The anti-poverty charity Oxfam said this week that the European Union’s rush to biofuels could hit the world’s poor quite hard. The group released a report about the issue suggesting that without proper controls to make the biofuels boom sustainable and more just, it’s likely to threaten the food supply and provide a large incentive to heavily concentrate land ownership for biofuels production, pushing many poor subsistence farmers and others off their land. Oxfam suggested that the E.U. work to ensure land rights, labor standards, and food security are protected in the countries that produce its biofuels, including Brazil, Colombia, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Tanzania. “In the scramble to supply the E.U. and the rest of the world with biofuels, poor people are getting trampled,” said Oxfam’s Robert Bailey. “The E.U. proposals as they stand will exacerbate the problem. It is unacceptable that poor people in developing countries should bear the cost of questionable attempts to cut emissions in Europe.”
