Bioeconomy for Sustainable Development

The bioeconomy is recognised as a major area of development of current economies. Though defined in different ways and focusing on different sectors depending on countries and areas of the world, a key qualifying feature of the bioeconomy is the sustainable use of biological resources building on a wide range of modern technologies. Biotechnology is the leading type of technology in this context, but attention is much wider. This paper develops a conceptual approach on the development of the bioeconomy based on the integration of three perspectives: investment in biological capital, organisational trends and configuration of policy.

The development of the bioeconomy, including biotechnology, has significant meaning for many regions in the European Union. Nineteen member states already have a bioeconomy strategy (or a similar strategic document) in place or are in the process of developing a strategy (Haarich S, Bioeconomy development in EU regions: mapping of EU Member States/regions’ research and innovation plans and strategies for smart specialisation (RIS3) on bioeconomy. Final Report, Framework Contract: 2014.CE.16.BAT Lot 2. Specific Contract: RTD/F1/PP-03681-2015. European Commission, Brussels, 2017). Currently, the development of science and technology creates new opportunities that make bioeconomy one of the most dynamic sectors in the European economy. Biotechnology has the greatest potential impact in the sectors of agriculture, health and industry. The global human population is estimated to reach nine billion people by 2050, which creates a serious challenge for achieving global food security and adequate responses to the effects of climate change. Progress may be achieved by applying knowledge of molecular and genetic mechanisms to create or improve agricultural processes and food production. This chapter aims to review current knowledge on agri-biotechnology, within the context of the legal and economic aspects of using GMOs (genetically modified organisms). The area of GM crops in EU countries in 2017 was marginal. GM plants were cultivated in a few EU countries: Spain (0.1 million hectares), Portugal (less than 0.1 million hectares) and marginally in Slovakia and Czech Republic. As a consequence, EU countries import raw materials and GM products from other countries. Finally, we highlight the legal aspects of using GM plants in agriculture, including GM products that are registered as food and feed. In the last chapter, we present perspectives on the development of the bioeconomy and biotechnology in the European Union.

As early as 1979, the Philippine Government envisioned that biotechnology would play a pivotal role in solving the long-standing problems on agricultural sustainability, incurable diseases, and climate change. With the burgeoning human population on an exponential rise, there is a dire need for a new paradigm to encourage agricultural sustainability. Biotechnology can be adopted and has been identified as one of the solutions to address these growing concerns. As an important tool, it has wide applications in agri-industry as it offers opportunities and promising economic potential for enhancing productivity and developing competitive products. There are groups in the country which abhor biotechnology, particularly the use of GMOs. They are very visible and articulate in various forums intended to discuss issues on biotechnology outputs. Support to research and development on biotechnology would suffer if their effort succeeded in urging the government to make a misinformed decision on policies concerning biotechnology.

With a world population of more than 7.5 billion people, today we are able to produce enough food to support the entire population of the planet. However, in the next few years, the population will continue to grow and the challenges are even greater, limitation in expanding new agricultural frontiers, besides the demand of conscious consumers who seek healthy sustainable produced food. In this scenario, the biological control seems to be one solution and one opportunity to reduce the dependence of the oligopoly on agrochemicals. Based on the strategic innovation model of the triple helix, the decentralization of investments in research and innovation, with the approach of universities and research institutes, of the rural producers, fomented by the government, boosts the search of solutions of biological control, supporting the regional development, with the increase the income generation and socioeconomic contributions in diverse countries. This way, we will be able to break the circle of poison.

Precision agricultural skill has constructed and will still construct the road we are moving into this novel theory of precision agriculture. By increasing the inspection and appliance of inputs on the land, farmers are changing from a usual, standardized treatment of every agricultural land to a perfect treatment for as little as possible districts. Remote sensing processes offer a basis for which vegetal stress and growth reaction can be estimated. Remote sensing research based on terrestrial and spatial domains has demonstrated that numerous kinds of plant illness, through pre-visual infection signs for pathogens, hostile species and also plant health indicators, can be identified through aerial hyperspectral imaging. Inspecting foliage using remote sensing data necessitates understanding of the organization and role of foliage and its reflectance characteristics. Sensors have been ameliorated to calculate the reflectance of incident bright at numerous wavebands and have been associated to plant evolution and plant cover. Remote sensing technology has the major advantage to obtaining data about a given entity or region without having physical exchange and frequently employs surface-based instruments or spatial pictures. Remote sensing would be considered as an economic and relevant instrument for land-scale pest controlling and study.

