Biofuel Legislative and Policy Framework and Sustainable Development: From Perspectives of Developing Countries

Abstract

Biofuel development has a strategic significance in various fields, including national energy security, climate change mitigation, environmental conservation and protection, as well as agricultural revival and rural development. The production and trade of biofuels have entered a new era of global growth, with both the scale of the industry and the number of countries involved reaching unprecedented levels. Developing countries have advantages over developed countries in biofuel production, as many of them have apparent relative availability of land and feedstocks, as well as good climate conditions in that biomass production potential is much higher and production costs can be lower. However, a biofuel expansion in these countries raises concerns about potential added environmental and socio-economic pressures. A massive scale-up in the production and use of biofuels could speed up deforestation and biodiversity loss, and possibly accelerate climate change, while creating a distortion on the traditional agricultural market and the emerging agro-energy market, and increasing the concentration of economic wealth.

Against this background, the central aim of this thesis is to collate a variety of guidance, legislation and policies relevant to the regulation of biofuels in developing countries, to provide a comprehensive and coherent legislative and policy framework for these countries. As the rise of the biofuel economy has linked together many complicated environmental and social-legal relations in various topics, it is impossible to regulate biofuels within a single legal regime. In envisaging the legislative and policy framework for biofuel sustainability, it is necessary to consider and balance various values and interests from at least four legal areas, namely biotechnology development and diffusion, the environment, agro-energy economy, as well as trade liberalization on the biofuel market. Within the interdisciplinary regulatory framework, the biofuel industry in developing countries would not lead to a scenario in which it provided a solution to one specific problem/legal area, while creating many more in other legal areas. As a result, this regulatory framework will help policy makers to ensure that environmental and socio-economic sustainability considerations are taken into account in the production, promotion and consumption of biofuels, with a view to minimizing risks of negative impacts and maximizing benefits in the Global South, and in turn to benefit developing countries and the whole world in the immediate and long term.