Aliens Newsletter - ISSG

Managing Biodiversity Risks of Biofuels – Biological Invasions
Geoffrey W. Howard
The world-wide movement to produce biofuels as
substitutes for reducing stocks of fossil fuels has
resulted in many plantations in developing
countries of introduced plants used as feedstocks
for production systems. Amongst the negative
impacts of establishing biofuel production
systems in single-species plantations is the
probability that they will result in biological
invasions by the introduced plants if they
“escape” from the production area. IUCN
initiated a programme to investigate the
likelihood of this happening in Eastern and
Southern Africa and, after two significant
consultations with biofuel producers, government
regulators, invasive species experts and
concerned conservationists, developed a series of
recommendations on how to reduce or eliminate
the risk of possible invasions by the introduced
plants. The result was a series of
recommendations and best practice which will
enhance the existing advice on prevention of
invasions of the Roundtable on Sustainable
Biofuels. The process and outputs of those
consultations are described and links to their
details provided.
Introduction and background
During the 9 th Conference of Parties of the Convention
on Biological Diversity (held in Bonn, Germany
in May, 2008), the Global Invasive Species Programme
(GISP) hosted a Press Briefing on Biofuels
and Invasive Species and released a small information
document entitled “Biofuel Crops and the
Use of Non-Native Species”. The gathering was addressed
by the Chairman of the GISP Board, Dr
Dennis Rangi, and by GISP partners from CABI,
IUCN and The Nature Conservancy. They presented
possible problems of biological invasions from
plants introduced from outside a particular area that
would be used as feedstocks for biofuel plantations
– especially in developing countries, and then contributed
some solutions to this problem. The result
was a plethora of press articles across the world and
much debate about whether this was really a significant
risk and what could be done about it – especially
as large areas of land were being purchased
in Africa, Asia and Latin America for the development
of biofuel plantations at that time. GISP responded
by publicising the information document
(GISP, 2008) and encouraging the preparation of a
technical paper on the subject which was subsequently
published in Biodiversity Business
(Howard G & Ziller S, 2008) later that year. This
presented the possible problems as well as ways to
avoid them and suggested that Weed Risk Assessment
should become a standard practice when deciding
upon the kind of biofuel feedstock to select
for a production system.
IUCN, through its Business and Biodiversity Programme
and its Invasive Species Initiative, decided
to take this further and to assist the Roundtable
on Sustainable Biofuels to develop specific guidance
for the selection and management of biofuel plantations
to avoid the possibility of plant invasions
from the feedstocks involved. A proposal was made
to the David and Lucile Packard Foundation which
generously agreed to fund a one-year set of activities
to prepare some of the guidance suggested. This
was to be done by gathering information and advice
and discussing this in the Eastern and Southern
African region with interested parties, experts and
biofuel producers. This region was chosen for the
discussions because of the rapidly expanding biofuel
industry developing in that part of Africa at the
time.
The Process – Workshop One
The first activity of the one-year project was to commission
a background document which would define
the terms and the topic and give general information
necessary for an informed discussion about
this topic. Dr John Mauremootoo was asked to prepare
such a document (IUCN, 2009a) which was finalized
in March, 2009 and distributed to the participants
who had meanwhile been invited to the first
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