As part of its work towards creating a new GBEP focus area on financing, capacity building and technology cooperation for sustainable bioenergy, two reports were developed by the Secretariat of the partnership and are now available on the GBEP website that should provide useful resources for countries and organisations keen to put bioenergy projects or programmes in action.

Numerous initiatives have been developed in recent years to address the environmental and socio-economic impacts associated with the production of biofuels or of specific biofuel feedstocks. These include regulatory frameworks, voluntary standards or certification schemes, and scorecards. Some cover the entire biofuels supply chain, while others deal only with parts of it. In order to provide an overview of these initiatives, the FAO Bioenergy and Food Security Criteria and Indicators (BEFSCI) project released a Compilation of Bioenergy Sustainability Initiatives. Meanwhile, the Bioenergy and Food Security (BEFS) Project released its analysis on Tanzania, implementing its quantitative and qualitative framework to analyse the interplay between bioenergy and food security.

This is the first article in the Global Bioenergy Perspectives series, which will highlight reports and papers of focusing on topics of particular interest in relation to bioenergy. A recent UNEP paper has focused attention on the risk of adopting invasive species as biofuel feedstocks without properly assessing and monitoring their impact on biodiversity..