At a meeting of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in Rome, international experts agreed that bioenergy can be a positive force for rural development as long as environmental and food security concerns are also considered. Biofuels hold the potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but often are grown after large tracts of land are cleared for monocultures, risking environmental damage and loss of biodiversity. The head of FAO’s Natural Resource Management Natural Resources Management and Environment Department said, however, that despite these concerns, biofuels can be “an important tool for improving the well-being of rural people.â€
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