Lotte Asveld

The bioeconomy offers a vision of economic prosperity and ecological sustainability by substituting fossil resources with biomass. The use of biomass is essential to achieve global sustainability targets and novel technologies emerge to exploit biomass in increasingly efficient ways. However, these technological advancements raise critical questions about economic and environmental justice, including the distribution of benefits, ownership rights and their impact on global inequalities. Particularly, concerns arise about the sourcing of biomass from the Global South for processing in the Global North, and how these practices affect sustainability and biodiversity. This chapter explores the concept of inclusive innovation as a solution to these uncertainties, emphasising the engagement of diverse stakeholders in the design and development of technologies to enhance their legitimacy and acceptance. Inclusive innovation aims to improve the livelihoods of the most vulnerable by integrating their perspectives into innovation strategies. Environmental justice, focusing on distribution, processes, recognition and capabilities, is essential for achieving fair and sustainable bioeconomic practices. By applying these concepts to both regional and global value chains, this chapter demonstrates how meaningful inclusion can enhance opportunities for disadvantaged groups and align bioeconomic practices with local capacities. Inclusive design can also generate support among European farmers to deliver to bio-based value chains. Ultimately, embracing inclusive innovation and environmental justice ensures that the bioeconomy fosters equitable and sustainable development for all.

To tackle the global biotechnological innovation divide, Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) are negotiating policies to fairly share the benefits from the use of digital sequence information (DSI) on genetic resources. The policies aim to transfer money, knowledge and technologies from technology-rich developed to biodiversity-rich developing countries in order to bolster the latter’s capacities to achieve the CBD’s objectives. However, by focusing predominantly on scientific capacities, these policies overlook the complex interactions between various actors, conditions and infrastructures that collectively constitute a country’s innovation capacity. In the first-time application of the National Innovation System approach in this policy context, we identify many factors contributing to an innovation gap in Colombia, the host country of COP16, resulting in barriers to study and valorize biodiversity and in lost opportunities for the country to benefit from new technologies. This analysis calls for consideration of broader policy reforms in access and benefit-sharing (ABS) negotiations, and illustrates how holistic policy interventions are needed in countries that benefit from ABS instruments to effectively use financial, scientific and technological resources. Without such an approach, efforts to enhance benefit-sharing from genetic resources and DSI risk reinforcing inequalities in innovation capacity. Finally, we discuss actions countries could take to use their current resources better, as well as how scientists and companies as users of genetic resources and DSI can pursue mutual interests by tackling innovation bottlenecks. [Para una versión en español del resumen, por favor consulte los Datos suplementarios]

Safe-by-Design (SbD) is a new concept that urges the developers of novel technologies to integrate safety early on in their design process. A SbD approach could—in theory—support the development of safer products and assist a responsible transition to the bioeconomy, via the deployment of safer bio-based and biotechnological alternatives. Despite its prominence in policy discourse, SbD is yet to gain traction in research and innovation practice. In this paper, we examine a frequently stated objection to the initiative of SbD, namely the position that SbD is already common practice in research and industry. We draw upon observations from two case studies: one, a study on the applicability of SbD in the context of bio-based circular materials and, two, a study on stakeholder perceptions of SbD in biotechnology. Interviewed practitioners in both case studies make claims to a strong safety culture in their respective fields and have difficulties differentiating a SbD approach from existing safety practices. Two variations of this argument are discussed: early attentiveness to safety as a strictly formalised practice and early attentiveness as implicit practice. We analyse these perceptions using the theoretical lens of safety culture and contrast them to the aims of SbD. Our analysis indicates that professional identity and professional pride may explain some of the resistance to the initiative of SbD. Nevertheless, SbD could still be advantageous by a) emphasising multidisciplinary approaches to safety and b) offering a (reflective) frame via which implicit attentiveness to safety becomes explicit.

Biomass such as crops and agricultural waste is increasingly used as the primary resource for products like bioplastics and biofuels. Incorporating the needs, knowledge, skills and values of biomass producers in the design of global value chains – the steps involved in creating any finished product from design to delivery – can contribute to sustainability, reliability and fairness. However, how to involve biomass producers, especially if they are resource poor, remains a challenge. To make sure that inclusion in global biobased value chains is both fair and effective, the capabilities of relevant actors need to be taken into account, especially of those producing biomass. Access to resources determines to what extent a specific actor can participate in a global value chain. Therefore, differences in capabilities should be a central consideration when new (biobased) value chains are designed. Using the capability approach as an ethical framework to realize inclusion, we discern three complementary strategies for setting up inclusive value chains. Firstly, designing for local conversion factors second, providing adaptive design for new capabilities, and third, investing in local conversion factors. Applying these strategies can lead to context-sensitive design of biorefineries that allow for true inclusion of local stakeholders. We support these claims with reference to case-studies of sugarcane production in Jamaica, modified tobacco in South Africa and the non-edible parts of corn (stover) in the US.