Sustainable Development and Biotechnology

Sustainable development requires that resources are used as conservationally and as optimally as possible in order to maintain an adequate resource-base for future generations. It is not an easily-defined concept, nor is there any single way of achieving it. It does, however, focus on the environment, as this provides the resource-base that supports all society. Among the recently-evolved scientific developments, biotechnology has many applications that can improve resource-use. It involves the manipulation of organisms to undertake specific processes and includes genetic manipulation or ‘engineering’. In an environmental context, biotechnology has its greatest contribution to make in agriculture — especially by improving crop-yields. It offers opportunities to design crops for specific environments and to make crops more efficient producers of food-energy than otherwise. Biotechnology can thus manipulate primary energy-flows; it can also reduce fossil-fuel energy inputs into agricultural systems. It could also contribute to the mitigation of environmental problems such as deforestation and soil erosion. Both food- and fuel-energy resources are key components of sustainability. Sources produced biotechnologically, e.g. SCPs and biomass fuels, can supplement those produced conventionally. Resource recovery and recycling, and hazardous-waste disposal, are other environmentally-beneficial facets of biotechnology. These are equally pertinent to sustainable development because they extend the resource-base. In this context, biotechnology constitutes a vehicle for the improved manipulation of biogeochemical cycles. There are, however, potentially significant drawbacks in the use of biotechnology. These focus on technology transfer between the Developed and Developing World; this is economic and political, and relates to intellectual property rights, etc. Environmentally, the disadvantages concern the potential creation of ‘ecological ogres’ which could generate ecological disasters. Moreover, biotechnology relies heavily on the availability of a sustainable genepool, i.e. on biodiversity; indeed the two are interdependent. The high rates of extinction of plant and animal species that are currently occurring are thus limiting biotechnological opportunities for the future.