Just over 18 months ago ActionAid held a global meeting at Johanesburg to talk about hunger – for the first time in history over one billion people are going hungry, making food an issue that could no longer be ignored.

Activists were already talking about important ideas in the fight against hunger – sustainable agriculture, support for women farmer’s (forget Farmer Giles it’s women who produce most of the world’s food) and the importance of averting the worst effects of climate change.

Then people started mentioning a new threat to food access: industrial biofuels. Activists from Mozambique, Ghana, India, Senegal and Tanzania have all been telling the same story – poor farmers forced off land, unprofitable biofuel crops grown, people going hungry – it was clear that biofuels were harming people now and with their rapid expansion the situation was only going to get worse.

The crucial thing about industrial biofuels is that they are made from crops – very often food crops. This includes maize, wheat and oils - staple foods.

The amount of biofuel in UK cars is going to almost quadruple in the next ten years because of government targets. This biofuel won’t come from thin air and will hurt the world’s poorest because as land is switched from food crops to fuel crops, food costs will rise massively – the Overseas Development Institute estimates that this could be by as much as 76%.

Food price rises hurt the poor most – people in developing countries can spend up to 80% of their income on food so even a small price increase can have a dramatic impact on hunger. Whole families skip meals and parents have to make impossible choices between food, healthcare or education for their children.

Biofuels are driving a global tragedy. ActionAid have just launched a report called ‘Meals per Gallon: The impact of industrial biofuels on people and global hunger” which shows how EU biofuel targets could push 100 million more people into hunger in just 10 years.

It’s not just the increase in food prices that mean billions of people being pushed into hunger. Whilst conducting the research for our report we heard disturbing stories of farmers who had lost their land to biofuels - people like Matilde Ngoene a farmer in Mozambique whose farm was taken from her by a biofuel company, she told us:

“They (an industrial biofuel company) actually took the land when it was already tilled. They haven’t paid us anything, they haven’t told us anything. They haven’t offered any jobs, they haven’t employed us – they haven’t offered us anything. They haven’t given us any alternative farms. What we want is to get our farms back, because that is what our livelihood is dependent on. We are dying of hunger and there is nothing that we have that is actually our own.”

This is not an isolated story. From Ghana to Guatemala and Mozambique to India, ActionAid is seeing first hand the consequences of western consumption of biofuels. EU companies have already acquired or are in the process of acquiring 5 million hectares for biofuel production – that’s an area of land twice the size of Wales.

And as if that wasn’t catastrophic enough biofuels are not even the answer to climate change. If you look at the science, almost all biofuels are worse than the fossil fuels they are supposed to replace. Scientists have realised that there are two main issues: fertilisers and land.

Biofuels need nitrogen fertiliser to grow. Some of this nitrogen is released into the atmosphere making nitrous oxide – a greenhouse gas that is 300 times more damaging than carbon dioxide. More importantly, increased biofuel production creates more demand for land. If we cut down rainforests or plough up grasslands to plant biofuels, we will be releasing massive amounts of carbon. This can happen directly, like in Indonesia where rainforests are being cut down to grow palm oil. Or it can happen indirectly when farmers are being pushed off their land and have to find new land to grow food.

The UK now faces a choice - we can continue to expand our biofuel production at the expense of poor people, or we can stop investing in an approach that is not even helping the environment. The UK government has less than five months to submit its plan for renewable energy use in transport to the European Commission – ActionAid are fighting to make sure it doesn’t include a commitment to increasing the amount of industrial biofuel in our petrol and diesel.

You can read the report in full or visit the ActionAid website to help us demand Zero Meals Per Gallon and stop this disaster before it happens.

Written by guest blogger, ActionAid Campaigner Emma Hughes.

The news came last month that General Motors (GM) plans to scrap the Hummer H2 range of 4×4s, the civilian version of the famous US military vehicle. The Hummer H2 became popular as the biggest, some might say most obnoxious, 4×4 available even though it has notoriously bad cornering (in an episode of UK motor magazine show Top Gear the presenter had to do a 3-point turn to go around a corner in a rural village) and miles per gallon hovering somewhere around 8-12 (for comparison a new VW Golf does up to 52mpg).

