Learn about biofuel from us: India to US

Indian government officials said India can teach the US to sustain a biofuel programme without risking the country’s food security or causing a global food crisis, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: May 4, 2008, 02:11:53 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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On the day that US President George Bush accused India’s growing prosperity of causing the global food crisis, Indian government officials said India can teach the US to sustain a biofuel programme without risking the country’s food security or causing a global food crisis.

The US has diverted one-third of its maize production for making ethanol to meet its domestic fuel demand and has been giving huge subsidies for agro-fuels. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in Geneva recently that the trend of “development emergency” should be checked and the policies pursued by the West reviewed.

India has taken into account the impact of biofuel production on food security in its Action Plan on Climate Change.

The Action Plan will make it clear that agricultural land or foodgrains for human consumption will not be used to sustain biofuel production, thereby preventing any threat to the country’s food security, government sources told HT on Saturday.

Pradipto Ghosh, former environment secretary and a member of the PM’s Council on Climate Change, said India can produce enough biofuels without risking its domestic food bowl. “India produces 500 million tonnes of crop residue every year which can utilised to produce 250 million tonnes of ethanol, enough to meet the country’s biofuel requirements,” he said.

Some experts differ. They say India will have to increase its sugarcane production by 16 per cent to meet the target of 20 per cent ethanol blending by 2011.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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