[Commentary] How Biofuel Subsidies are Pressuring the World's Water Supply

The recent trend towards dedicating more arable land to the growing of biofuel crops for
alternative fuel has been encouraged by a desire by the world's lawmakers for energy
independence and as a means to reduce global carbon emissions. Administrations, particularly
those in developed countries, have in recent years enthusiastically signed up to dedicate public
money towards the diverting of crops for alternative fuels such as ethanol. However it is these subsidies which have come under fire from environmentalists, agricultural
scientists, food security experts and water advocates. Increasingly biofuel critics have sounded
the warning that appropriating more government money for the increased growth of crops for
alternative fuel is upsetting the delicate balance that governs the world's food and water
supply.
Defined as fuel derived from recently living plant material, the production of biofuel crops has
soared in recent years in Europe, Asia and North and South America. Global consumption of
ethanol has doubled between 2000 and 2005 and the European Union, for example, has directed
that its members source at least 5.75 percent of transportation fuels from ethanol by 2010.
Biofuels were originally hailed as a potential savior from climate change for their role in
reducing carbon emissions from harmful fossil fuels. However environmentalists and food
experts have now argued that, as more land is needed to be set aside for the increased demand
for alternative fuels, less is available for growing food crops. In an increasingly hungry world,
one of the results of the heavy subsidizing of crops for biofuels has been the upward pressure
on food prices, particularly in the developing world.
During 2008, food riots were experienced in Haiti, Indonesia, the Philippines and
Cameroon after large price rises in food staples such as rice, wheat and corn were
experienced. UN food experts now consider food security as the latest crisis for developing
countries with UN Special Rapporteur for the Right to Food Jean Ziegler famously telling
German Bayerischer Runfunk radio in an April 2008 interview that "producing biofuels today is a
crime against humanity." Ziegler justified his strong views on the fact that more and more
arable land was being diverted away from food production for the growth of biofuel crops.
More recently UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told a Feb. 2009 gathering of environment
ministers in Nairobi, Kenya that sharp increases in food prices had focused the role of biofuel
production on food and water scarcity.
"Soaring food prices brought intense focus not just on the issues of agriculture and trade but on
the inflationary role of biofuel production," Ban said to attendees at the week-long meeting.
"Wildly fluctuating crude oil costs illustrated once again our dependence on the fossil fuels that
are causing climate change, and the short-sighted economic vision that has precipitated the
current financial turmoil is also bankrupting our resource base," he stated.
However while the debate over ethanol subsidies and their effect on food prices has raged in
the past few years, water experts have shown the extravagant water cost of the growth of
biofuels to feed our vehicles in the post global warming world. A growing number of experts
contend the extra demands placed on the world's water supply by the increased growing of
crops for alternative biofuel-based crops such as corn-based ethanol is unsustainable given
added factors such as population growth and climate change.
A 2007 conference organized by the Water Science and Technology Board (WSTB) of the
National Research Council on “Water Implications of Biofuels Production in the United States”
stated that, though the effect on water supply through expanded biofuel growth was difficult to
quantify, it found "...there are likely to be significant regional and local impacts where water
resources are already stressed."Internationally, the Stockholm International Water Institute reports that China intends to
quadruple its biofuel production to 15 billion litres by 2020, which if achieved which will
require an extra 75 litres of irrigation water per person every day. A major 2007 study by the
Colombo-based International Water Management Institute, (IWWI) said that both China and
India already suffer from acute water shortages and increased biofuel production would worsen
both countries' water supply.
"Domestic production of bio-fuels derived from crops will put greater stress on these countries'
water supplies, seriously undermining their ability to meet future food and feed demands," said
Charlotte de Fraiture, lead author of the IWMI study to the UK's Daily Telegraph.
In a already water-stressed world, experts have predicted the amounts dedicated to the growth
of biofuel crops will simply make the growing of crops for biofuels unsustainable. A 2004 Water
Resources Management report has predicted that, by 2025, "...some 5.1 billion (60% of the
total world population) will live in regions potentially experiencing moderate to extreme [water
resource vulnerability]."
According to David Pimentel, agricultural sciences professor at Cornell University, 1700 liters of
water are needed to produce one liter of ethanol in the United States with the country already
consuming a total of 61,200,000,000,000 liters of water to produce its total output of biofuel
crops. Despite these figures, the former Bush administration called for an increase of ethanol
production to 35 billion gallons of ethanol annually by 2017.
Clearly the amounts of water needed to grow crops such as corn, soy or sugarcane are
unsustainable said Prof Pimentel to OOSKAnews and added that governments, who are
responsible for the subsidizing of food crops for ethanol, were acting "insufficiently" to remedy
the problem.
Prof Pimentel said the increased concentration of growth of crops for biofuels "...will intensify
water shortages" throughout the world and governments needed to "investigate the water use
problem and CO2 problem carefully" before "eliminating the subsidies for biofuels" as a solution
to the crisis.
Maude Barlow, water author and Senior Adviser on Water to the President of the United Nations
General Assembly, agreed that government subsidies to farmers growing crops for biofuels were
a major cause of the crisis and called for greater cooperation between government departments
to promote a better understanding of the "true nature of the global water crisis."
"Clearly, governments must think this through," said Barlow to OOSKAnews. "It is as if one
arm of our governments looks after agriculture policy and another looks after water and they
don't speak. It is folly to try to deal with one bad habit - the over-use of fossil fuels for cars -
by picking up another; using vast amounts of water to grow crops to feed cars."
However she added that the Western world needed to reduce drastically its car-orientated
lifestyle if the world is to both offset global warming caused by carbon emissions and avoid the
impending global water crisis which has been exacerbated by the subsidizing of biofuels.
"We will have to change our lifestyles in the end," she said. "We have to dramatically reduce
our overall fuel consumption, not think that we can continue business as usual while moving to
destroy the world's water supply just so we don't have to give up our lifestyle."

Published in OOSKAnews World Water Weekly

[Img: Corn field. Credit: Befe/flickr