GM announced in late February that they would be closing Hummer operations after a failed buyout with a Chinese company in an attempt to avoid bankruptcy. So whilst this is a victory for the planet - the fewer of these polluting dinosaurs (in more ways than one) that exist the better - it is anything but for the thousands of people employed in building and distributing the vehicles across the US.

So how better to make the best of this situation than to start to provide government subsidies to renewable energy companies who can provide jobs, and more importantly job security - whilst GM were crawling to the government for a $1.7bn bailout, solar panel company Hemlock Semiconductor Corp were planning a $3bn expansion.

So how about letting some of the fossil fuel dinosaurs die off and put the money into companies like Hemlock or wind turbine manufacturer Vestas to recruit and retrain people who lost their jobs in the recession and build a green future based on sustainable living and renewable energy.

If you’re in the US sign up with Focus the Nation to take action.

Last month, Shooting People pulled out all the stops to encourage their filmmakers to enter Mofilm’s Barcelona Ad Competition. It paid off, with eight Shooting People members winning prizes, two coming top and one winning the Grand Prize; this filmmaker is now off to make an ad with ‘Avatar’ producer Jon Landau.

As one competition ends, another opens - this time, winners will be flown to New York for Tribeca Film Festival and pick up a host of cash prizes. To enter, filmmakers must make an ad of less than 90 seconds for one of six brands including Nokia, Nature Valley and Best Buy.

Mofilm have again offered Shooting People members an EXCLUSIVE OFFER - all members who enter go into a draw to win a brand new Apple MacBook. Not a member? No problem. Claim your free trial membership.

DEADLINE: 6 April 2010

Leading environmentalists, major national companies and industry experts have increased calls for more action on what has been called the “oil crunch”. Environmental entrepreneur Jeremy Leggett wrote in The Guardian recently about how we are heading for an oil crunch within the next decade. Leggett heads up the UK Industry Task Force on Peak Oil and Energy Security and has warned how we could see the same crash that happened to the banks happening with global oil reserves. The task force has claimed that oil production will hit its peak in 2015 after which we will see a rapid decline in production whilst demand continues to increase, a claim supported by major UK companies such as Virgin and Stagecoach. The report by the task force highlights concerns that draw parallels with the causes of the credit crunch. They are concerned that there may be significant flaws in the oil reserve estimates by OPEC countries, similar to the flaws in the value placed on “toxic loans”. This would mean that demand would be even higher than estimated and could cause oil production to peak even earlier. The UK Government’s line on this has remained the same; that there is enough oil for the next 40 years and there is no crisis on the way, though I’m sure that’s what the Treasury and Bank of England were saying to the few economists that predicted the crash.

So what would an “oil crunch” mean? Well, as supply plummets and demand continues to increase, countries dependent on importing oil, such as the UK, would initially see increasingly large price rises, particularly for energy and fuel. On a global scale, countries that produce a lot of oil would become increasingly protectionist, particularly countries with histories of isolationist foreign policy such as the USA, China and Russia. This combined with neo-liberal (read ‘corporate influenced’) government and free-market economics pushes larger countries into conflict with oil-rich countries such as those in the Middle East.

A pretty dire future I think you’ll agree.

So, if we are plummeting towards this inevitable distopian future, is there any point in doing anything? Well, yes, or at least if we don’t do anything and we do continue to burn oil for the next 40 years, it won’t be the lack thereof that is a our biggest problem, we can kiss goodbye to staying below a 2^oC rise in global temperatures. Far from being inevitable this is, in fact, evitable, very evitable. The answer is simple but, like cleaning up any mess, implementing the solution will require a huge effort and a lifestyle switch. What is the answer? Simple, we stop using oil, and there are a great many ways in which we can do this. In the UK, for example, the report from the task force suggests ending the, quite frankly absurd, £9billion tax break on fuel for domestic flights (which in a country the size of the UK are ludicrous anyway) and instead pumping it into public transport and boosting the renewable energy sector. If the subsidies that go into fossil fuel energy were put into developing sustainable, decentralised renewable energy, peak oil wouldn’t be anywhere near the problem that it is likely to be. If ever there was a good reason to look into fitting solar panels onto your roof, this is it.

