ActionAid and Friends of the Earth Europe warned that biofuel targets are leading to uncontrollable land grabbing from poor communities in Africa, pushing more people into hunger.

The bloc’s renewable energy directive requires that 10 percent of transport fuel come from renewable energy by 2020, with most of it likely to come from biofuels. Andris Piebalgs, E.U. energy commissioner, recently said that Europe already imports around 25 percent of its biofuels, a figure that will likely increase as the use of biofuels in the region swells.

To meet the required target, countries have to use up to 17.5 million hectares of land. Around 5 million hectares have already been acquired in developing nations for industrial fuels – a move that activists believe is at the expense of poor communities’ ability to feed themselves.

“Huge tracts of land are being snatched across the developing world for European biofuels. Whether it’s their impact on the environment, the climate, or the need to swallow up more land, the arguments against large-scale biofuels continue to grow,” said Adrian Bebb, food and agriculture campaigner for Friends of the Earth Europe.

“Poor communities are being pushed off their land to make way for E.U. biofuels companies. Under the Treaty of Lisbon, all E.U. policies must have the eradication of poverty as the primary focus – this is clearly not the case with the E.U.’s energy policy, which is further damaging E.U. progress towards the Millennium Development Goals,” echoed David Barisa Ringa from ActionAid Kenya.

Biofuel’s status as a green and renewable fuel has long been criticized for diverting food crops and using agricultural land that could instead be used to feed people. To be truly green, biofuels must be made of nonfood stock and grown on land that does not threaten food supply or biodiversity, critics say.

ActionAid estimated that 30 million people have already been made hungry by biofuels, with another 260 million placed at risk of hunger.