Yahoo News 9 Sep 08;
Major investments in agrofuel development should be put on hold unless they met stringent criteria, a UN expert said in a report Tuesday, warning that pushing ahead could lead to food shortages.
Efforts should be made to reach an international consensus on biofuels and agrofuel development to avoid skewed development in producer countries, said Oliver de Schutter, the UN's Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food.
"The conclusion that emerges... is that the current path in the development of agrofuels for transport is not sustainable, and that if such development goes unchecked, further violations of the right to food will result," he said in the report published on Tuesday.
Before an international consensus was formed on the issue, any major new investment in agrofuel development should be allowed only if assessments were "positive in terms of its implications, both at the domestic and international levels," he added.
The development of biofuels has accelerated as major fuel-consuming countries such as the United States promoted the use of the fuel as a greener alternative to fossil fuels.
Higher oil prices have meanwhile encouraged consumers to embrace biofuels.
In recent months, however, biofuels have come under fire for taking up arable land that could be used to grow food -- thereby contributing to a shortage in produce and, in turn, higher food prices.
In his report on food security, which was to be presented to the Human Rights Council on Wednesday, de Schutter pointed out that a major problem was that the demand for agrofuels was "potentially almost infinite."
"Whereas increased demand for crops for food or in order to feed livestock reaches a natural limit... once crops are turned into bioethanol or biodiesel, the level of demand can be such that a very large proportion of crops can be used for that purpose, without a risk of saturation of markets before long," he wrote.
Therefore, it was important to monitor the impact on those who did not farm such crops, he added.
In July, the head of the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization Jacques Diouf said in a visit to Cuba that the production of biofuels was depriving the world of around 100 million tons of cereals that could go to feed the hungry.