And yes, I have noticed the obvious self-interest of SolarCentury owner Jeremy Leggett warning us of the perils of relying too much on oil, doesn’t make him any less right though.

The ancient forests are the lungs of the earth; without the forests life as we know it cannot exist on this planet. Deforestation and forest degradation, through agricultural expansion, conversion to pastureland, infrastructure development, destructive logging etc are destroying vast areas of forest at an alarming rate.

In Canada, tar sands extraction projects are destroying huge areas of Boreal forest, some of the largest areas of ancient forest left. The trees are clear-cut to allow the oil companies to access the tar sands underneath and are exported to the US to be turned into toilet paper. In Ecuador the Yasuni region has vast reserves of oil which oil companies have been exploiting for years, destroying the local environment and evicting the indigenous people in the process.

In total deforestation and forest degradation accounts for nearly 20% of global greenhouse gas emissions, more than the entire global transportation sector and second only to the energy sector. It is now clear that in order to constrain the impacts of climate change within limits that society will reasonably be able to tolerate, the global average temperatures must be stabilized within two degrees Celsius. This will be practically impossible to achieve without reducing emissions from the forest sector, in addition to other mitigation actions.

The United Nations launched the Collaborative Programme on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation(REDD) as a key means of reducing CO2 emissions suggested during the COP15 in Copenhagen. The aim is to create a financial incentive to protect these areas of forest by attributing a value to the carbon they store.

It is predicted that financial flows for greenhouse gas emission reductions from REDD could reach up to US$30 billion a year. This significant North-South flow of funds could reward a meaningful reduction of carbon emissions and could also support new, pro-poor development, help conserve biodiversity and secure vital ecosystem services.

There are some serious concerns around the REDD initiative however, particularly around the rights of the indiginous people. In a statement in September 2009 the International Indigenous Peoples Forum on Climate Change (IIPFCC) said:

“If there is no full recognition and full protection for indigenous peoples’ rights, including the rights to resources, lands and territories, and there is no recognition and respect of our rights of free, prior and informed consent, we will oppose REDD,”

Amazon Watch have published a list of concerns with the treaty, stating that the provisions that protect the indiginous peoples’ rights to the land and recognisiton of rights to free, prior and informed consent are either missing, or worded in such a way that would mean they were likely to be cut from a final draft. They also express significant concern over the economic model underpinning REDD being based on the free-market style carbon market. This would lead to “drastically restricted traditional customs and lifestyles, leading to displacement and impoverishment of indigenous peoples and forest-dependent communities” as well as “exacerbating conflict over land rights with local landowners and governments”. A spokesperson from Amazon Watch said:

“By turning forests into a highly-prized commodity, REDD could give way to forced evictions and essentially turn control over a given area of forest to private interests”

The Yasuni Green Gold campaign is an example of how this sort of project could work. Launched to try to protect the Yasuni National Park from destruction, the campaign called on the international community to pay $350m per year for 10 years for the government to keep the area free from development. The Yasuni Green Gold campaign is aimed at ensuring that the rights of the indiginous people in the area are respected and are enshrined in any deal or treaty governing the use of the area.

We will have a guest post written by Amazon Watch campaigner Han Shan coming up in the next few weeks. Subscribe to our blog or newsletter and follow us on Twitter to make sure you don’t miss it.

Our friends over at Shooting People have just annouced that February’s judge for theirFilm of the Month is Katherine Butler, Senior Commissioning Executive for Film4. Having worked on ‘Slumdog Millionaire’, ‘Hallam Foe’ and ‘Nowhere Boy’ amongst other features, Katherine is the perfect candidate to review the short films uploaded to the competition.

Want to enter? All you need to do is upload your film - of any genre - to your Shooting People profile. This automatically puts it into the running for February. If your film gets into the final three spots on the Leaderboard your work will be viewed and reviewed personally by Katherine.

