Bio-based economy - Artikel: Societal and Ethical Issues in Industrial Biotechnology

7 important questions on Bio-based economy - Artikel: Societal and Ethical Issues in Industrial Biotechnology

What are the five social and ethical issues in industrial biotechnology?

  1. Sustainability (also, when looking at working conditions in such factories)
  2. Naturalness (what is natural? And which role has nature?)
  3. Risk management (how acceptable is the risk?)
  4. Innovation trajectories (What kind of innovation trajectory industrial biotechnology is supporting?)
  5. Economic justice (who benefits from this technology?)

Asveld et al (2019) researched the societal and ethical issues in the industrial biotechnology. They argued that this is seen as a promise of sustainable solutions based on natural resources. However, there is also societal criticism. What are the five critiques?

1. Sustainability: What and how to measure?
2. Naturalness: what is natural? E.g. A synthetic version of vanilla?
3. Risk management
4. Innovation trajectories
5. Economic justice; who benefits? E.g. The farmers loose jobs when we are going to produce with industrial biotechnology.

What is the approach of Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI)?

A transparent, interactive process by which societal actors and innovators become mutually responsive to each other with a view to the ethical acceptability, sustainability and societal desirability of the innovation process and its marketable products (in order to allow a proper embedding of scientific and technological advances in our society)
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What are the four dimensions of RRI?

The four dimensions of RRI are:
1. Anticipation; System thinking and resilience while innovation opportunity.
2. Reflexivity; assess own preconditions and find common ground
3. Inclusion; Wide range of people and perspectives in development and design
4. Responsiveness; willingness to change and innovate when it becomes clear that it conflicts on crucial issues with values of stakeholders. You then change it in response to them.

What are the guidelines for the framework of Responsible Research and Innovation?

  1. Anticipation (Anticipation involves systematic thinking aimed at increasing resilience while revealing new opportunities for innovation and the shaping of agendas for socially-robust risk research)
  2. Inclusion (Inclusion implies that a wide range of people and perspectives is taken into account when developing new technology)
  3. Reflexivity (RRI asks for reflexivity in actors implying that they critically assess their own preconceptions)
  4. Responsiveness (Responsiveness is the action that is taken after innovators have anticipated possible effects of their innovation, have been reflective and have included a wide variety of perspectives)

What are the two critiques on the bio economy?

1. Fundamental critique; critique on neo liberalism; this regards to the viewpoint that BE is fundamentally not good, because big organizations benefit from it.

2. Greenwashing critique; BE is used to look sustainable, but in fact organizations are not.

How is the bio economy defined?

The bio economy includes the knowledge-based production and utilization of biological resources, innovative biological process and principles to sustainably provide goods and services across all economic sectors.

The question on the page originate from the summary of the following study material:

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