Source: Xinhua

04-15-2009 10:50

WASHINGTON, April 14 (Xinhua) -- A new study finds that it will take more than 75 years for the carbon emissions saved through the use of biofuels to compensate for the carbon lost when biofuel plantations are established on forestlands.

A new study finds that it will take more than 75  years for the carbon emissions saved through the use of biofuels to compensate for the carbon lost when biofuel plantations are established on forest- lands.(File photo)

If the original habitat was peatland, carbon balance would take more than 600 years. The study appeared on Tuesday in Conservation Biology.

The oil palm, increasingly used as a source for biofuel, has replaced soybean as the world's most traded oilseed crop. Global production of palm oil has increased exponentially over the past 40 years. In 2006, 85 percent of the global palm-oil crop was produced in Indonesia and Malaysia, countries whose combined annual tropical forest loss is around 20,000 square kilometers.

Conversion of forest to oil palm also results in significant impoverishment of both plant and animal communities. Other tropical crops suitable for biofuel use, like soybean, sugar cane and jatropha, are all likely to have similar impacts on climate and biodiversity.

"Biofuels are a bad deal for forests, wildlife and the climate if they replace tropical rain forests," says research scientist Finn Danielsen at Nordic Agency for Development and Ecology, who is also lead author of the study. "In fact, they hasten climate change by removing one of the world's most efficient carbon storage tools, intact tropical rain forests."

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