 a newly released published book by SAI and Routledge. I am the center director here at the Stockholm Center and I've been given the honor and privilege to welcome you to this event. I'm very excited and also a little bit, what can I say, amused by this new word, bioeconomy. The last week I've been swamped in presentations on the green economy, the circular economy and now finally the bioeconomy. Is this yet another buzzword or is it something more to it? I guess we'll find out today. But drawing upon a little bit on my own background with doing research in Sub-Saharan Africa for many years, this topic is of course very dear to me and looking at the bioeconomy and the use of bio resources is of course, has been critical over the past decades and will definitely continue to be so, both with a growing population and of course as well with a changing climate. And I'm quite sure that we can say that we definitely have an economy which is very much dependent on bio resources in Sub-Saharan Africa. I mean, we could just look at the need to increase food production but of course equally also we have an energy sector which I guess many of you are aware of is 80% biomass based today in Sub-Saharan Africa and the desire of many people to shift across to modern energy sources such as electricity and the shift and transformation of the societies there. And I guess also an understanding that a lot of the energy sector in Sub-Saharan Africa will continue to be biomass based. So how do we then trade between these different interests in Sub-Saharan Africa? But also the new opportunities when it comes to this and I guess this is very much what the book highlights. What are the opportunities that are at hand today where we can utilize the bio resources even better? And then making the comparison with Europe where we have energy sectors which are increasingly then looking at at any or bio resources for sort of meeting climate targets. So it's a very timely and exciting topic and of course when looking at this I remember the first time I saw Eli. I was very young, I was a PhD student at that time it was at Stockham University and Eli came in like a whirlwind, you know and he was passionate about this topic and he gave this presentation and I'm not going to tell you how long ago I was but it was a while ago and he already then spoke about the opportunities because I believe you, Eli, you are a true optimist. Yeah. And it still is. And all the opportunities that you saw and has continued to push for all along from how to use bio resources but all along the supply chain and what we can do. So I think this book also summarizes a lot of your experiences and yeah, all the work that you have done. So of course, SEI is very happy that you were able to and wanted to to take on the challenge that were given to you what is it now, two years ago maybe with writing up this book on the topic. I mean, it is in a sense a little bit of a crazy venture, you know it's just to write a book and it's easier said than done. I know that how much blood, sweat and tears has gone into this book eventually because just writing a book is of course a lot more than just writing a book as we all know now. So we have a very exciting list of speakers. I know that it's a little bit late now so I realize that many of you might have to drop out through the program. I hope that you'll be able to stay as long as possible. There is food security provided at the end of the program I believe and drink security as well. Water security added alcohol. So without much further ado I would like to introduce our first speaker Mathias Goldman from Fures to give us some perspectives and knowledge on the bio-based economy so maybe you'll move me out of my illusion of it just being another buzzword. So Mathias, the floor is yours. Thank you so much and I would love to start by finding my presentation here or maybe getting some help in doing that. Here we go. Is there a thing? There is normally. Does that work? That's a green button. Ah, great. Is that going to work? That's amazing. The collaborative economy. That's one that we forgot but it was proven right here that that does work. Well, yeah, more or less. Now we are. Yeah, anyways. It's a pointer, not as a changer. Okay, it's a pointer. Good, so I can point. These are our hands. Well, with that brief, thank you so much for that introduction and thank you so much for having me here. I feel slightly embarrassed for two reasons. First of all, I haven't actually read the whole book yet. I'm so excited about doing that. I'm going to take the train across America this Christmas and now I know what to read. So that's good news. And second, because when I look at the room and also a lot of those people following this on, on this, this screaming, a lot of you are going to know this subject way better than I am. So I guess my purpose here is not to enlighten us but rather to bring it down to something that everybody who's on the other side of that camera can also follow. And a lot of us are going to think what I'm saying now is not nearly covering the whole subject of bioeconomy. That's partially my purpose because I want to link it to something that's on the political agenda of today. And partially also because, again, I haven't read the book and a lot of you started this more in detail than we managed to do at the Forum for Reforms, Entrepreneurship and Sustainability, which I had. I used to be based in Kenya where I was developing renewable energy focusing on biofuels and focusing on the bioeconomy. So this is a dear subject to me. And I very much love the approach here of what we can achieve together. My main worry, and I know there's a lot of different worries and different incomes and different possibilities here, it is climate change. There's no denying that. And we know that those skeptics who said that the climate has always been changing, they're right. Look at these changes here, temperature going up and down. And you also see that it clearly follows the CO2 in the atmosphere when CO2 goes up, so does temperature. And within this range, we've had a kilometer of ice above our heads here in Stockholm. Or within the, when the Vikings ruled the northern part of the hemisphere, they called Greenland