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and institutional framework to support a sustainable agrofuel industry (Mande
2009). The question arises, pertinent to the paper; could such a situation have been
better guided by appropriate decision-making criteria before the projects were ap-
proved? In summary, all the above examples depict the lack of clear decision-
making criteria for determining the sustainability of agrofuel crops, in various
contexts, as a problem.
17.3.2 Proposed Decision-making Criteria
The elaboration of key concerns over decision-making for agrofuels, based on this
paper's review of literature, was deemed a justified starting point to distil appro-
priate decisional criteria. When considered together, these criteria are intended to
have the benefit of guiding analyses and capturing the elements that lead to evi-
dence-based determination of the sustainability of agrofuel crops. In other words,
they provide a mechanism to integrate socio-economic and environmental con-
cerns into the decisional processes, particularly the questions of if, where, how
much and which agrofuel crops are to be grown, and how. The criteria for deci-
sion-making may in some cases overlap, and are herein collated to include the fol-
lowing:
1. Pro-poor priorities e.g. rural and agricultural employment and income. This can
for example be done by analysing how agrofuel PPPPs will promote the Mil-
lennium Development Goals (MDGs).
2. Food security e.g. how will it be affected at local, regional, and national levels?
How will this influence susceptibility to civil unrest?
3. Regional balance e.g. what socio-economic pressures will be aggravated or re-
lived by agrofuel plantations in various regions of a country?
4. Land equity e.g. how will landless people be further affected by agrofuel plan-
tations, or how will those with grievances over historical land injustices be af-
fected? Is land grabbing escalated?
5. Livelihood means e.g. how will agrofuel production affect access to livelihoods
for both traditional pastoralists and rural farmers? Will their access to local
medicines and cultural, seasonal resources be affected?
6. Environmental and biodiversity protection e.g. will wildlife migratory routes be
affected? Will key environmental resources be affected?
7. Compatibility with other PPPPs. How will agrofuels impact key developmental
goals (MDGs) and other national visions? For example, how will Kenya's Vi-
sion 2030 goal of being a middle-income country be affected by agrofuel
PPPPs?
8. Consultative and participatory decision-making e.g. are all the local communi-
ties and stakeholders consulted and their concerns over agrofuels sustainability
taken into consideration?
9. Agricultural characteristic e.g. what are the net beneficial agrofuel crop charac-
teristics such as ability to intercrop, be perennial, be used for multi-purposes or
meet certain traditional local community requirements?
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