Employing the ecosystem services approach
Biofuel production expanded significantly across Africa in the past decade. Jatropha (for biodiesel) and sugarcane (for bioethanol) attracted the most attention. While sugarcane ethanol has a proven commercial model with excellent energy balances, jatropha is not yet proven commercially. Yet, it might offer valuable socioeconomic benefits, particularly to small-scale farmers.
Despite the mounting policy and investor interest, several early biofuel ventures collapsed. On several occasions these project collapses left poor local communities, even poorer. Some of these poverty outcomes are directly related to the loss of access of local communities to ecosystems; and the goods and services they provide. This implies that there are significant linkages between the environmental and the socioeconomic performance of biofuel projects but we still have an incomplete understanding of these interrelations in Africa least developed countries (LDCs).
In order to link biofuel-driven ecosystem change and human wellbeing we employ the ecosystem services (ES) approach, which has been shown to capture the main environmental and socioeconomic impacts associated with biofuels production and use. The main ES that we consider are fuel, food/fodder/fibre, water, climate regulation, pollination and cultural services.
Publications
Romeu-Dalmau C, Gasparatos A, von Maltitz G, Graham A, Almagro-Garcia J, Wilebore B, Willis K. 2016. Impacts of land use change due to biofuel crops on climate regulation services: five case studies in Malawi, Mozambique and Swaziland. Biomass and Bioenergy. DOI:10.1016/j.biombioe.2016.05.011
Alexandros Gasparatos, S Mudombi, BS Balde, Graham P Von Maltitz, FX Johnson, C Romeu-Dalmau, C Jumbe, C Ochieng, D Luhanga, A Nyambane, C Rossignoli, MP Jarzebski, R Dam Lam, EB Dompreh, KJ Willis, Local food security impacts of biofuel crop production in southern Africa, Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews 154 2022. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rser.2021.111875