Wine Land because you could grow grapes there. So within this range, we see that awful big change can happen, but we're no longer within that range. This is new uncharted territory and I'm very worried that the link we've established for 300,000 years is still gonna be valid for the future. And with business as usual, that's where we are in 2050. So I know that other areas, other targets are gonna be equally important to a lot of us, like biodiversity, but if we don't fix this one, it's gonna be very hard to fix the other matters close to heart for us. That's my number one take. And my second one, when we start getting depressed, we all heard that it's 20 degrees Celsius warmer than usual in the Arctic. And a lot of us are moving directly from denial. It's not really happening to despair. It's really happening. There's not much you can do about it. And I wanna stop us before we get to despair. And the way I do that is with this chart, not as convinced that you've seen as with the other one. So this in green, you see the annual GDP growth. In blue, you see the annual growth of CO2 emissions worldwide. And you see that we managed to reduce emissions several times before, but it's always been linked to an economic decline. And that some of our friends, including some people in parliament, are gonna say this is the way to reduce CO2 emissions. But probably in most parliaments around the world and with most consumers around the world, they're not gonna be terribly interested in, in reducing the economic growth to combat climate change. And that's why I'm so excited to see that starting in 2014 and continuing, we managed to have the first serious global decoupling. The global economy went up. We know that the GDP is not a perfect indicator, but it's there and CO2 emissions went down. Sweden has been doing this for a while, even though a lot of it has been exporting emissions to elsewhere, but now it's global. This is only a first step. We need to go all the way down here. But part of this is what we're gonna discuss exactly today. This is the bioeconomy kicking in. This is moving more and more from the fossil era to the renewable era. And I think a fresh start for this, of course, was the Paris Agreement. And then at the bottom half of my screen, there's also the 17 sustainable development goals that we got in Addis in late last year. I'm actually myself ambassador for the renewable, sustainable energy for all target number seven. And a lot of these 17 targets, if you cut them out and then you put them upside down or you play memo with them, you realize that most of them have a strong and direct link to the bioeconomy. If we wanna reach, and we do wanna reach, those targets for 2030, we need to get serious about the bioeconomy. And another reason why I'm excited about the book and the product is that it gives Sweden a role. We all know that Swedish CO2 emissions are 0.15% of the world's emissions. So even if we theoretically managed to reduce our emissions to zero, nobody's even gonna notice. You can't even find that in those global indicators for CO2 around the world. The only reason and the only way for Sweden to be relevant is to do something that can inspire and help others. And we decided that in Sweden, seven out of eight parties in the Miljormåldsbergettningen decided that Sweden is gonna be a world leader in terms of reducing CO2 emissions. We got the world's toughest CO2 target and we got the world's broadest agreement on reaching those targets. Now that's something to build on and that gives Sweden a sense of purpose. Very much in line with the book here which asks what can Sweden do for the whole continent of Africa in terms of moving into the bioeconomy? And those Swedish targets, the fossil independent transport sector, the fossil free Sweden, those targets with seven parties behind them are clearly indicating that we need to be leaders in the bioeconomy. And exactly today, we realize more than ever that we're not getting very much help from the European Union. The European Union today launched what they call the winter package. The winter package, it is a lot about where the union wants to go as a union and where they want the member states to go. And it is the strongest possible hindrance for a switch to renewable energy that I can imagine. It says that everything that's based on what we can grow should have a very strict limit. It doesn't put any limit on the fossil fuels, it puts limits on the renewable fuels. When the FAO moved from a few years ago saying food versus fuel, you all remember that. The FAO now says food and fuel, but the EU is still stuck in food versus fuel. When we move towards the bioeconomy, the EU is still worried that we're gonna take food out of the mouths of the hungry people. We know that's not true. We know that we get more food on the table when the farmers economy grow. But we also know that the European Union hasn't understood that yet. And several of my NGO friends around Europe haven't understood it either. And we need to challenge that, otherwise the bioeconomy is not gonna grow the way we want. We also need to realize that when we talk about the bioeconomy and when we talk about to switch to those targets that the EU and Sweden set, there's often a perception that this can be done by switching to electric, for instance in the transport sector. Now I used to live in Kenya as I mentioned, we wanted to be part of Earth Hour. It was not possible because we had a blackout all day. And in several other countries, including our dear friends, neighbors, Poland, most of the electricity is not green and South Africa is 97% coal in the grid. Electric is not gonna be the solution there either. So we need to understand that there's other parts of the switch from non-renewable to a bio-based economy. The renewable energy, this is a jet trophy tree are gonna play a large part in that. And I'm glad for this project showing that way. We also need to start rethinking our image of Africa. A lot of us still have this backwards romantic view of Africa, of farmers and forestry. That's all nice, but we need to start liking nice factories. This factory is a factory in no shipping with a 95% CO2 emissions reductions because they don't only produce