Anggi Putra Prayoga, forest campaigner at Forest Watch Indonesia, argues that allowing the use of food/feed-based biofuels in shipping at the IMO could have severe negative social and environmental impacts.
Indonesia should serve as a stark warning to anyone considering biofuels as a sustainable clean option. Here one fifth of the county’s emissions is due to palm oil which has led the territory to its highest – ongoing – deforestation rates.
For a long time, biofuels have been erroneously sold as an attractive solution to transport pollution, especially in the road sector. Now, the threat could come from the sea.
In April this year, the International Maritime Organization (IMO) made history by agreeing on a flagship climate law for global shipping, the Net-Zero Framework, that aims to help reduce the climate impacts from the sector, which are bigger than most countries combined. As governments meet again in London this October for the next IMO negotiations, they should not forget what happened to my land and people.
The IMO’s agreement is a much-needed signal that multilateralism can still make progress on climate action and that the age of fossil fuels is definitively coming to an end. But the work is not over yet. The IMO still needs to decide which energy type will take centre stage as the alternative to fossil fuels. In other words, countries still need to make a choice between putting shipping on a pathway towards true renewable energy or going down the line of false and dead-end solutions where biofuels present themselves as the most attractive candidate, together with fossil gas (LNG).
The main issue with biofuels and especially crop-based biofuels – such as palm oil, soy, cassava, sugar palm, and sugarcane – could undermine the very objectives of the new Framework. Crop-based biofuels are responsible for deforestation and indirect land use change (ILUC) emissions which makes the impacts of their full life cycle comparable to those of fossil fuels, or even higher. Neglecting them from the framework would unleash an environmental disaster.
Deforestation driven by the demand for biofuel feedstocks occurs when forests, including peatland ecosystems, are directly converted. Large-scale forest clearance triggers massive emissions from forest and peat fires. ILUC occurs when agricultural and natural land previously used for food and feed production is diverted to biofuels feedstocks. Since food and feed demand remains constant, new land must then be converted into cropland to sustain production levels raising the overall emissions of these fuels.
A recent study estimated that by 2030, using the cheapest biofuels feedstocks such as palm and soy as an alternative energy source in shipping would require an area equal to the size of Germany.
In Indonesia, spurred by government energy policies and ambition for food self-sufficiency, the cultivation of biofuel feedstocks has led to the loss of 190,000 hectares of forest, an area even bigger than Greater London. Food and energy project expansion has devastated tropical forests, destroyed biodiversity, displaced Indigenous peoples, and depleted water resources. With palm oil plantations already covering more than 10% Indonesian land, my country is pushed beyond its ecological limits and climate stability.
Forest Watch Indonesia recorded Indonesia’s energy transition is filled with greenwashing. Here, the development of so-called “energy plantations” has already caused deforestation to supply biomass and wood pellets to countries like Japan and South Korea. This is a form of climate colonialism that must be stopped.
If international shipping were to adopt these same fuels, we would risk replicating this environmental disaster on a global scale.
Some argue that first generation biofuels can be produced “sustainably”. However, we know that the lack of transparency and international coordination makes it extremely hard to guarantee the origin of biofuels or to ensure they are free from deforestation and other high impacts.
When governments meet in London again in October to deliberate energy sources for ships, the priority must be clear: safeguard forests by making sure ILUC emissions and their effects on land are properly accounted for under the new Framework.
The IMO has a social and moral responsibility to ensure it does not contribute to deforestation and pollution, particularly in climate-vulnerable regions such as Southeast Asia and Africa. Only by taking this responsibility seriously, international shipping can show true climate leadership.
The ships of the future must run on clean energy, not on burned trees.
