The commission of the European Union has decided to change the European bio-fuel politics considerably. This is a success for us, too. The Parosphromenus-project had, as have other organizations, launched a protest against to wrong support of so-called “bio-fuels” for our cars and public transport. It is wrong to use food-plants for this, and it is absolutely wrong to make peoples think that they support the own farmers by this policy. The truth is, that huge amounts of crops are lost for human food, most of them from the countries of the so-called third world. For us, the main reason for the evergrowing threat on the licorice gouramis and the whole biodiversity connected with them is the logging and draining of the south-east Asian rainforests for the sake of creating arable land which is commercially usable for planting palm oil plantations. And the palm oil not only fills the pockets of a few international combines but ends to large an extent in our cars as “bio-fuel”.
We gladly read now (October 15th, 2012) that our protest together with that of other organizations has had the intended effect: The commission changes its politics. In future, in the so-called bio-fuels there will be no products any longer that cause such devastating loss of the rainforests or depend on fruits and crops that are primarily for human nutrition.
But it is necessary to remain alert. For most Licorice gouramis this success comes too late and is too small. And palm oil is used for many other products besides fuels. The logging will go on and the planting of palm-oil plantations will go on. Nevertheless we should call a success a success. For it is one.