TY - JOUR
T1 - Indirect land-use change and biofuels
T2 - The contribution of assemblage theory to place-specific environmental governance
AU - Palmer, James
AU - Owens, Susan
PY - 2015/11/1
Y1 - 2015/11/1
N2 - The blending of liquid biofuels into road transport fuel has been supported by legally binding targets in Europe since 2009. Concerns over the extent to which these targets might engender indirect land-use change (ILUC), however, have an equally long history. Brought about when biofuel production displaces existing agricultural activity into new territory, ILUC has the potential to exert deleterious impacts upon the global climate, biodiversity, water and soil quality, food security, and even land rights. This paper begins by illustrating how current approaches to addressing this problem, predicated on equilibrium modelling and the concept of emissions 'factors', effectively detach its impacts from their place-specific contexts. Drawing on a relational view of space, the paper then advances an alternative, assemblage-based approach to conceptualising ILUC. By emphasising ILUC's fluidity, indeterminacy and complexity, this approach questions the logic of relying solely on abstractive science and policy tools to address the problem. The paper concludes by advocating an alternative approach to remedying ILUC - one that imbricates both place-specific and globally aggregated representations of the problem. The paper has implications for research across multiple disciplines addressing the sustainable governance of transport biofuels and wider bioenergy systems as a whole.
AB - The blending of liquid biofuels into road transport fuel has been supported by legally binding targets in Europe since 2009. Concerns over the extent to which these targets might engender indirect land-use change (ILUC), however, have an equally long history. Brought about when biofuel production displaces existing agricultural activity into new territory, ILUC has the potential to exert deleterious impacts upon the global climate, biodiversity, water and soil quality, food security, and even land rights. This paper begins by illustrating how current approaches to addressing this problem, predicated on equilibrium modelling and the concept of emissions 'factors', effectively detach its impacts from their place-specific contexts. Drawing on a relational view of space, the paper then advances an alternative, assemblage-based approach to conceptualising ILUC. By emphasising ILUC's fluidity, indeterminacy and complexity, this approach questions the logic of relying solely on abstractive science and policy tools to address the problem. The paper concludes by advocating an alternative approach to remedying ILUC - one that imbricates both place-specific and globally aggregated representations of the problem. The paper has implications for research across multiple disciplines addressing the sustainable governance of transport biofuels and wider bioenergy systems as a whole.
KW - Assemblage
KW - Biofuels
KW - Environmental governance
KW - Indirect land-use change (ILUC)
KW - Place-specific knowledge
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84938678713&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.envsci.2014.10.010
DO - 10.1016/j.envsci.2014.10.010
M3 - Article (Academic Journal)
AN - SCOPUS:84938678713
VL - 53
SP - 18
EP - 26
JO - Environmental Science and Policy
JF - Environmental Science and Policy
SN - 1462-9011
ER -