For over a century, chemical control of pests is a common practice in agriculture. The average reduction in global crop loss due to use of pesticides is around ∼39%. The postharvest losses and quality decline caused by storage pests are major problems in a subtropical country like India. So, the farmers have relied heavily on the use of chemical pesticides to improve their crop production, which is now paying a huge toll on the human health and environment. Though the chemical pesticides are very effective, what concerns over their use is their effect on soil and environment and presence of residue in food products. Another major issue is the development of resistance in the pests. Therefore, the use of biopesticides to control pests is now preferred over synthetic pesticides because of their pest control ability and diverse mode of actions which helps in avoiding resistance development in the pests. In a country like India with a huge diversity of plants, there is an urgent need for identifying new biopesticides which can serve the purpose of pest control. India needs to develop its own biocontrol agents (BCA) because it will be cost-effective and also environment-friendly. Major hurdle in the development and use of new biopesticides in India is the commercialization process. The farmers are reluctant to use the new products because of high cost and no practical knowledge.

This chapter has examined the nature and adoption of biotechnologies, socio-economic impacts, regulatory frameworks and concerns for rising farm incomes in a cross-country perspective. The product development in biotech has been moving from just insect/herbicide resistance to breaking yield barriers, drought tolerance and quality enhancing traits, just from 3 to 31 crops, a large share of acreage in developing countries and increasing penetration of public sector. The frontiers have been moving forward with the fundamental breakthrough in the form of CRISPR-Cas 9 technique with wide-ranging applications. A rigorous study of peer-reviewed literature shows that GE crop cultivation has increased yields and net income, reduced pesticide usage and helped conserve tillage. Biosafety laws have been stifling product development, and therefore harnessing biotechnologies necessitate enabling policies like a legal framework for biosafety, labelling and trans-boundary movement. Developing countries need to put in place regulations for the new plant breeding techniques on par with the conventional plant breeding techniques. The policy implications have been then drawn for utilization of opportunities in advancement of biotechnology for developing country agriculture.

Biotechnology has become a new crucial technology of increasing economic growth. Nowadays, biotechnology has been widely applied in the fields of agriculture, pharmaceutical industry, medicine, energy, and environment protection. With the development of new processes in biotechnology, new adjustments are needed from established patent rules. Thus the Directive was drafted by the Commission to meet the demands of biotechnology industry. The Biotechnology Directive had successively treated the patentability of gene-related inventions, the exceptions to patent and moral issues. In addition, the Directive generally achieved the goal of harmonization of patent laws among the member states. To some extent, the Directive simplified the uncertainty of the patent law which is benefit to increase the research investment and development funds, but the remaining issue limiting its wide acceptance have been discussed in this chapter.

A seven-step approach is proposed for the assessment and management of bioeconomy-related developments affecting the pathway of transition economies and societies. The particular action steps of this approach include methodological elements from various fields, with emphasis on future-oriented methods, especially horizon scanning, identification of key drivers and barriers and scenario-building. These are combined with other relevant tools, such as mapping, techno-economic evaluation, technology assessment and strategy and policy analysis. This approach is applied in this paper to the case of Poland, a country currently in the process of preparing its bioeconomy strategy in the frame of regional and national smart specialisation efforts.

The bioeconomy provides a possible solution for the increasing demand on natural resources by substitution of the nonrenewable resources with resources derived from biomass, thus reducing the environmental impact of fossil fuels. A fundamental unit that will enable the bioeconomy implementation is biorefinery. The bioeconomy is a collective term for the complex system that includes biomass production, transportation, conversion into products, and product distribution. In this chapter, we introduce the concept of offshore marine biorefineries as potential drivers for the bioeconomy of the future. We discuss fundamental thermodynamics principles that determine the optimum scale of biorefineries and put the limit for the services area for a single-processing unit. We provide a review of the current methods to produce biomass offshore. Next, we exemplify the marine biorefineries, which show co-production of several products from the same biomass, thus reducing the waste and maximizing economic benefit from the unit. In addition, we discuss the economic and environmental challenges of marine biorefineries as an emerging platform for society transition to low-carbon economy.