biofuels. They use the waste heat for heating. They use the surplus for animal fodder and they create biogas and biofuels along the way. So a spare CO2 is not put into the air but it's bottled and sold. So when you drink a luca, as opposed to a ramlösa, it's a byproduct from this factory in no shipping. This is an old fossil fuels factory that you will find many of in Western Africa. And this is the way we should embrace the future for all of Africa. And then we need to tell our dear friends in the charity slash development organizations that we can't just embrace this wonderful picture of this small-scale African farmer. And we need to not get fanatic. There's not gonna be one solution. This book points at so many different solutions to getting to the bioeconomy. It's not gonna be flower power probably, but when we move from yesterday's fossil-based economy to tomorrow's renewable-based economy, we're gonna see that there's gonna be several different opportunities. Africa has more than 50 countries. There's gonna be more than 50 different size of shoes to put on there. I think one important quote that I loved in this book is that switching to the bioeconomy is also a way to involve the African youth. The African youth is more than 50% of the population, so that's very important. We also need to create a future for them, including in the rural areas where we see that the bioeconomy creates new opportunities which will not stop urbanization, but might slow urbanization down to a manageable pace, which we're not seeing now. So I love the way the bioeconomy can and the fossil economy can't involve the youth. I would also love for us to create markets incentives to go right, because when we talk about the bioeconomy and we talk about, for instance, biofuels, you will notice in today's media that there's a lot of discussion about palm oil, for instance. Now, this has palm oil, this has palm oil, this hasn't. Why does this have it? Well, we haven't created the economic incentives yet. We haven't been concerned consumers enough yet, but there's clearly room, and this is not just a question about bounties and snickers, there's clearly room for us to be stronger in the sustainability mandates that we put on renewables. I would just love for us to try and put some of those demands on the fossils as well. There's strong demands on working conditions, sustainability, indirect landlose chains when we talk about renewables, never ever any demand on the fossils. Isn't that an unfair world? The good news, well, he's not the good news. Donald Trump is not the good news. The good news is that even if you want to embrace the old, the fossils, the coal, the oil, it's gonna be very hard because pure market economy shows us that it makes better sense to go into renewable. I was in India last December, and there was this billionaire who was gonna start a new coal power plant. And then at the last minute he didn't, was that because he had waken up to climate change? No, it was because it made better business sense to build a solar park. So around the world, we see that the new buyer economy, including other sorts of renewables, makes business sense. And even if you're the new leader of the free democratic world, you're not gonna be able to change that. That's the good news that we bring. And moving on to the other speakers, the F word. There's actually four F words in the book and even four C words. There's the food, there's the fiber, there's the fuel. They go together and there's the feed that also goes together. And then there's the four C's, the changes, the challenges, the complexity and the compliance. And I realized this has not been about complexity so much, but this book certainly is. So there's room for us to go from complexity to hopefully, if not final, well then at least the solution takes all this into account. Thank you so much. Do these work? Yeah, great. Thank you so much, Mathias. I'm not sure I said so. Mathias is the executive director of Forrest and you'll come back in a little while again and help us to moderate the discussion, I believe. Did you have any quick questions to Mathias for clarification? Otherwise we'll open the floor for discussions later. No. Then Ivar, it is over to you to give us some flavor of the book. Thanks a lot for this, let's see. How did I move this? Is this mic working? Great, hey. So yeah, it's so exciting to be here actually after a long and winding road getting to this book. So the book is about, I'm gonna tell you a bit about the book, but I'm also gonna tell you a bit about the journey leading up to the book. So the book is about creating sustainable bio-economies, but its focus is really on how bio-science innovations and the revolutionary advances we see in bio-sciences can lead up to sustainable bio-economies in Europe and Africa. So it all started, in a sense, from an NCI point of view, with two programs in the bio-economy program and the bio-innovate program which actually are, have been one of the largest, some of the largest bio-science, bio-innovation programs in Africa and some of the most diverse programs. Now, the bio-in program was initiated by SAI in 1998 with the objective of assisting East African countries to develop their own capacity to use the new biology for their own needs and their own challenges and opportunities. It was a capacity-building program. We have one former steering committee member of the audience, Tobin Fagerström, and it was meant to build capacity and capacity it built, it had more than 35 PhD being trained in this program and some 50 MSCs. And the program then merged into the bio-innovate program which was more on developing innovation platforms, including the private sector, but also linking the private sector with the academic sector, moving things from the lab out into the market. So in a sense, both the bio-economy program and the bio-innovate program were bio-economy programs before we even used the term bio-economy. And they were so in the sense because we were using bioscience innovations to optimize biomass use and also to pursue sustainable development by developing tools for improved breeding of new resource-efficient climate smart crops by producing bio-based alternatives for green chemicals for industry