One of the great privileges of working at the RSPB is that we can bring together colleagues from different disciplines to tackle environmental issues from high level policy to practical realities on the ground.
Take biofuels, for example. At first sight a neat idea, extracting fuel from growing plants to replace some of our dependence on fossil fuels. Dig only a little deeper and the veneer of green energy quickly vanishes. Growing crops for fuel takes land that could grow food, to grow food means more land has to be hacked from the forest or drained from wetlands – this impact of indirect land use change was visible throughout the process of the EU setting targets (and we were campaigning on the subject); targets that would directly hit land use in places like Kenya.
The RSPB is part of the global conservation family of BirdLife International – and other colleagues were working with Nature Kenya and local communities to try to tackle the real impact of this thirst for new land – successfully in the case of the Dakatcha woodlands, which has regularly featured on this blog.
The policy at EU level is now shifting – recognition of the insane irony that driving indirect landuse change would actually push up carbon emissions from the loss of forests to the draining of wetlands.
There is a long way to go to ensure that these hard-fought battles are truly won, but this is a significant step forward.
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