Who is afraid of the bioeconomy?

Bioeconomy every day @ BioBased World 2015 in Frankfurt am Main

There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things.

The bioeconomy is not excluded. We know that is the only way to reconcile economic growth, creation of jobs and environmental sustainability. We know what measures are necessary, what we exactly need to attract investment and create a market for biobased products. However, everything moves with difficulty.

Why? Well, the answer seems very simple. Because there are powerful lobbies that are against the bioeconomy: they protect advantageous positions, businesses that have greatly enriched them in the last few decades, regardless of the greatest damage they cause to the environment, to the detriment of the generations of our children and grandchildren. Today politics only focuses on the short term, to get votes and win elections. It feeds on polls and emotions. It’s the reason why we need public education and information.

We are sure that the election of Donald Trump at the US presidency will not help the development of the bioeconomy, indeed will be a strong brake. The bioeconomy revolution, however, can not be stopped. It is a structural change, a new industrial and cultural era.

The IMF estimated the global subsidies on fossil fuels in 2015 at 5.3 trillion USD, 6.5 percent of global GDP. Obviously, the beneficiaries of these subsidies may not want the bioeconomy. We are not interested in preserving the status quo, we want to overthrow it.