by improving value chains for sorghum, cassava and millet, developing various products by converting waste from agri-processing industries into useful products such as biogas and feed improving the environment. And we also tried in this program to link policymakers and scientists discussing. So in three years ago actually, it was three years ago, Jakob Garnit, who then was the deputy director here, approached me and said, Eva, we should capitalize on the bio-economy and bio-innovate program somehow. Why don't we produce a book? And I was inspired and I contacted Jane Morris, who's with us and gonna talk with her, who I knew was a brilliant science writer and also been part of the bio-innovate programs. And together we developed the concept, the book concept that we went with to various publishers including Rutledge, who then sort of this is inspiring. We would like to support that. And through a very quite lengthy review process, where we promised Rutledge that this book will actually gonna include not only technologically, but also the socio-economic challenges, various case studies. We got to go ahead from Rutledge and also from our dear science management, SEI science management committee that go ahead, produced the book. And so we did, two years ago actually, when we had basically, we had Mattias on link from Lima at that time. We had a meeting here with all the book authors, almost all the book authors, developing the ideas, the concepts of the book. And I've actually squeezed in a visit to Vasa during that. It was cold December, close to the Nobel Prize Award. We actually got, I think, we were a bit inspired by that. And we came up with several sort of key messages that we said this is the take-homes that we should deliver in a sense. And that is that we see this dramatically increase of bio-resource demand globally, both from food feed and fuel. And as Mattias said, and Luis said, we have to produce these bio-resources under severe limitations in a sense. We have the climate change coming. We have also, with that limitations of water resources, both limitations on land and availability of land. So we have really to meet this huge bio-resource demand in a resource-efficient and climate-smart manner. And the thing is here, the whole modern biology and bioscience innovation can actually help us to do that. It's not the entire answer, of course, but it's part of the answer. So with modern biosciences, we can actually tailor-make biological production systems that are resource-efficient and climate-smart. And the development has just begun. This is just so fast. And on this picture you see, actually, this is algebraic and genetically engineered algae-producing jet fuel in the U.S. We can think of indoor agriculture systems with artificial frontose photosynthesis producing synthetic meat, synthetic eggs, if we ever were to accept that. But these systems will, of course, then be much more environmental and climate-smart than present-life production systems, in a sense. We would be able to have precision agriculture meat with the new biology and make current farming systems in Europe but also in Africa much, much more resource-efficient and productive. We would have, be able to, and this is, of course, happening already, convert our forestry industry and have a new generation of, well, forest refineries to produce things like, not only pulp and paper, but also green chemicals, biofuels, of course, and textiles, et cetera, et cetera. So the future is here, but the thing is, and we agreed on that, it's fairly unevenly distributed. We've made a lot of progress and biosciences have made an impact, but mostly so in the agriculture sector for the main crops, soya, maize, cotton, and also for the main large-scale growers in the US, Brazil, this is not entirely true because you have the BT cotton, which has made an impact in India and Bangladesh and also. So it's not entirely true, but being a bit simplistic, we made an impact for quite a lot of farmers, but mostly in the North. And many of the farmers in the South, like the small subsistence scale, subsistence farmers, haven't really been part of the game. And being a part-time farmer myself, I could also add that European farmers and Swedish farmers hasn't been part of the game either. So, and the reason is that a lot of these, we have to broaden this innovation agenda to include more actors, but also more, for more actors, more providers, but also for more recipients of these new technology packages. And the reason for that, that's so little is happening, is that quite a lot is stuck in the R&D phase. It's not moving out to society for a number of reasons. These being, and that we agreed on, that the barriers these days are not purely scientific and technical. We have the technical and scientific means, but it's more the market, and that by science innovations are poorly incentivized, that our policy regulatory regimes stifle innovations, finances is a big problem, business models is also lacking to a large extent, a lot of uncertainties, public distrust, especially to genetics engineering, and also to many of the new technologies. So the public perception usually of potential risks far outweighs the potential benefits. And I remember when we, when I was, we were doing the bio, developing bioearn and bioinnovate, we had an oil price of more than 100 US dollars per barrel. And future looked quite bright for a lot of those bio refineries and a lot of the innovation systems, but with an oil price of under, with oil under 15, always about 25, it's quite difficult for many of these systems to hit the market really. So I'm not gonna go through the book in detail, I don't have the time of course, but it has 20 chapters, it's written by more than 30 authors, it has lots of different perspectives, and as I said, it's quite complex in a sense, but it also tries to make tell stories and have a lot of case studies. Having a lot of ground, but I will just fly in and make some, give you a sort of a flavor of some of it, of what we're trying to tell. We're telling a bit about the Africa, Jaim will tell you more about Africa, but we're telling about the prospects of the new modern biology really improving agriculture productivity in Africa