ABSTRACT
Cellulosic energy crops, such as trees and grasses for bioelectricity, have attracted less attention than bio-fuel crops with regards to land grabs and negative community impacts. Where land rights are contested, oil palm developers may have a perverse incentive to target lightly-populated forested areas over previously cleared agricultural areas in order to reduce the number of landholders they must negotiate with. Sustainability standards such as those of the Roundtable on Sustainable Biomaterials (RSB), Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) and Sustainable Agriculture Network (SAN) represent an alternative way of protecting land rights where government regulations are inadequate or difficult to enforce. The RSB has attempted to strike a balance between environmental, social and economic issues in its standards and has no doubt benefitted from having earlier standards such as those of the FSC and SAN to draw on. Energy cropping may hasten demographic change through land changing hands and jobs shifting from one location to another.
