Potential Impacts of Biofuels on Deforestation in Southern Africa

Southern Africa has been identified globally as one of the areas with high potential for extensive biofuel production. Unlike most commodities, biofuel is not market-limited. Instead, access to feedstock—and more particularly the land on which to grow the feedstock—is the main constraint for biofuel production, and hence the greatest competition in the industry is to acquire land. Countries in southern Africa have taken very different policy stances on biofuel. South Africa is taking a conservative approach; concerns about potential invasiveness of Jatropha curcas have led to a moratorium on planting, and maize-based bioethanol is banned due to possible food security impacts. On the contrary, Mozambique sees biofuel production as one of the key strategies to obtain foreign investment in the agricultural sector, which it is actively trying to revive. What remains unclear is to what extent primary and secondary forest and woodland will be cleared to enable this biofuel expansion. Although early indications suggested that extensive deforestation would occur, more recently companies seem to be taking more conservative approaches to deforestation due to concerns over certification requirements.