RSB Working Group on Environment
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Roundtable on Sustainable Biofuels (RSB) > RSB working groups > RSB Working Group on Environment (ENV WG)
Within the Roundtable on Sustainable Biofuels (RSB), the Working Group on Environment (ENV WG) aims to set principles, criteria and indicators regarding each environmental issue connected to the production, trade or consumption of biofuels, except the greenhouse gases elements, which are dealt with by a specific working group (RSB Working Group on Greenhouse Gases).
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Secretariat webpage | Steering Board | |
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| Sustainability Criteria: | Global principles for sustainable biofuels production (2nd version) October 23, 2007 | |
| Working groups | GHG - Greenhouse gas lifecycle efficiency analysis ENV - Environmental impacts SOC - Social impacts IMP - Implementation | |
| Current debates: | Land Use and GHG- GHG emissions from indirect land use changes Soil Management Water Management Air quality Biodiversity Offsets. | |
| Documents: | -RSB launch press release -RSB Flyer (pdf) -RSB Intro to Feedback Mechanisms -Commenting on RSB Drafts Using the BioenergyWiki (PDF File) -RSB Draft Principles - June 5, 2007 (PDF File) | |
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FOR DISCUSSIONS, DEBATES AND COMMENTS WITHIN THE WORKING GROUP, PLEASE CLICK ON THE "DISCUSSION" TAB ABOVE AND FOLLOW THE INSTRUCTIONS!
Contents |
Latest news and announcements
- Burning Topics! Come and share your views on Soil Management, Water Management, Air quality and Biodiversity Offsets.
- 8th Virtual Meeting of the Working Group on Environment (7th May 08): View the Full Minutes, Summary, background document on Air and the background document on Soils.
- 7th Virtual Meeting of the Working Group on Environment (3rd April 08): View the Full Minutes, the Summary and the working papers on Conservation and Technologies
- New Discussion Forum on Biodiversity Offsets. You have your views on the subject? Please click here!
- The Working Group is still open to new participants. Interested persons must quickly register among the coordinator (see email adress below) or on the official webpage of the RSB. Participants will be requested to fill out a brief questionnaire.
Current discussions
The Working Group is approaching the first deadline for the release of draft Principles and Criteria on Environment, but several topics are still burning. The current discussions are:
- Soils: How to avoid significant erosion and soil losses? What is the optimal level of Organic Matter? Is no-till the solution in every situation?
- Water: What must biofuel producers do to avoid depleting water resources? How to avoid competition with other uses?
- Air: Is it realistic to expect that biofuel producers avoid increasing air pollution? How to cope with trade-offs such as sugarcane burning (for security reasons) vs higher air quality?
- Biodiversity Offsets: Can we realistically integrate BO within the Criteria on Conservation? What are the risks and opportunities?
2nd Version of Draft Principles on Environment
After 1 round of discussion, the Working Group on Environment has reedited the principles, with regards to the requirements in terms of protection of the environment. Although there is not a full agreement of the Working Group on the exact wording, the new draft principles are related to:
By clicking on the above links, you can access a discussion page specially dedicated to each principle or click here for a general page for comments.
The ENV Working Group will recommend exact wording of the principles related to these topics, and recommend draft language regarding the criteria for meeting those prinicples, and the indicators that would prove the criteria have been followed - i.e. a draft standard. After transposing these principles into precise criteria and indicators allowing a reliable follow-up, the Working Group will adress a certain number of recommendations to the RSB Steering Board, which aims to approve a draft standard based on Working Group recommendations by June 2008.
Participants
The Working Group is open to any participants from the academic, industry, corporate, NGO or international organisation sectors. We use a combination of teleconferences, online discussions, and regional meetings to draft our work.
To sign up for this and other Working Groups, please use the following link: on-line WG signup.
Because of the accelerated nature of our work, those who join the group after the first meeting will be required to read all previous minutes and background documents and to make themselves familiar with the decisions previously made by the Working Group regarding approach and recommendations. The Working Group will be led by two Co-chairs:
- Jeff McNeely, Senior Scientist at the World Conservation Union (IUCN)
- (other co-chair to be confirmed)
and a Coordinator:
- Sebastien Haye, project coordinator at EPFL (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Lausanne)
- Sebastien joins the Roundtable after working on an environmental and social impact assessment on the use of agricultural residues as a source of domestic energy for BP in India. He holds an MSc in Environmental Sciences from the Universities of Geneva and Lausanne, which included research at the EPFL in Life Cycle Assessment and Risk Analysis. Since 2003, he is a board member and in charge of a project in India for Terre des Hommes Genève and volunteers for the Tiljala SHED (social development in Calcutta’s slums); he recently created a small organization which raises funds to support cultural development in underprivileged areas.
- Contact: sebastien.haye"at"epfl.ch
- Sebastien joins the Roundtable after working on an environmental and social impact assessment on the use of agricultural residues as a source of domestic energy for BP in India. He holds an MSc in Environmental Sciences from the Universities of Geneva and Lausanne, which included research at the EPFL in Life Cycle Assessment and Risk Analysis. Since 2003, he is a board member and in charge of a project in India for Terre des Hommes Genève and volunteers for the Tiljala SHED (social development in Calcutta’s slums); he recently created a small organization which raises funds to support cultural development in underprivileged areas.
