Reflections from Rio: Principles and Progress made on the Bioeconomy
Last week, Ana Yang and Henry Throp, travelled to Rio de Janeiro to take part in discussions on how to accelerate the rise of sustainable bioeconomies.
Sunrise over Pão de Açúcar. A blanket of particulates from fires burning in the Amazon and Cerrado create orange and pink hues at the beginning and end of the day, Photo credit: Henry Throp.
There is a buzz in the Solar da Imperatriz, well above Rio’s lush Jardim Botanico district, and on the edge of the Tijuca Forest, where the ‘Accelerating Finance for a Global Bioeconomy’ conference is taking place.
Just the day before, the Brazilian Presidency of the G20 achieved a diplomatic first. Ten High Level Principles for the Bioeconomy have been agreed upon by the world’s largest economies. 1 The incoming President – South Africa – has just announced its intention to continue this initiative.
This matters because the bioeconomy is being proposed as a new trajectory for economic development distinct from the extraction of fossil fuels. In a bio-based future, many of the everyday objects we use are derived from biological matter, like trees and crops. 2 It does not require a huge leap of the imagination to see how the bioeconomy could disrupt long held assumptions about geopolitics and trade, production and consumption.
A large challenge – for all those in attendance at the conference and around the world – is one of implementation. How best to grow the bioeconomy to enrich societies and our ecological landscapes together?
This is why we have come to Rio.
In October, we will be publishing a new report on how to foster both public and private sector collaboration across bioeconomies. In this report, we take stock of the innovations that could play a role in the bioeconomy and the geopolitical headwinds and tailwinds whose gusts will shape and be shaped by its development.
Earlier in the week, we presented these findings to leading figures in business and finance at the offices of the Brazilian National Development Bank.
What became clear throughout the discussion was the need to hold both the telescopic and microscopic views in tandem. In the bioeconomy, the appetite for collaboration on investment, innovation and trade will be governed equally by geopolitics, regulation and compliance. The devil remains in the detail.
In our event at the Museu Botanico with the Rio City Hall – hosted in a space surrounded by the historical tools of Brazilian botanists – our conversation was routed in place. More specifically, the cities that we live in.
The bioeconomy can play a role in addressing our urban challenges – like the sprawl, sound, heat and health – that face our metropolitan areas. Urban regeneration is about re-rooting our relationship with nature in cities. We looked at some innovative examples – like biohubs in Rio - and then more broadly at urban challenges in South America.
As the sun set over the latest round of discussions in Rio, there was a collective sense of progress being made. Our focus at Chatham House is to explore and inform exactly where that progress might lead us.