Indonesia is known as the emerald of the equator which has high values of natural resources, although it also has a huge disaster risk. It’s because it is located in strategic areas, namely, (1) the equator, (2) Ring of Fire, and (3) earth plates of Eurasia, Pacific, and Indo-Australia. Tropical ecosystem has high temperature, rainfall, moisture, light intensity, and rapid organic cycling along a year, so they have the highest biodiversity and net primary production in the world. As a part of the Ring of Fire, the land becomes more fertile because it is always supplied by new volcanic materials which contain a lot of important nutrients. The earth plate resulted in the accumulation of valuable mine minerals. Tropical natural resources have a high potential resource but still have less economical values, because it is still under mismanagement that is not based on natural norms. We have to shift paradigm from natural resource-based development to knowledge-based development. New paradigm from extraction to empowerment of natural resource will give new challenge to shift from red-green economic to blue economic concept that should be more smart, global, focused, and futuristic for sustainable development. An education of sustainable development system should be developing with a strong culture and values of humanity that educate the head, heart, and hand, respectively. Development of Integrated Bio-cycles System (IBS) in a closed-to-nature ecosystem will manage land resources (soil, mineral, water, air, microclimate) and biological resources (flora, fauna, human) that could have more high added value in environment, economic, socioculture, and health aspects. This integrated farming system has multifunction and multiproduct that produce food, feed, fiber, fertilizer, energy, water, oxygen, medicine, mystic, and tourism for sustainable and productive tropical natural resource management.

By 2050, the global population is predicted to expand to 9.8 billion people, requiring 70% more food than we are consuming today. At the same time, crop losses are increasing due to resistance to pesticides and restrictions on the use of these products because they are harmful to humans and the environment. The need for alternative and sustainable crop management strategies has prompted interest in plant growth-promoting pseudomonads and the secondary metabolites they produce. These strains, however, have not been widely embraced by the farming community because they have failed to yield consistent results in the field. To take advantage of the plant growth-promoting abilities of pseudomonads, there has been increased interest in the direct application of the biosynthesized secondary metabolites. This review describes the benefits and difficulties associated with pseudomonad-based bioinoculants and recent advances toward commercial application of biosynthetic secondary metabolites from these organisms.

In the course of the general discussion about sustainable urban development, there is currently a growing interest in urban greenery and the concept of green infrastructure, both at the national and international level. At the international level, the EU Green Infrastructure Strategy explicitly includes urban spaces. Urban green infrastructure offers a promising potential for bioeconomic activities. Bioeconomy stands for the structural change from a petroleum-based to a bio-based economy, which combines economic prosperity with ecological and social compatibility. The concept refers to the provision and use of renewable resources such as plants, animals and microorganisms, as well as the prevention of waste. The present contribution analyses the potential of bioeconomy in urban green infrastructure with a focus on a multifunctional biomass production, particularly focused on the production of food and feed through urban agriculture. The contribution discusses the potentials and challenges of urban gardening as well as urban farming approaches.

This chapter provides an overview, from bioeconomic and global sustainability perspectives, of the main constraints to the current global vaccine innovation system for achieving Sustainable Development Goals – SDGs. Biotechnology market trends, gaps in vaccine coverage against emerging and neglected diseases, and patent protection and regulation are discussed. A structured long-term “public-return-driven” innovation model to overcome vaccine market failure is proposed.

This book chapter looks into corporate social responsibility (CSR) and meta-regulation as legislative technique as a way to implement regulatory incentives of sorts aiming to foster sustainable drug development. The chapter pays particular attention to supplementary protection certificates, the recent manufacturing waiver in the EU, and PRIME. By reviewing these regulatory inccentives, the chapter reflects on the need to include CSR principles in future legislative reforms, which should not focus exclusively in recouping investments but instead in achieving a balance amongst stakeholders’ and patients’ interests, thus proposing meta-regulation as a means to achieve it.