Objectives & Scopes
As per the preliminary concertation between the several stakeholders from the RSB, it is agreed that the first duty of the WG is not to provide a judgement about the level of sustainability reached by biofuel chains. Although the existing statements about biofuel channels' sustainability will be considered, the major outputs will rather be a tool of evaluation. As the group is aware that its time is limited, it is preferable that the task forces concentrate on a few major issues (e.g. land use) and try to end up with a concrete and implementable tool that really allows the biofuels stakeholders to orientate their work toward the highest level of sustainability. Otherwise, it is very likely that the efforts could be dispersed by trying to partially cover ALL the issues that raise from the biofuel chain.
Timeline
Official RSB documents (Working Group on Environment)
- Paper 28: Summary of the 8th Virtual Meeting - Soils and Air (7th May 08)
- Paper 27: Full Minutes of the 8th Virtual Meeting - Soils and Air(7th May 08)
- Paper 26: Summary of the 7th Virtual Meeting - Conservation and Technologies(3rd April 08)
- Paper 25: Full Minutes of the 7th Virtual Meeting - Conservation and Technologies(3rd April 08)
- Paper 24: Synthesis on Technologies for 7th Virtual Meeting(April 08)
- Paper 23:Synthesis on Conservation for 7th Virtual Meeting(April 08)
- Paper 22: Background Paper 1 for the Expert Panel on Soils (February 2008)
- Paper 21: Synthesis from the 6th Virtual Meeting of the ENV WG (1st February 2008)
- Paper 19: Synthesis from the 5th Virtual Meeting of the ENV WG (4th December 2007)
- Paper 18: Full minutes from the 5th Virtual Meeting of the ENV WG (4th December 2007)
- Paper 17: Synthesis on Conservation Criteria, version 1.0 (Second version is included in papers 18 and 19).
- Paper 16: Synthesis from the 4th Virtual Meeting of the ENV WG (19th October 2007)
- Paper 15: Full minutes from the 4th Virtual Meeting of the ENV WG (19th October 2007)
- Paper 14: Minutes from the 1st Meeting of the Expert Panel on Conservation (3rd October 2007)
- Paper 13: Background Paper for the Expert Panel on Conservation
- Paper 12: Minutes (Summary) from the 3rd Virtual Meeting of the ENV WG (7th Sept 2007)
- Paper 11: Minutes (Full) from the 3rd Virtual Meeting of the ENV WG (7th Sept 2007)
- Paper 10: Proposal for new environmental Draft Principles (August 2007)
- Paper 9: Synthesis of the discussion about edits of draft principles (July 2007).
- Paper 8: Minutes of the Second Meeting of the ENV WG (25th July 2007). Unedited version.
- Paper 6: HCV Areas
- Paper 5: Review of Draft Principles
- Paper 2: General information, principles and scopes of the WG ENV
- Minutes from the first Meeting of the Working Groups on Environment and GHG
Further readings
ALL INTERNATIONAL KEY REPORTS (International Organisations, Governments, NGOs...) ARE AVAILABLE HERE
- The Soil Carbon Opportunity
- Position paper from ENDA-Biofuels in Africa (PDF file)
- The Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety
- The FAO's Unified Bioenergy Terminology
- The Challenge of Sustainable Bioenergy: Balancing climate protection, biodiversity and development policy - A Discussion Paper (PDF file), from the German NGO Forum on Environment and Development, courtesy of Mr G Knauf
- Carbon and Sustainability Reporting Within the Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation (RTFO)
- Sustainability Reporting within the RTFO: Framework Report
- Carbon Reporting within the RTFO: Methodology
- Final report from the project group “Sustainable production of biomass” (Cramer Commission, Netherlands) (PDF file)
- IPCC Special Report on Land Use, Land-Use Change And Forestry
- Executive Summary of the Empa (Switzerland) Report about Comparative LCAs of Biofuels (in English) (PDF file)
Useful links
- Official webpage of the RSB
- IRGC - International Risk Governance Council's Governance on Bioenergy
- Global Bioenergy Partnership (GBEP)
- UK Department of Transport: Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation (RTFO)
- Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO)
- The Energy, Environment and Development Association (ENDA)
- Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC, US-based NGO)
- Conservation International (CI, US-based NGO)
- The High Conservation Value Resource Network
- The European Biomass Association
- UNEP Energy Group:Transport
- World Business Council for Sustainable Development
- Sustainable Agriculture Initiative Platform
- Biosafety Clearing-House (BCH) of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) - "a mechanism...to facilitate the exchange of information on Living Modified Organisms (LMOs) and assist the Parties [to the CBD] to better comply with their obligations."[1]
| Environment | edit | |
| Climate change - Greenhouse gases | Life-cycle analysis Species: Biodiversity | Invasive species | Orangutans Genetically Modified Organisms | Pollution | Soil erosion | Forests: Deforestation/Forest degradation RSB Working Group on Environment | ||
