David,

I noticed that in an earlier blog you expressed concern over the prospect of increasing imports of biofuels from, and therefore production in, developing countries. May I counsel a bit more circumspection?

For one, when criticizing developing countries for environmental damage caused by farming, we need to keep in mind that the North is not one big happy organic paradise either. Need I mention what U.S. sugar producers did to the everglades, and sodbusters on the Prairies, the expanding Dead Zone in the Gulf of Mexico, the loss of natural vegetation and soil salinization in Australia, and continued heavy agrochemical use in Europe? Increased production of corn for ethanol in the USA and rapeseed for biodiesel in Europe will very likely intensify environmental pressures in those regions.

Certainly, it is not good if Northern demand for biofuels ends up encouraging even more deforestation. (That is a particular danger for some countries planning big expansions of biodiesel based on palm oil). But there are some other sources of biofuels -- e.g., jatropha -- that could actually help restore land while providing income for some rather poor people.

Tariffs on imported biofuels are blunt instruments, and non-discriminatory. They keep out ethanol coming from well-managed cane operations (or, as I wrote earlier, mangrove palms), as well as ethanol from areas cleared of forest. That is the IIED report's main message.

High tariffs on ethanol could even have the perverse consequence of INCREASING pressure on the Amazon rainforest. In Brazil, the Amazon is being cleared not from cane production for ethanol (there is no commercial cane production in the Amazon), but from soybean production. If, as a result of a ramping up of corn production for ethanol, U.S. farmers cut back on the acres they plant to soy and export less of the bean, who's going to pick up the slack, eh?