The Sustainable Development Goals place high priority on food and energy security. This paper argues that bioenergy plays an important role in achieving both goals, and lays out priorities for achieving synergies between bioenergy and food security.
Understanding the complex interactions among food security, bioenergy sustainability, and resource management requires a focus on specific contextual problems and opportunities. Effective food security programmes begin by clearly defining the problem and asking: What can be done to assist people at high risk? Simplistic global analyses, headlines, and cartoons that blame biofuels for food insecurity may reflect good intentions, but mislead the public and policy-makers because they obscure the main drivers of local food insecurity and ignore opportunities for bioenergy to contribute to solutions.
Applying sustainability guidelines to bioenergy, the paper argues, will help achieve near- and long-term goals to eradicate hunger. Priorities for achieving successful synergies between bioenergy and food security include
Systematic monitoring and analysis to support adaptive management and continual improvement are essential elements to build synergies and help society equitably meet growing demands for both food and energy.
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