Medicinal plants were studied in 4 communities from the coast of Tabasco; it registered 63 species, which are used to treat 37 local diseases. Those plants have different origins; 81.5% were located in family gardens, and people daily coexist with them; two species were cultivated for consumption, but a secondary use is medicinal. Also 2 species were registered in the fences, and 4 come from mangroves and 2 from paddocks, and 14 are wild. Here we found six biological forms: tree, shrubs, herbs, vines, epiphytes, parasites, and thick vines. Because the soil is very saline, only a few species grow as trees in the orchards. The other species, mainly grasses and vines, are planted in discarded dishes and hung to the trees or arranged in the branches of the same. For these plants, substrate from other agricultural areas of the region is used. It is important to mention that only tree or shrub species are grown in the gardens of family orchards, such as the nance (Byrsonima crassifolia (L.) Kunth.) and the cinnamomum (Cinnamomum zeylanicum Breyn). The rest of the species are usually planted in waste containers such as buckets or frets that no longer fulfill their main function, but the substrate is not from the area; this is because in coastal communities the soil is too saline, due to which many species do not grow in these conditions, so over time the ladies have brought from communities far from the coast fertile soil where watermelon, corn, or sorghum is produced and have used it as a substrate to grow their medicinal plants. The main uses were for treatment of pain, spells, treatment of nerves, expulsion of intestinal parasites, inflammations rash, hair treatment, constipation, emmenagogue, diarrhea, diabetes, and rheumatism, the other treated with two species each.

The main challenge in today’s world to the healthcare system is the elevated occurrence of the neurodegenerative disorders. Progress in the field of bioinformatics and biomedical research has allowed us to understand the pathobiology of the neurodegenerative disorders in a detailed manner. The threat of these diseases increases with aging, and Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, and Huntington’s disease are the major ones affecting the public health and posing the higher economic burden. The research centers, pharmaceutical companies, and academic institutions are conducting research work in collaborations these days to enhance the development of new therapeutic strategies and develop novel drugs in a sustainable way. This can help in the development of safer therapies with reduced risk and can help in developing the authentic and evident biomarkers so that the disease can be diagnosed at early stages and treated accordingly. The advancement can therefore help in improving the quality of life of patients suffering from these debilitating neurodegenerative disorders and can also help in providing the job opportunities to the students interested in drug development program.

Due to their characteristic benefits and medicinal value, medicinal plants are gaining importance worldwide. It is becoming famous, and people are using herbal therapy as an alternative medicinal therapy. Because of their increased traditional use and cultural acceptability, these medicinal plants are greatly admired and also have minimal side effects and thus are gaining global importance. Herbal drugs which are cost-effective than synthetic drugs in many cases are being promoted by most of the developing countries, and they have started discovering and filing patents on the medicinal plants and their derivatives. Many drugs still have not undergone the process of drug approval and are not yet validated for their safety and efficacy. These medicinal plant-derived drugs can be formulated by medicine-based industries. The international trade of medicinal plants and their products was estimated to be USD 60 billion in 2010, and by 2050, it is expected to reach USD 5 trillion. Asian countries are very rich in medicinal plant species and are the major exporters of these plants and their products. These medicinal plants can be popularized and used to improve the economy of low-income countries of Asia and create livelihoods for its people. Moreover, overexploitation of these medicinal plants should be limited, the valuable species of high marketing value should be conserved, and their cultivation should be promoted for future use.

Gallbladder cancer (GBC) is the most fatal cancer of the biliary tract with poor prognosis. Silent in its infancy, this malignancy remains asymptomatic until aggressive disease has progressed to an advanced and non-curative stage. The overall mean survival rate for patients with GBC is less than 6 months, with a 5-year survival rate of approximately 5% with a high relapse rate. Treatment depends upon the stage of disease, patient’s age, nutritional status, performance status, and cardiopulmonary, hepatic, and renal functions. Complete surgical resection is considered the most curative modality for GBC. Chemotherapy has recently shown its effect on gallbladder cancer. Therapeutic agents, targeting cellular and molecular pathways, can effectively impede tumor growth. Newer drugs are being developed that work which target specific parts of cancer cells or their surrounding environments like tumor blood vessels. This chapter discusses market of chemotherapeutic drugs in India and market drives and government initiatives for the promotion of pharmaceutical sector in India with special emphasis on GBC.