Manual Embedding New Technologies into Society: A Regulatory, Ethical and Societal Perspective

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Table of contents

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Inclusion implies that a wide range of people and perspectives is taken into account when developing a new technology [ 42 ]. In the bio-based economy, inclusion already takes place in many shapes, such as for the certification and monitoring of sustainable biomass [ 46 ]. There is an ongoing international debate on the norms for sustainable biomass as well as on the quality of the labels monitoring these norms [ 17 ].

A wide variety of actors takes part in these debates, such as NGOs, companies and governmental organisations. Their views are incorporated in schemes for the certification and monitoring of the sustainability. The criteria by which sustainability is determined are hence done in an inclusive, participatory manner.

According to RRI such inclusion should go beyond the formulation of criteria and extend to the actual design choices that are being made when developing a new technology. Even if these barriers occur, there are still actions that companies and other innovators can undertake to assure a representation of a wide variety of perspectives. One option is to learn from other related cases what are relevant concerns from stakeholders. The cases described above can, for instance, serve as guide for the kind of societal concerns that might affect comparable industrial biotechnology products [ 16 ].

Also, stakeholders that are at a given time unavailable might be represented by other parties that are available such as academic experts or NGOs [ 49 ]. Once a wide variety of perspectives has been identified, either indirectly as described above or directly through interviews or workshops, they can be used to inform the design choices made in an innovation trajectory. Such choices can, for instance, concern the choice for a particular feedstock, for a particular kind of technology or for centralised or decentralised production facilities [ 44 ]. The last dimension of RRI is that of responsiveness and this might be seen as an overarching attitude for which the other three strategies are essential conditions.

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 [ 32 , 49 ]. Especially in a setting that is continuously evolving and where the learning curve on social values is steep such as in the bio-based economy, a responsive attitude is crucial to achieve societally robust innovations. The public outcry over using food crops for fuel has, for instance, intensified the policy support for fuels from nonedible parts of crops and algae.

This can be considered a responsive attitude towards societal concerns of biotechnological innovations. It can be difficult to be responsive because innovations are sometimes locked into their own trajectory. It is possible to change the policy surrounding biofuels, but it may also be difficult to change the production platforms of the biofuels.

Responsiveness is hence not always technologically possible without abandoning existing production facilities. Therefore responsiveness can be a costly affair if not managed properly. According to RRI philosophy, companies should always be aware of the need for responsiveness and try to incorporate it in their innovation strategies by ensuring some form of flexibility. For the biotech companies described in the beginning, such responsiveness seems available to different degrees because they can switch to different end products if needed without changing the core of their business, namely, the production platform engineered micro-organisms.

Responsiveness does not necessarily always imply a change in course of those developing an innovation. Although they had the option to change to other end products, all three biotech companies that faced societal criticism e. Amyris, Evolva and Solazyme are actually still producing as they were before. They have considered the societal criticism, and they did not deem it necessary to change their innovations.

The management of Solazyme started a new company focussing on health foods based on non-engineered algae, named TerraVia, thereby expanding their portfolio. They are also still producing oil from engineered algae. However, the end-user of the algae-based oil that Solazyme produced, Ecover, has stopped using the oil as ingredient for their detergents, even though they still deem it a desirable innovation. The innovation manager, Tom Domen, thought the company needed to reconsider its communication and engagement strategies before continuing with a controversial innovation such as the algae-based oil [ 9 ].

These different responses to societal criticism show that responsiveness does not necessarily imply the same course of actions for each company. This might lead to an adaptation of the technology, but it should, at minimum, lead to a better articulation and explication of the reasons and values behind choices made in a particular innovation process. Sustainability was already introduced in Sect. Such impacts should in principle be qualitatively or quantitatively assessed to determine whether a process, product or service should be realised or not.

In other words, knowing the potential positive or negative consequences in terms of social, environmental and economic impacts of a novel biotechnology-related project — throughout the entire value chain — is a valuable instrument to motivate and support debates among the five social ethical issues see Sect.

