(To comment on this principle, and its associated criteria and guidance, please use the Discussion Page.)
PRINCIPLE
6. Biofuel production shall not impair food security.
CRITERIA
- 6.a Biofuel production shall minimize negative impacts on food security by giving particular preference to waste and residues as input (once economically viable), to degraded/marginal/underutilized lands as sources, and to yield improvements that maintain existing food supplies.
Key guidance: Clear definitions are needed for waste, residues, and degraded/marginal/underutilized land. ESIA should ensure that these lands were not used for livelihoods support, or that benefits of use for biofuels outweigh any loss of livelihoods. All of these definitions are time-dependent; unused land might come into production anyway given climate change as well as population and wealth growth. These criteria and definitions should be periodically re-assessed. The RSB will examine different tools for incenting the use of these preferred sources of biofuels.
- 6.b Biofuel producers implementing new large-scale projects shall assess the status of local food security and shall not replace staple crops if there are indications of local food insecurity.
Key guidance: The RSB will work with other actors to develop tools for assessing local food insecurity. To mitigate local food security impacts, the biofuel project could, for instance: take the maximum food value from the crop and use the remainder as an energy stock, offset impacts via economic instruments, and/or intercrop food and fuel.