In this series of articles, we are looking at some of the
big challenges facing the world at present, and what the bioeconomy brings to
the table in tackling these challenges. In the previous article, we discussed
the problems centring around plastic waste, and how the bioeconomy presents
several solutions to this multifaceted problem.
In this article, we are looking at the complete opposite end
of the value chain from waste: resources. One of the central tenets of
sustainable development is the management of resources, and dealing with the
needs of an ever-growing human population. It is here that sometimes the
bioeconomy is sometimes seen to conflict with solving these problems, but recent
developments have shown that even these conflicts can be mitigated with good
practice.
Problem: Resource Provision
As the human population continues to grow, we are starting
to feel a significant strain on the available natural resources the planet
offers. Continued analysis is showing that everything from food to oil to raw
materials is not produced at the level required to sustain the population as it
is, or if it were to grow any more (as predicted). The problems this will cause
are obvious: lives and livelihoods will be adversely affected the world over –
to put it delicately! However, resource levels are not past the point of
no-return, and so the problem is not unsolvable.
Solution: Continually improving biomass feedstocks
When discussing the bioeconomy, it’s easy to gravitate
towards end-products, such as biobased plastics and biofuels, while forgetting
about the biomass from which they are derived. Without the feedstocks sector
there would be no “downstream” bioeconomy. The bioeconomy makes use of many
different biomass resources, from crops to forests to microorganisms.
There is a continuing debate surrounding the bioeconomy
regarding land-use change. If bioeconomy practices are going to negatively
impact food production, this is seen as a bad option. However, research
continues to show that this effect can be minimised: the USA would be able to
cater to its entire energy crop needs by using only 3% of its agricultural
land, with 80% of this being marginal land. Add to this that improvements are
continually being made in the development of more productive crop varieties,
better farming practices, and improvements in the extraction of useful products
from said crops, and the picture starts to look better for resource provision
in the bioeconomy.
One of the biggest advances that could happen here would be
the development of a method of successful lignin breakdown in woody biomass,
which would greatly increase the rate of cellulose extraction from such
biomass, thus hugely increasing the feedstock yield of forests. No
hard-and-fast method has yet been reached, but a variety of approaches are
being taken, including using enzyme technology to break down the lignin, and
genetically modifying plants to produce less or modified lignin themselves.
The bioeconomy also provides us with alternative methods of
producing useful chemicals that would otherwise be sourced unsustainably from
fossil fuels or living organisms (the former case will be discussed in more
detail in the next article). The chief method behind this has been the
development of microbial technology, wherein genetically modified microbes
produce the desired chemicals, ranging from platform chemicals to
pharmaceuticals to vitamin supplements. One key example has been the
development of algae that produce omega-3 fatty acids, a discovery that promises
to reduce strain on fish stocks, which have been the primary source of these,
thus allowing, indirectly, for an increase in food availability. Microbes are
also used as a source of enzymes which can be used as catalysts in industrial
processes that have greater specificity and less input that conventional
chemical catalysts.
The take-home message here is that the bioeconomy is
continually developing, and those new developments will continue to bring in
better options for biomass resources, allowing for better provision of those
resources.
Problem: Biodiversity loss
One of the biggest problems where biodiversity is concerned
is how to quantify its value. It is well documented that a more diverse
ecosystem provides “ecosystem services” such as provision of resources, and
regulation of biological problems such as pests. It is becoming increasingly
apparently that these ecosystem services are more valuable than we have
previously given them credit for, and as biodiversity continues to fall, unmitigated
biodiversity loss could be disastrous.
Solution: Ecosystem management
One of the less “glamorous” sides of the bioeconomy is the
management of the feedstock used for biobased processes. Behind any sustainable
biobased process come extensive management of the biomass feedstock, be it
crops or woody biomass. While in the first instance this management is
undertaken to maximise yields and profit, a side-effect of that is the
promotion of biodiversity, as this has been found to decrease the likelihood of
crop failure, and to increase the yield of timber forests.
By utilising the sound management practices that have been
developed by bioeconomy feedstock growers, biodiversity will not only be
preserved, but alongside it productivity will improve, thus benefitting both us
and the environment.
This is not even to mention the surprising additional
effects that other bioeconomy practices can have on ecosystem services. It is
commonly accepted that the best option for flood mitigation is to have more forest
on floodplains. However, these forests, when planted, take a long time to grow
and fully develop to the point where they can provide the necessary level of
hydraulic roughness to mitigate flooding. However, energy crops such as
miscanthus grow much faster than forests, and are found to have an equivalent
or higher hydraulic roughness than young forest, thus providing equal or better
flood mitigation, while still providing a resource. Thus the optimal management
practice would be to plant energy crops in the floodplain rather than attempt
to establish a forest, and it is management practices like these that can
result in a more productive bioeconomy, but also a more sustainable one.
In effect, these two problems go hand-in-hand – attempting
to sustainably provide for the human population without destroying our world in
the process – and the solutions may appear on the surface to be more heuristic
than practical, but the mindset that underpins these solutions forms the
backbone of the bioeconomy as we know it. At its core, the bioeconomy is about
sustainability, and thus the navigation of these challenges is inseparably
intertwined with the bioeconomy, and will continue to be so.