with new generation of disease, drought resistant crops. Value change, we have this fantastic production of cassava, the gem of Africa, which would hardly, with very little value addition to it now, but we have to see a lot of opportunities here. And we have the whole agro process sector in Africa, which is key for sustainable development and food security in Africa, which needs to be revitalized and also where that industry can also use its waste to produce products. We also focus a bit on one of the chapters of perennial crops and nutrient deficient wheat. And that is, this is perennial crops, this is a huge root system. And perennial crops is of course crops that are more like hay or a grass that you harvest, but the root system is left intact for a number of years. So it can develop a root system and also hold all the nutrients. And so you will be able to develop agriculture systems which are much more climate smart, but also resource effective. Nutrient deficient crops, these are new DM technologies making crops more efficient in absorbing nutrients. This case we looked at was nitrogen. So by applying the same amount or half the amount of nitrogen for a farm today in Sweden, you would have the same type of yield. So that's of course a huge possibility for farmers both in Africa and Europe. And the thing here is with these type of technologies, we would be able to develop crop systems which serve as a carbon sink and help offset greenhouse gas emissions. And I have to reuse the right computer I realize. And we also have the prospects of developing new type of crops, industrial crops, producing, doing the chemistry that we today do in quite dirty oil refineries, the fossil fuel type of economy. We can do a lot of that chemistry directly in the crops themselves. Tailor make crops producing special green chemicals or lubricants or whatever. A great opportunity for farmers, both in Africa and Europe. We could also think of different type of bio refineries and we go through a bit of that as well in the book. So again, Jane will talk a bit more about Africa. So from a European perspective, and here I put on my farmer's hat here that we actually in Europe have a lot of potential here. We have an advanced agriculture and forestry system. We have a very advanced and efficient agri-processing system. And we have a potential to be a global competitive bio economy, but also we have the potential of sharing. As Masiya said, Sweden could be in one of the front run is sharing technology and experiences with Africa and learning of course from Africa as well. In that if we want, because problems in Europe and you alluded to that Matias in your talk, we have a lot of barriers in Europe and some of the, we have a lot of policy incoherences. And for example, when talking about the third generation of the second generation of biofuels, lignus and biofuels or bio plastics, everybody that has been in that sort of developers of these know that there's been a roller-coaster ride of different regulations, different type of regimes and creating conditions which hasn't really been favorable for long-term planning really. So the policy makers of the European level, well, you said it Matias, we have a lot to learn. And now it seems even worse, it seems to accelerate the barriers as we speak, these barriers are just rising in front of us and ensure that policies and regulations keep up with the technology development. My God, you guys, we have all these fantastic bioscience technologies in the engineering which actually can be used to propel sustainability in agricultural systems if we do it right. But we have a DM regulation in Europe which is more than 20 years old, developed in, what would you say Jens? 94, 95, and the development of the technology has made fantastic strides. It's been a marvelous development. But our regulation is still at 994 level, so that regulation hasn't kept up with the development, making it extremely burdensome for developers of different type of engineered crops to really do that in Europe and reach the market, in a sense. Our investments in research innovation in the field of biosciences is significant, but in comparison to Brazil, to the US, to China, to India, it's not that much actually. So there's an underlying investment in this. So in a sense, when we talk about, we said a broadening the innovation agenda, we have all these barriers in Europe making it very difficult to broaden the innovation agenda. So, and that's part of the message. We have a concluding chapter in this book where we try to conclude and draw lessons from some of the chapters, early chapters, discussing policy barriers and incentives, structures. So we come up with these set of recommendations. So what we have to do, some of the key action's points is really, and that's connected a bit also again to what you said, Matias, we have to improve the science communications and science advice, and an important part of that is these type of multidisciplinary assessment of various bioeconomy pathways, by science innovation pathways, to identify risks, potential risks, potential benefits, and also conflict of interest because there will always be conflict of interest and trade-offs, and correspond on mitigation. So we need more research on that. We need more assessments on that. And we need a science advice and transparency on that. And we make a big, it's a big sort of message in the book that we need these partnerships, European-African partnerships, and Africa having going its science base with fantastic genetic resources, but with a private sector, which is not really able to roll out these technologies, financial problems of course, and Europe with its quite advanced structures, both in terms of science and technology, but also its very strong private sector could link up with Africa, and we could have mutually inclusive and balanced partnerships, both on the private sector partnerships, but also academically. Last, thanks, a lot of thanks. Thanks to the Russian team for producing this book. Thanks for the SAI management team to allowing us to do this. Thanks to Jane being my brilliant co-editor in this project. Thanks to all the fantastic co-authors of the book, developing a lot of your thoughts and