2 December 2008 | Luca Del Buono

 

Clearing tropical forests to plant biofuels is a bad idea for the climate and reduces the diversity of animal and plant life, a study found on Monday.

"Keeping tropical rain forests intact is a better way to combat climate change than replacing them with biofuel plantations," according to scientists from seven nations writing in the journal Conservation Biology.

Millions of hectares of forest land in South East Asia has been converted to palm oil plantations to produce biofuels -- seen as greener than fossil fuels because plants soak up greenhouse gases from the atmosphere as they grow.

But the study, released on the opening day of 187-nation talks on a new U.N. climate treaty in Poland, said it would take 75 years for carbon emissions saved from using biofuels to make up for carbon released into the atmosphere by burning down a forest to clear it for a biofuel plantation.

And the balance would only be achieved after more than 600 years if the habitat was carbon-rich peatland, it said. Planting biofuels on degraded grasslands, however, could lead to a net removal of carbon after only a decade.

"Sourcing biofuel feedstock from crops such as palm oil simply doesn't make environmental sense," said Emily Fitzherbert from the University of East Anglia, England, who was one of the authors.

The spread of biofuel plantations in Asia has also led to a loss of habitat for species such as rhinos and orangutans according to the report, by scientists in the Netherlands, the United States, Malaysia, Germany, Indonesia, Britain and Denmark.

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Source: Reuters

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