By William Ginn
Director, Global Forest Partnership, The Nature Conservancy

The world is eager for solutions to climate change and new alternatives to petroleum. So investors are busy developing "renewable" energy sources such as biodiesel and ethanol, two "biofuels" derived from plants.

In 2005, investors put $49 billion into alternative energies — a 60 percent increase over 2004. But in our drive to replace fossil fuels, are we "burning" the biodiversity of forests?

Forests Giving Way to Biofuel Plantations

The growing market for biodiesel has sparked a worldwide surge in the clearing and burning of forests to make way for palm-oil plantations and fields of soy and canola. And the consequences for human and ecosystem health have been severe.

In Indonesia, for instance, the palm-oil boom has led to millions of acres of fires as well as smog and respiratory illnesses across Southeast Asia. And these fires are releasing millions of tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere — the very thing biodiesel is intended to counter.

The clearing of more tropical forest for the biodiesel market also exacerbates soil erosion, water contamination and the loss of critical habitat for endangered animals such as orangutans.

In Kalimantan, the Indonesian part of the island of Borneo, clearing for oil-palm planting has leapt from just 37,000 acres 20 years ago to 988,000 acres today. Little more than one-half of Borneo’s once ubiquitous forest cover remains today.

Sustainable Alternatives are Available

The lure of energy-yielding crops is also triggering forest conversion in Brazil, Malaysia, Canada and Colombia as well as in the United States, where an increase in demand for ethanol is driving the plowing of more land for corn. In October, a European Parliament committee recommended a ban on palm-oil biofuel because of its link to tropical deforestation.

But biofuels need not be destructive. For instance, small-diameter wood gathered from fire-prone U.S. forest areas (a move essential to restoring natural forest systems) could be lucrative — if the United States developed a market for it.

Conservation organizations have also joined with palm-oil and energy companies to form the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil, which hopes to certify plantations that follow best management practices. And in Brazil, The Nature Conservancy and Cargill have launched a joint "responsible sourcing" demonstration project for soy.

Our challenge is to ensure that we don’t create another, equally devastating "solution" in our quest to solve the climate and energy problems.

Nature picture credits (top to bottom, left to right): Photo © Ron Geatz/TNC (Deforestation due to palm oil plantation in Papua New Guinea); Photo © TNC (William Ginn).