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This paper presents results from comprehensive field surveys of jatropha projects in Mozambique, Tanzania and Mali in 2012. The article singles out the salient economic and social impact results and derives lessons. The results clearly demonstrate the weak business case for jatropha biofuel production at this time. Plantations were found to be unviable because of insurmountable up-front capital requirements in combination with slow and unreliable crop maturation, inefficient oil pressing owing to a lack of scale and experience, inadequate utilization of by-products, and competitively-priced fossil diesel and palm oil. For smallholders, jatropha only has limited value as a hedge crop in environmentally and economically disadvantaged areas. Better prospects have to wait for the advent of improved jatropha varieties. Social impacts from the perspective of project managers were rather mixed: overall, food security perceptions were positive and no massive forced human displacements were noted so far, though some disputes over land access and compensation were reported. Labor legislation was apparently respected on plantations, and positive gender effects, regional income/employment effects and better public facilities were also reported. The projects generated considerable employment, albeit mostly of a temporary nature, as lack of economic viability had caused many projects to close down again. When introducing next-generation biofuel projects, better OPEN ACCESS Sustainability 2014, 6 6204 monitoring by various actor groups is recommended, as well as long-term investment plans that include integral exit strategies.

The Global Environment Facility (GEF) aims to set clear policies and priorities for future work and investments in biofuel related projects and to provide guidance to countries on how to select sustainable biofuel projects. Three UN agencies, UNEP, UNIDO and FAO, in collaboration with three research institutions have worked together to prepare this report, with the aim to develop a Biofuels Screening Toolkit, that can be used by the GEF and/or other actors to address sustainability issues concerning biofuels. The research looked at environmental, economic and social impacts of biofuels with the overall objective of identifying and assessing sustainable systems in developing countries for the production of liquid biofuels for both transport and stationary applications. The research project was conducted in full awareness of other initiatives to develop sustainability criteria and policy tools for the promotion of sustainable biofuels, such as the UN Energy Decision Support Tool for Bioenergy (2011), the Global Bioenergy Partnership's (GBEP) work on sustainability criteria and indicators, the European Union's Directive on the promotion of the use of energy from renewable sources which contains sustainability criteria for biofuels (2009), and the Inter-American Development Banks's Biofuels Sustainability Scorecard 2.0 (2009), as well as various certification schemes available on the market.