Good luck!

A new campaign has just launched in the UK to build support for a tax on financial transactions called a Tobin tax (named after the American economist who proposed the tax in the 1970s James Tobin). Taking inspiration from the legend of Robin Hood, the medieval bandit who conducted his own brand of wealth redistribution, the campaign calls for a Robin Hood Tax.

The idea behind a Tobin tax is very simple concept that could raise hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars to go to alleviating poverty, mitigating climate change, curing diseases the list goes on. The idea works by charging a 0.05% tax on speculative transactions. As many thousands of these happen every day this would rapidly raise huge amounts of money.

A speculative transaction is one that has a typically very high risk of not returning the original investment. This is the type of financial transaction that was involved in the collapse of many banks recently - the buying and selling of debt is one of the most common forms of speculative transaction.

This latest initiative in the UK has given a huge boost to global Tobin tax campaginers. The Tobin tax was proposed by the UK and France at the UN Climate Change summit in Copenhagen last December as a way to raise the money needed to help developing countries to leap-frog carbon intensive development and go straight to renewables.

There are campaigns all over the world calling for the introduction of a Tobin tax as it needs to be implemented on a global scale. To find out where your nearest campaign is check out the Tobin Tax Campaign website.

Human activity causes the destruction of the natural world. This is an unfortunate and potentially disastrous fact. It is not, however, inevitable. Even in as little as the last 40 years, the diversity of life on earth has collapsed in on itself. There are significantly fewer species of plants and animals in the world than there were in 1970 and there are fewer examples of those species that remain. Maintaining biodiversity is crucial to maintaining life on the planet. All living things are so interdependent that the loss of one can easily cause the loss of another. With so many people dependent on the survival of the plants and animals around us, we must recognise that we play the crucial role in conserving biological diversity on earth.

“The essential role of the environment is still marginal in discussions about poverty. While we continue to debate these initiatives, environmental degradation, including the loss of biodiversity and topsoil, accelerates, causing development efforts to falter.” Wangari Maathai, Kenyan environmental and political activist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate

The United Nations Environment Programme has declared 2010 the Year of Biodviersity in an effort to raise awareness of the destruction to the natural world caused by human activity. They launched the campaign with a speech by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon in which he said

“A wide variety of environmental goods and services that we take for granted are under threat, with profound and damaging consequences for ecosystems, economies and livelihoods,”

The campaign has identified 4 key messages:

1. Humans are part of nature and have the power to protect and to destroy it
2. Maintaining biodiversity is essential for sustaining the living networks and systems that provide us all with health, wealth, food, fuel and the vital services our lives depend on
3. Human activity is causing the diversity of life on Earth to be lost at a greatly accelerated rate; but we can prevent this loss
4. We have made some achievements to safeguard biodiversity but we need to do much more and we must act urgently

Check out the UN Environment Programme Year of Biodiversity website

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The 1 Minute to Save the World 2009 entries 85 Months and Counting by Finn Harries and Invest by Temujin Doran were picked by the entries panel for the BFI’s Future Films Awards. They were part of the screening showcasing young filmmaking talent held at the BFI Southbank last Friday. Well done to Finn Harries and Temujin Doran.

Oxfam Spain have launched the Actua Festival for 2010 and the theme this year is poverty. They are calling for entries films of no more than 20 minutes and can be either fiction or documentary. Oxfam say (translated from Spanish):

If after having broken your back working a whole day long you only receive 1 dollar a day, what would you do with it? How would you get by if you hardly had enough to eat? And what if you had a family to feed? How would you pay for health care?

Nearly one billion people in the world live on less than 1 dollar a day. Women account for 70 per cent of this figure. This situation should have sounded the alarm many years ago. For this reason the theme of this year’s ACTUA Festival edition is poverty. Because nobody can live on 1 dollar a day and because changing this reality is a matter of political will. We want to report these situations and we want the short film’s proposals and points of view to be inspired by these claims.

They are offering up professional and semi-professional video cameras as prizes. The deadline for films to reach Oxfam is 15 April 2010. For more information see their website.