Unpacking the complexities of biofuel policy

Abstract

"Path dependence" is an important concept to help to understand the ways in which societies respond to new challenges. It suggests that established practices or policy traditions will generally be the basis for deciding what to do when faced with new challenges and opportunities. It can therefore be expected that policy-makers and lawyers will approach the governance of biofuels on the basis of how previous challenges involving energy industries, natural-resource-based enterprises and sustainability have been addressed. We can expect that issues will be viewed through the lens of energy security and climate change, and that strategies will involve a mixture of the command-and-control and market-based approaches that have been generally used (with varying degrees of success). While biofuels governance shares many characteristics with other natural resource management (NRM) and energy issues, contemporary biofuels raise unique governance challenges that are likely to require innovative institutional arrangements. These challenges are the focus of this chapter.