Optimizing decision making in the global biofuel chain for sustainable development, by creating insight into trade-off between social, economic and environmental impacts, and how these affect actors in different locations and on different time scales.

Abstract

Biofuels can provide a renewable and CO2 neural fuel, however biofuels are contested as the land needed to cultivate biofuels threatens food security. The market pull created by the European Biofuel Directive, that targets at a 10% obligatory blending in transport fuels by 2020, threatens food production and biodiversity in other continents, as for instance Africa, since Europe does not have the required land area neither the suitable climate. Sustainability criteria are defined, however, evidence is still lacking, as this new sector is still in the learning phase and data and expertise on best practices are being gathered. Furthermore, different actors within this global cultivation, production and usage chain have different priorities. Europe is targeting at mitigation of climate change, while Africa’s priorities are poverty reduction and conservation of soil fertility. Therefore it is important to operationalize the sustainability criteria in decision making by creating insight into the trade-off between the 3 dimension of sustainability; social (sustaining livelihoods in developing countries), economic (poverty reduction and profit making), and environmental (mitigation of climate change and conservation of soil fertility and biodiversity). Through mapping of the actor network and the distribution of costs and benefits (including externalities) in the entire chain, we will indicate where decisions can influenced. By combining this with the impact assessment we are creating insight into trade-offs and power relations for optimization of decision making. We will discuss the case of small holder jatropha farmers in Tanzania cultivating for export, based on years of research. Combined with our expertise on socio-economic modeling of the decision making processes, in this case strengthened with extensive literature research on jatropha biofuels as well as expert knowledge obtained through interviews, we will develop a decision support model for policy making in this global biofuel chain.