insights and sharing that with us. So I hope this book will be a stepping stone for us, for SAI, for further efforts, but also for inspiring others to embrace bioscience innovation and the bio-economy challenge and opportunities. Thanks. Thanks so much to you, Eli. Hang on a second before you take that out. Casey, that he's not only a whirlwind, he's also a magician. He can take photos into the future. Thanks a lot. Well, sorry. Of course, this is highly interesting and also, I would say a topic, of course, that at least in Europe is considered partly controversial. So I'm sure that many of you have questions either, but I think we'll keep them for later, unless you have something really burning for clarifications. Is the book available yet today? Well, apparently we only have two printed copies, unfortunately, the one lying here and the second one, but Eva, you said that you have a list somewhere where you can sign up so that you can... Great. Thank you. So then, we are very, very privileged to have Dr. Professor Jane Morris. I'm not any of that. I'm just Jane. Okay. Well, she's just Jane and Dr. Professor, and all the way from Leeds University. Thank you so much for coming here, and I believe you have managed to work with our whirlwind colleague for three years. That's also... So Jane is together with Eva, one of the two editors of the book. So we're looking forward to listening to your perspectives. Yeah, thanks very much. I must say Eva's a hard act to follow. With quite that whirlwind of enthusiasm, let me at least see what I can do to follow up his presentation to talk a little bit more about the prospects for an African bioeconomy. Eva focused a bit more on the European situation, so I'm going to focus a bit more on the African situation seeing as how I spent most of my professional life in Africa, and it's very close to my heart. So where do we really stand? Is Africa the basket case that we all think it is, or are we really going somewhere, and where can we go with an African bioeconomy? Because it is so important. You actually look at the size of Africa and the population of Africa. We can't stand still on the African continent. It's really important. But what are the challenges? Well, yeah, population growth, it's huge. It's leading to the increased demand for food and feed around the world, but particularly in Africa. And we know that also Africa has got this chronic energy shortage. I mean, if you just go anywhere in Africa, you like us not to find there's a power cut somewhere going to happen, you know, and working with scientists who are trying to carry out experiments when they only have power for a fraction of the time, you know, I know that this is a huge issue. But, you know, if we're going to deal with the energy problems in Africa, you know, that also puts the increased pressure on bioresources. And yes, it's not food versus fuel, but that whole saying of food and fuel needs to be properly managed. We do also know that the real current trajectory of economic development in Africa is certainly ecologically unsustainable and something has to be changed. And how do we ensure sustainability when we've got degraded ecosystems and climate change as well? And, you know, in spite of the progress we've had in building scientific capacity, we know that Africa still lags behind in bioinnovation. And all of this, when we can see this population of Africa increasing like that, whereas the European population is kind of stabilized. So Africa is where it's all happening. But there are still a huge number of opportunities. You know, there's a lot of work being done by scientists both in Africa and elsewhere, things like crops with improved drought tolerance that can deal with climate change, disease resistance and resistance to insect attack. Some of this whole lot of opportunities for new crops, often crops that are currently not really being used, but they can be developed for sustainable by resource-based industries. And agro-processing and agro-waste conversion is an enormous opportunity. There's no point just producing the primary produce and then not doing something further with it. So value addition in an African context is something that demands an enormous focus. And Eva talked about the Bioinnovate program that's one of the big focuses of that program. Another area is reduced post-harvest losses and I'll talk a bit more about that, as well as plant-based production of biopharmaceuticals, another area that I'll talk a bit more about. But in the book there's a whole range of different opportunities that we highlight. And I can't obviously talk about all of them today. It's another incentive for you to go out and get a copy of the book, because I can only give you a couple of examples in this short talk about what is possible. So one thing that Eva already mentioned was cassava as a crop. It's got opportunities as a whole for a bio-resource-based industry. Sorry, my headline's a bit off the top here. Formatting's a bit different on the screen. But Nigeria, okay, it's a huge country in Africa and it's actually the world's largest producer of cassava. But the yields are really low. There are a number of other countries that produce cassava as well. And it's a major food crop with drought tolerance, all sorts of good properties. And there is an enormous potential to increase production and develop new value chains for both the raw products and the processed products. It can be used for chips, flour, all these things. It's got opportunities in textile manufacturing. It can give industrial starch. And it can also be used to produce biodegradable plastics and some specialty green chemicals. All of these things that could be done with what is currently a subsistence crop and it just needs that bit of oomph to drive it into being a really important commercial crop. And there are quite a number of initiatives underway that can stimulate the development of cassava value chains such as mobile cassava processing units. But again, more needs to be done and we need the appropriate policies, the strategies. We need partnerships. Again, partnerships between Europe and Africa would usually benefit us. And we need that as well as the technology development for success in this whole