BRUSSELS, Belgium, Nov 7 (IPS) – President Prabowo Subianto recently welcomed his counterpart Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva from Brazil to Jakarta to strengthen ties between the fast-growing economies.
The timing is significant. The meeting took place just weeks before Brazil hosted the COP30 climate change negotiations in Belém, a bustling port city at the mouth of the Amazon.
Like Brazil, Indonesia is home to vast rainforests that are under intense international monitoring due to their rich biodiversity and globally important role as carbon sinks. And like Brazil, Indonesia has implemented new policies to encourage the use of biofuels.
The leaders, who agreed to expand cooperation as two of the world’s largest biofuel producers, argue the energy sources are needed to reduce dependence on imports and cut emissions.
But Indonesia has been down this road before.
In the mid-2000s, growing international demand for highly versatile palm oil – a key ingredient for biofuels – led the country to clear millions of hectares of rainforest and peatlands to make way for vast plantations.
The oil gold rush has displaced indigenous communities and smallholder farmers and destroyed vital ecosystems on which species such as orangutans, Sumatran tigers and the Javan rhino depend for survival.
In Borneo alone, instead of reducing CO2 pollution, slash and burn agriculture has caused the largest single-year global emissions increase in 2,000 years. NASA.
Falling demand and the introduction of conservation measures helped slow deforestation in the ensuing decade, but the Subianto-Lula meeting reflects a worrying resurgence of biofuels as a global commodity.
Brazil will ask the international community at COP30 to sign a pledge calling for a fourfold increase in so-called ‘sustainable fuels’ – the most important of which are biofuels – over the next decade.
The proposed pledge draws heavily on a new report from the International Energy Agency (IEA) showing that a fourfold increase can be achieved through innovative fuel developments and a doubling of biofuel use. However, in the fine print, the IEA notes that no additional land should be needed to achieve the target.
Brazil’s COP30 pledge does not make this distinction, raising fears that growing demand will fuel deforestation and increase competition for already scarce land.
In August, Brazil lifted a moratorium on soy that environmentalists credit with significant conservation gains made over the past two decades to make way for more cultivation.
There is also the matter of food.
Globally, approximately 90 percent of biofuel production depends on food products. In 2023, the biofuel industry used about 200 million tons of corn, 8 million tons of wheat, 40 million tons of vegetable oil, and enough sugar cane and sugar beets to make 50 million tons of sugar.
According to one estimate, the energy stored in these crops could meet the minimum calorie needs of 1.3 billion people, while almost 3,000 liters of water are needed to produce enough biofuel to drive a car just 100 kilometers.
Biofuels also have serious consequences for the atmosphere. It is estimated that, liter for liter, when the full impact of land use change caused by biofuel production is taken into account, these biofuels emit on average 16% more carbon than the fossil fuels they replace.
But as we move away from biofuels, we cannot ignore the social and economic realities on the ground. For example, Indonesia’s new policy stems from the country’s palm oil surplus and the need to maintain rural employment.
In response, Indonesian NGOs have increasingly advocated for a holistic solution that would limit expansion, improve traceability, and invest in community-based governance, including a decentralized energy system.
Earlier this year, Indonesia formally joined the BRICS, an influential bloc of developing countries that makes up almost half the world’s population and handles almost a quarter of all trade.
The countries are also responsible for 51 percent of emissions. In recent years, the bloc has made statements suggesting climate change is its top foreign policy priority and committed last July to increasing peer-to-peer climate financing.
If Indonesia and its new partners are serious about building a new kind of economy that works for the Global South without undermining progress on reducing emissions, they will have to pair their lofty rhetoric with tangible action. Starting an honest conversation about biofuels in Belém would be a good start.
Cian Delaney is Campaign Coordinator for Transport & Environment
IPS UN Office
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