At the annual meeting of the UN Commission on Sustainable Development, Matthias Machnig, State Secretary at the Federal Environment Ministry, spoke out in favour of introducing sustainability criteria for bioenergy worldwide. "We will do all we can to get such criteria recognized. Only sustainable bioenergy effectively contributes to climate protection", Machnig declared in New York.
Machnig was very satisfied with the outcome of the talks he held among others with representatives of Argentina, Brazil, Costa Rica, Indonesia, Mexico, South Africa, Tanzania, Thailand and the United States. Machnig: "It is essential to strike a balance between food security, sustainability and climate protection. We must find a solution for these conflicting aims." In New York all participants agreed that bioenergy must not compete with food production.
Biomass which has been produced at the cost of the destruction of forests or other natural ecosystems cannot be considered sustainable. Therefore the adoption of global sustainability criteria is essential. Currently some 2 percent of arable land is used for bioenergy production worldwide. Wheat is the grain for which prices have increased most strongly. However, only 0.6 percent of global wheat production is used to produce bioethanol.
The State Secretary also attended a high-level meeting on the reform of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP): "More and more countries are convinced that we need to reform the organisational structures of international environmental protection from the ground up. We need a strong UN environment organisation which can effectively rise up to the huge challenges we are facing." The UN General Assembly will discuss a resolution on this reform in the upcoming weeks. The UN ambassadors of Mexico and Switzerland presented the draft resolution at the high-level meeting in New York. Together with 50 other countries, Germany is advocating the enhancement of UNEP's status by transforming it into a specialised agency like the World Health Organisation. Machnig: "Global environmental policy requires an organisation that is effective at the global level. The status quo is no solution."