field. Just one example. Bioenergy crops. We've heard quite a bit about bioenergy crops already. But there are also a range of such crops as well as waste materials that have got huge potential for African bioenergy production. And we've got potential for biotechnology interventions through crop improvement, genetic engineering as well as other types of crop improvement, improved conversion routes, use of improved microorganisms and enzymes. So, you know, the technology has got the opportunities if people just focus their minds and see what can be done. But the complex conversion platforms with significant co-products do offer challenges in African environment. You know, we're not great in Africa at getting complex processes off the ground, particularly where there's a substantial investment that's needed and where the markets could be a bit complex. And again, it's an opportunity where Europe may be able to assist Africa. But of course, we need to deal with things like land tenure problems, infrastructure shortages, investment technology and market development. We need to address all of those hand in hand. So I think a holistic approach to a lot of these issues is what's needed. We can't just have a piecemeal approach, a bit of technology here, a bit of market development there. We need to bring everybody together and everything together. Another example is enzyme technologies for agro-processing. There's a lot of move now in Africa to... Well, okay, we've got a bit of booze outside, I think. I'm not sure that we're going to have any sorghum beer or cassava beer, but certainly in Africa it's an opportunity where these are being used to replace the barley in brewing and it's all being made possible because of new enzyme technologies that are available. So for instance, this is a Mozambican cassava beer. That's a sorghum beer that's from Uganda. A lot of things moving ahead in that area. And what it's done is it's created sustainable livelihoods for a number of small-scale farmers who then can grow their crops on contract to the brewers. And so it gives the producers an outlet for their production in a sustainable and viable way. But as well as the beer industries, there are also a lot of things happening in terms of using enzymes for environmentally friendly agro-processing. So just as one example, the enzymes are being produced for cleaning of coffee flesh in the coffee processing industry. And these things are more environmentally friendly. They're not creating all the degradation that we see from a number of chemical processes. Another area where there's opportunities in biocontrol to reduce post-harvest losses. Post-harvest losses in Africa are enormous, at least 50% in many areas, sometimes higher, simply because there's a lack of appropriate storage facilities, there's a lack of coal chains, small-scale producers in particular don't have really good ways of storing their crops. And there's a number of ways in which we can actually improve this. So for instance, we can use microbial antagonists to inhibit fungal decay of fruit and vegetables, but there's only a few biological agents that can do this that are actually on the market. So it's a gap between what's done in the lab and what actually gets out there into the marketplace and gets implemented. So again, action is needed to make this happen. And more research is needed to make these things effective and make sure they're consistent. Another problem is regulatory barriers. I mean, to actually register a biocontrol product can offer insurmountable barriers in a number of African countries where they simply don't have the systems in place. So again, holistic approach needed. Then plant-based biofutile pharmaceuticals. This is a fairly high-tech kind of area, but there are a lot of opportunities for things like vaccines, antibodies, and other biologics that can be produced in plants. A lot of it through genetic engineering, putting the genes into the plants to produce a vaccine. One of the experimental vaccines in the Ebola outbreak was the XMAP vaccine, which was produced in plants. Just as an example, and it's a way that developing countries could develop vaccines with low capital cost and can also quickly respond to pandemics with affordable treatments. An easy way in might be through the veterinary vaccines because they're a major opportunity where the registration requirements aren't so significant. But again, investment is needed for establishment of facilities for large-scale production, downstream processing, and purification. I know a number of my ex-colleagues in South Africa have been developing the technology for this, but again, it's that hurdle between getting a small-scale pilot facility and getting a real full-scale production facility that can go out there and really make a difference. So again, bring the market end, the investment end and the technology end together, you might get success. But again, as I say, for success, all these opportunities, they need a facilitating environment. So we need support for public sector R&D and mechanisms to move the R&D to the marketplace. We need more support for building a human and institutional capacity. And there's a lot going on in Africa, and it's a lot better than it used to be a few years ago, helped in large measure by the bio-owned and bio-innovate programs, but there's still a lot more to be done. We need support for investment, and we need a whole lot of better linkages between the scientists, the farmers, the politicians, the entrepreneurs, and the marketplace. And we need those collaborations between Africa and Europe, between the sectors, and we need long-term commitment. And we need to work on elimination of a whole lot of burdens and regulations or lack of regulations or regulations that aren't implemented to make sure that the political environment is appropriate to move this forward. We also need to look at Africa's bio-economy policies because there are a number of African Union policies that provide the framework for an African bio-economy around agriculture and the related biosciences, but they're fairly broad in scope and they don't really move towards implementation. And really, apart from South Africa, there's no African country that I'm