, it is argued that opportunities for positive synergies between bioenergy and food production should be explored [124].…”

Social Life Cycle Approach as a Tool for Promoting the Market Uptake of Bio-Based Products from a Consumer Perspective

“…In particular, it has been clearly pointed out that for the assessment of social aspects of bio-based products, upstream processes in the agricultural sector have a high social risk potential [19]. Indeed, the production of biomass affects access to land and land use [18] and the price of feedstocks, with direct and indirect effects on food production and security (see [20,21]). Moreover, given that a great percentage of raw materials are produced in countries with lower human rights standards, working conditions in this phase must be carefully monitored (see [20]).…”

Improving poverty and inequality modelling in climate research

“…Climate mitigation policies can generate income and price shocks, which in some cases can also increase health risks to the poor 8 . Climate mitigation technologies can also generate differential impacts on different income groups, a notable example being the extensive deployment of biomass for energy and its implications for food security 9,10 . In order to meet the Paris climate agreement goals of keeping warming below 2•C above preindustrial levels, national pledges to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions need to be ramped up significantly 11 .…”