Looking beyond calculative spaces of biofuels: Onto-topologies of indirect land use changes

By dedicating food to fuel, recent biofuel policy developments in the European Union have become part of the substantial substitution of existing land use patterns around the globe. This process has had various environmental and social consequences, commonly discussed under the topic of 'indirect land use changes' (iLUC). Although the European Commission has strived to mitigate the indirect biofuel related land use impacts, in this paper we show that the recent directive proposal on iLUC is rather a quick fix than a delicate attempt to grasp the topological and ontological polymorphism of the phenomenon. We will demonstrate this, firstly, by showing how the iLUC policy development of the Commission has been intertwined with the iLUC models that have quantified the indirect GHG impacts of various biofuel feedstocks. Secondly, we will examine how these calculative models have created a problematic ontological framing of the iLUC by concealing the manifold spatialities of this elusive phenomenon. Finally, the calculative models have not only posited iLUC into calculative nexuses of ordering; such calculations have also remained unable to explicate the heterogeneous topologies of actual biofuel production. We illustrate this crucial point by explicating three types of topological mediation - the fluid, the parasite and the fire - that cannot be acknowledged with the iLUC models or contemporary policies of European Union. In sum, by combining and rethinking the ideas of Heidegger, Latour and Serres, we argue for an onto-topological approach capable of taking into account manifold and complex topologies and ontologies of biofuel production.