Agrofuels in Sub-Saharan Africa: Decision-making Criteria for Sustainability - Implementing Environmental and Resource Management - page 204

10. Climate change e.g. how do agrofuel crops and PPPPs contribute to the climate
change agenda?
11. To what extent does the agrofuels sector contribute to nation interest e.g. for-
eign exchange balance, energy matrix? Where is the balance between socio-
economic and environmental objectives?
It is conceived that these criteria will be contextualised and codified within the
country's PPPPs assessment frameworks e.g. through SEA/EIA, when deciding on
the sustainability of agrofuels. These criteria are 'evidence-based' in two ways.
One, they have been distilled from the analyses of evidence found in existing lit-
erature. Two, as elements of analyses, they are a bases for generating evidence on
which to then base decisions on the sustainability of agrofuels.
17.3.3 Advantages of the Decision-making Criteria
Application of context-specific decisional criteria will lead to several advantages,
specifically when determining whether agrofuels have net desirable benefits to a
country's sustainable development or not. One, the existence of the decision-
making criteria is a basis for efficient, effective and consistent quality of outcome.
This promotes predictability and enhances public and investor confidence in the
sector. Two, transparency in decision-making will be improved because auditing,
review or enforceability of agrofuel decisions is enhanced through existence of
known decisions criteria. Three, effectiveness of PPPPs assessment and decision-
aiding tools such as SEA and EIA are enhanced, as opposed to where such criteria
do not exist. This means that the tools already have decisional criteria to help as-
sess, evaluate, and integrate sustainability issues. Finally, these criteria integrate a
wider and comprehensive set of environmental and socio-economic sustainability
concerns, including aspects of equity and good governance, as illustrated in sub-
section 17.3.2, into the decision-making process. This means that the sustainability
agenda is more comprehensively considered within the decision-making process,
hence increasing quality assurance. PPPPs assessment, design and licensing can be
better guided by these decision-making criteria, in a way that mitigates adverse
impacts, and enhances socio-economic and environmental welfare of local popula-
tions. This is because they have been distilled as a summary and reflection of the
real and practical concerns already being discussed.
17.4 Conclusions and Recommendations
Planning, assessing and making decisions on agrofuel PPPPs that promote socio-
economic and environmental welfare of Sub-Saharan African countries has been
identified as experiencing challenges. This is because decision-making criteria that
integrate the above concerns are yet to be established. Some examples of these
have been provided for illustration. This paper has contributed to finding a solu-
tion by proposing key decision-making criteria for planning, designing, assessing