In the case of economic and environmental impacts assessment, multiple methodologies are already available and have extensively been described in literature [ 50 ]. However, in the case of social sustainability assessment, literature is scarce since methodologies are still under development, being social impact assessment SIA and social life cycle assessment SLCA the most commonly used approaches [ 13 , 51 ]. The former considers on-site specific impacts, while the latter accounts for the entire life cycle.

In the case of the SLCA methodology, a twofold classification of social impacts is considered, i. In the particular case of industrial biotechnology for biofuels and biochemicals production, some of the most critical social issues are related to food security, land use, water availability, energy security, rural and social development, employment, working conditions and health and safety impacts [ 50 ]. For instance, land expansion for industrial biotechnology applications had raised concerns in the last decade on food security and land competition for food production, especially in view of the increasing food demand of a constantly growing population.

Although this connection has been in public scrutiny as the food-vs-fuel debate, there is evidence that the effect of biofuels production on food prices is limited as compared to the effects from the oil prices [ 35 ]. Another concern from biomass production and expansion for industrial biotechnology applications is that such projects may significantly affect water availability and quality for other basic uses like sanitation or food production.

Although this concern highly depends on contextual features e. However, it is also acknowledged that further water stress would raise from growing biomass production demands [ 50 ]. On the other hand, industrial biotechnology-related projects, like biofuels and biochemicals production, have shown positive social effects, at local and global scales, in terms of employment creation e.

The labor market and the new Gilded Age

Industrial biotechnology carries the promise of sustainable solutions based on natural resources. However, some issues invoke societal criticism, showing that different actors have different perspectives on salient issues. These issues include sustainability, naturalness, risk management, innovation trajectories and economic justice. To achieve societally robust innovations, innovators can learn from actors who have a different view on a specific application.

The framework of Responsible Research and Innovations offers guidelines to organise such learning. These guidelines are based on the principles of anticipation, inclusion, reflexivity and responsiveness. The outcome of such a learning process might be that an innovation trajectory is adapted, or at minimum that the innovators are aware of possible objections to their innovation and can widen their understanding of their own motivation for pursuing that innovation.

Currently efforts are on the way to integrate social and economic aspects into LCA, but these are still in their infancy. The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material.

If material is not included in the chapter's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.

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Skip to main content Skip to sections. Advertisement Hide. Societal and Ethical Issues in Industrial Biotechnology. Open Access. First Online: 22 July Download chapter PDF. At the time, SSA was hailed as the first triumph for synthetic biology. It showed it was possible to provide a viable alternative to naturally occurring substances, with great promise for combatting a persisting global health issue: malaria.

However, not everybody was convinced of the merits of this innovation. Their main objection is that the production of SSA will undermine the agricultural production of wormwood, thereby undermining the livelihoods of farmers growing the wormwood. Sanofi can keep their prices low because of the Gates Foundation support and thereby undercut the competition.

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Moreover, this technology allows for the concentration of economic power in the hands of one company at the expense of many small producers. Their criticism is supported by the Dutch Royal Tropical Institute who state in a report: The advantage of synthetic artemisinin is the combination of its predictability and, eventually, cheap production.

These cases indicate some common societal themes that are brought forwards by innovations in industrial biotechnology. As stated above these are: a Sustainability.

Different worldviews in which nature plays a pivotal part are depicted below. These are adapted from cultural theory cf. The little ball represents nature and the position in which nature is supposed to be, i. These two positions are usually the most outspoken ones in discussions on genetic technologies Fig. Open image in new window.

However, for other actors such as Friends of the Earth, USA, and the ETC Group, the risks of applications such as synbio are both undeniable and considerable: While other types of pollution such as synthetic chemicals break down over time and do not breed, synthetic biological creations are designed to self-replicate and once released into the environment they would be impossible to stop and could wipe out entire species.

Another important issue for industrial biotechnology is that of economic justice, or put differently, who benefits from this technology? Many critics state that applications of industrial biotechnology lead to a concentration of knowledge and power in the hands of a few companies. This has been said for biofuels [ 24 , 26 , 33 , 34 ] as well as for more speciality chemicals [ 4 , 24 ]; ETC Group : What is being sold as a benign and beneficial switch from black carbon to green carbon is in fact a red hot resource grab from South to North to capture a new source of wealth.

As we have shown, there are many societally intricate issues related to industrial biotechnology.