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THE BIOECONOMY TO 2030 : DESIGNING A POLICY AGENDA

 

In 2005, the International Futures Programme (IFP) of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) embarked on a two-year project to design a bioeconomy policy agenda for governments. The bioeconomy is a new concept that encompasses many economic activities – each of which benefits from new discoveries – and related products and services arising out of the biosciences. The OECD project team, along with partners in government, industry and academia, will assess how pervasive biotechnological applications are likely to become given our rapidly increasing biological knowledge. The project will also examine the prospects for further development over the next two to three decades, the potential impact on economies and societies, and most importantly, the policies needed to promote and exploit this new wave of innovations to promote high-level social and economic goals.

 

The term “bioeconomy” is interpreted in different ways by different actors. The OECD Project supposes the bioeconomy to be the aggregate set of economic operations in a society that use the latent value incumbent in biological products and processes to capture new growth and welfare benefits for citizens and nations. These benefits are manifest in product markets through productivity gains (agriculture, health), enhancement effects (health, nutrition) and substitution effects (environmental and industrial uses as well as energy); additional benefits derive from more eco-efficient and sustainable use of natural resources to provide goods and services to an ever growing global population.

The bioeconomy is made possible by the recent and continuing surge in the scientific knowledge and technical competences that can be directed to harness biological processes for practical applications.

Looking to the future, new techniques in biotechnology, genomics, genetics, and proteomics will continue to converge with other technologies resulting in potentially large scale changes to global economies in the next thirty years.

Unsurprisingly therefore, strategic interest is growing in the biosciences in both
OECD and non-OECD countries. Indeed, the bioeconomy is growing faster in China, India and Singapore than in many OECD countries and the lead position
occupied by OECD countries in most fields is being challenged.

However there are considerable uncertainties facing both public and private actors, in terms of technology development as well as commercialisation, intellectual property and business models. In addition, the bioeconomy will have implications for society and economy (e.g. – pension sustainability, long-term healthcare, changing insurance markets, and ethical questions) which will have to be addressed. At the same time, technological and commercial progress in the biosciences is outpacing the policy and regulatory frameworks that govern them. Hence, policymakers will have challenging decisions to make and will need to understand the tradeoffs and possible consequences of their actions.

There is an increasing need for a long-term international policy agenda that clearly explains the issues that will have to be faced in the coming 20 to 30 years.