Make your case to the Government.
We’re delighted to share a significant victory from the last month: the New Zealand Government has dropped its proposed biofuels mandate!
The Government planned to mandate that fuel for vehicles would need to include fuel made from food crops. Unfortunately, burning biofuel can actually increase carbon emissions and takes food and land from people who need it. With the backing of our supporters, we shared these messages with the Government – and together we won! The Government has dropped the mandate, meaning they can focus on solutions to reducing emissions and preparing for climate impacts.
Use this email form to send your message to Minister Megan Woods.
To help you get started, we’ve put some information in the form. But you are able to change this and send your own personal message to the Minister.
You can find detailed information about biofuels and why they are a bad idea in our recent briefing paper.
This paper draws on international experience and evidence, and shows how biofuels are not a solution to the climate crisis. Biofuels have a history of causing harm to farmers and communities who already experience poverty and discrimination.
Biofuels use the same land and the same crops we use for food – things like corn, soy, and cooking oil (including palm oil) – and turn them into fuel for cars. This, in turn, increases the demand for food crops to be used for biofuels, essentially, burning our food.
We also know that biofuel companies push local farmers and communities off their land. Almost 300 deals have already been made to secure land for the purpose of biofuels, covering over 8 million hectares of farmland across the globe. These massive land grabs leave communities displaced and contribute to the destruction of the rainforest we need to soak-up carbon.
Put simply, biofuel obligations lead to less food and can push farming communities off their land.
Here are some key facts and messages you might like to share with the Minister:
- Burning food to run our cars exacerbates global hunger and is not a solution to climate destruction.
- Burning biofuel in our cars takes food and land from people who need it. In the middle of a global food and cost of living crisis, this is the last thing we need.
- Right now, almost a billion of us go to bed hungry each night. Biofuels will make this worse.
- Across 45 countries, 50 million people are on the brink of starvation. This is the time to protect and expand our food supplies, not waste them on biofuels that do little to stop the climate crisis.
- Biofuels lead to the destruction of the pristine rainforest that helps clean carbon from the air. Biofuels are not the answer to the climate crisis.
- New Zealand can do better things to stop the climate crisis, like invest in public transport and electric cars.
If you’d prefer not to use our email template, you can email Minister Woods directly at m.woods@ministers.govt.nz.
