4.2 The Architecture of International Biofuel Governance
75
Third, as an implicit norm, international policy initiatives have been kept limited and
non-intrusive, leaving maximum room for individual countries and non-state actors
to pursue their agendas. This norm reveals itself in a clear preference for voluntary governance mechanisms at the international level, based on market certification,
instead of binding regulations.
In terms of rules, there is a density of public policies at the national level and
paucity at the international one. Many governments have steered domestic biofuel
production using economic and regulatory incentives that create politically instituted
markets (Pilgrim and Harvey 2010), but no international biofuel regulations exist.
Existing institutional arrangements such as the GBEP and the IBF have worked as
fora for like-minded countries to debate biofuel issues and where they may agree on
certain strategies, but preserving their autonomy to follow their individual preferences
at the end of the day. None of those platforms has worked—or even meant to work—
as a place to make collective commitments, let alone legally binding commitments.
Attempts to make such commitments at more representative and consensus-based
decision-making venues, such as the FAO and the CBD, have all failed.
It would be hard to say that any of those ad hoc bodies govern biofuel expansion in any meaningful way. Even on non-political issues, such as biofuel technical
standardization, limited progress has been achieved (Unglert et al. 2020), let alone
on more sensitive issues such as trade barriers or sustainability. It could be argued
that the existing biofuel governance architecture has a lean, neoliberal institutional
framework where the players are not bound by regulations but just voluntarily cooperate out of their own interests. A more critical examination, however, can also reveal
problems of scope, accountability, and legitimacy. There is an evident prevalence of
institutional arrangements that promote biofuels only as a technical-economic challenge. There is an absence of mechanisms to jointly address, deliberate, or articulate
international and multi-level policies on biofuel production’s ecological and socioeconomic impacts. Scientists and other experts may hold such discussions, but those
fora are not policy-making venues.
Moreover, the actors working in those institutional arrangements are not held
accountable for their decisions—or their non-decisions—to anyone. Their legitimacy is also limited since those bodies are made by selective groups of like-minded
actors only (mostly large biofuel producer countries), and not by a diversity of voices
and stakeholders (Bastos Lima 2009). Those fora and partnerships may work effectively as platforms for joint exploration and research. However, this agenda is not
necessarily unbiased, either, and it differs fundamentally from governance processes
where science systematically feeds into policy-making, such as at the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change (IPCC) (Gupta 2010).
Biofuels are a clear case of a “non-regime”, as there are no collectively established
rules to steer countries’ behavior (Bastos Lima and Gupta 2013). This international
institutional framework is hardly a relevant driver of biofuel expansion; it primarily
involves countries that are already engaged with biofuels and provides no significant
additional incentive to production. Perhaps the exception would be the few small
75
Third, as an implicit norm, international policy initiatives have been kept limited and
non-intrusive, leaving maximum room for individual countries and non-state actors
to pursue their agendas. This norm reveals itself in a clear preference for voluntary governance mechanisms at the international level, based on market certification,
instead of binding regulations.
In terms of rules, there is a density of public policies at the national level and
paucity at the international one. Many governments have steered domestic biofuel
production using economic and regulatory incentives that create politically instituted
markets (Pilgrim and Harvey 2010), but no international biofuel regulations exist.
Existing institutional arrangements such as the GBEP and the IBF have worked as
fora for like-minded countries to debate biofuel issues and where they may agree on
certain strategies, but preserving their autonomy to follow their individual preferences
at the end of the day. None of those platforms has worked—or even meant to work—
as a place to make collective commitments, let alone legally binding commitments.
Attempts to make such commitments at more representative and consensus-based
decision-making venues, such as the FAO and the CBD, have all failed.
It would be hard to say that any of those ad hoc bodies govern biofuel expansion in any meaningful way. Even on non-political issues, such as biofuel technical
standardization, limited progress has been achieved (Unglert et al. 2020), let alone
on more sensitive issues such as trade barriers or sustainability. It could be argued
that the existing biofuel governance architecture has a lean, neoliberal institutional
framework where the players are not bound by regulations but just voluntarily cooperate out of their own interests. A more critical examination, however, can also reveal
problems of scope, accountability, and legitimacy. There is an evident prevalence of
institutional arrangements that promote biofuels only as a technical-economic challenge. There is an absence of mechanisms to jointly address, deliberate, or articulate
international and multi-level policies on biofuel production’s ecological and socioeconomic impacts. Scientists and other experts may hold such discussions, but those
fora are not policy-making venues.
Moreover, the actors working in those institutional arrangements are not held
accountable for their decisions—or their non-decisions—to anyone. Their legitimacy is also limited since those bodies are made by selective groups of like-minded
actors only (mostly large biofuel producer countries), and not by a diversity of voices
and stakeholders (Bastos Lima 2009). Those fora and partnerships may work effectively as platforms for joint exploration and research. However, this agenda is not
necessarily unbiased, either, and it differs fundamentally from governance processes
where science systematically feeds into policy-making, such as at the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change (IPCC) (Gupta 2010).
Biofuels are a clear case of a “non-regime”, as there are no collectively established
rules to steer countries’ behavior (Bastos Lima and Gupta 2013). This international
institutional framework is hardly a relevant driver of biofuel expansion; it primarily
involves countries that are already engaged with biofuels and provides no significant
additional incentive to production. Perhaps the exception would be the few small