Environment and Natural Resources Management Working Paper 45. Reducing “energy poverty” is increasingly acknowledged as the “Missing development goal”. This is because access to electricity and modern energy sources is a basic requirement to achieve and sustain decent and sustainable living standards. Yet three billion people – about half of the world’s population - rely on unsustainable biomass-based energy sources to meet their basic energy needs for cooking and heating, and 1.6 billion people lack access to electricity. Small-scale farmers are globally the largest farmer group and of key importance to local and national food security in developing countries. Therefore safely integrating,intensifying and thus increasing food and energy production for this large group of producers may have the best prospect to improve both local (rural) and national food and energy security and reduce poverty and environmental impact at the same time.

Bioenergy has received a lot of attention over the past years, both from the side of governments looking for ways to mitigate climate change, ensure energy security, strengthen the agricultural sector and promote development, and investors seizing business opportunities that occurred largely due to government support in the form of targets and mandates. At the same time, a number of concerns have been voiced regarding potential impacts on food security and the environment related to the rapid expansion of bioenergy feedstock production, and in particular, competition between different land uses. This tool has been developed to assist decision makers in the process of developing a national bioenergy policy and strategy and/or assessing investment opportunities.

Preparations are underway for 2012’s event marking twenty years since the Rio de Janeiro-hosted United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, commonly known as the Earth Summit. The newly launched FAO@Rio+20 web site will be updated throughout 2011 as preparations are underway with FAO’s detailed programme of work, studies and various initiatives related to the event.

Welcome to the second issue of the Natural Resources and Environment Newsletter. In this issue, we will be looking at work underway on the Voluntary Guidelines on responsible governance of tenure of land and other natural resources. We will also look at work done in Thailand and lessons learned by the German-financed Bioenergy and Food Security project.

The Government of Thailand, through its Alternative Energy Development Plan, has set a target to increase biofuel production to five billion litres by 2022. The Thai Government sees this expansion as a way to strengthen the country’s energy security, foster rural development and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The FAO Bioenergy and Food Security (BEFS) project aims to strengthen the capacity of developing countries to balance the trade-offs associated with bioenergy development and mitigate the impact of bioenergy on food security. The analysis presented in this document includes the main findings and recommendations for policymakers on how to achieve Thailand’s envisaged biofuel targets in a sustainable way without threatening food security.