aware of right now that has a bio-economy strategy. So that's a big looming gap. And whereas there's a whole lot of probiotic statements amongst the African Union and elsewhere, that they're actually contradicted by stringent biosafety regulations that stop a lot of these things getting out. And so we need much more development of scientists and bio-entrepreneurs who can take these things forward but also work with the governments, work with the politicians. And we do see a number of regional initiatives that are bearing fruit, but we've got to keep at it. We've got to make sure things really happen. A big problem is that European policies influence Africa nearly at the end. The common agricultural policy support to EU farmers definitely undermines some African farmers and that's a big problem. We know that the EU influence drives implementation of restrictive GMO policies in Africa. EU development aid priorities aren't aligned with Africa's priorities in spite of the declaration and the Paris Declaration of Aid Effectiveness and things like agricultural subsidies and so on. They impact on the trade and the power relationships between the continents and we do need to work on international agreements that require intercontinental collaboration. So seeing as how time is short, I'm not going to go through these 10 action points for Africa but these are the things that we've put in the book that need to be done to actually move the bio-economy forward in Africa. And if you want to look at them in more detail, again I'll refer you to the book. So building the bio-economy one step at a time. We need to decide we're not going to stay where we are. We actually need to move forward. Thank you very much. Wonderful. Thank you so much Jane. And I learned amongst other things that enzymes can help us to produce nice beers and I saw that Madeleine was smiling happily when we had the Mozambique beer up there as well. Which reminds me of my time in South Africa where everybody was just shaking their heads when I wanted to do things on Mondays, going no, no, no, it's Baba last day. So it can also sort of impact productivity slightly I guess. So let's see if we also in Sweden can use enzymes to produce cheaper beers. We could do with that I guess. Ole, if you were planning on touching on that topic or perhaps other. So I have the privilege to introduce Ole Olsson who is a research fellow here at Stockholm Environmental Institute. Yes, good to be here. Very interesting to be part of this book. I participated in writing, participated in this chapter on nutrient deficiency and perennial crops, which was highly interesting. But today I'm going to speak about another form of perennial crops, namely forests. And speak a little bit about the forest-based bioeconomy development in Sweden. Sweden is a very forested country, forest industry heavy. So when you talk about bioeconomy in Sweden it tends to be a lot of forest. So I'm going to speak about prospects, but also risks. So first of all, what are we dealing with in terms of land structure in Sweden? Well, most of it is forest. About 75% are most forest and most of that is productive forest and managed quite intensively. It's been done so for quite a number of years. The actual ownership structure is pretty diverse. About half of the forest in Sweden is owned by individual small-scale forest donors, including myself, where about 330,000. So it's a pretty diverse set of actors in terms of ownership. But also private sector companies and state-owned enterprises as well. An interesting thing about the Swedish forest sector and the Swedish forest land is that it's been continuously growing. Nothing in terms of just extraction. Harvest has been increasing strongly since, I guess, 100 years. But at the same time, so has actual growth. Because the demand for wood has also led to create incentives for forest owners to invest in more effective means of forest management. And this has led to increased growth as well. So we're continuously having a stable net growth between actual growth and what's actually removed. So we're building on the carbon stock and we're at the same time producing more for production and export. And Sweden is quite, it punches above its weight in terms of its forest area compared to its actual role in forest products markets. If you look at the actual forest area in Sweden, it's only, you know, less than 1% of global forest area. Whereas if you look at the total role in the global forest markets, it's a completely different picture where we have almost 10-12% of saunton recsports from a global level, for example. And this is just not only the forest product sector, but also if you look at the energy sector in Sweden, forest actually makes up the largest energy source in terms of consumption. Bioenergy in Sweden is 30% of energy consumption and the vast majority of this is forest-based. If you break this down, about half of this is a result of the cold Swedish weather, goes into district heating, and the second half is pretty much goes in internal energy use in the forest industry. So in this way Sweden is very much a bioeconomy as it is. Now then, if you've been talking about lumber and paper packaging and hygiene products, those are like the traditional forest industry products in Sweden and on a general basis. Of course, heat and electricity are very important as well. It's been grown especially in the last three decades. And we're now starting thinking about liquid fuels, that there's some processing, but then of course we have this whole, I would say in the bioeconomy in Sweden, if you speak about the forest-based bioeconomy, it's a lot about these new products. So how do we move from this sector paper, that's sort of in decline, there's a structure change going on, how do we find the new products and how do we sort of develop these into new markets. And of course, plastics and chemicals, textiles have also been talked about. This is not only in the future, this is happening in southern Sweden and Sweden, for example, they're producing, they have a paper or a pulp production line specifically for textile production. There's a lot of, I would say, more talk than actual action in terms of looking at the plastics and biochemical side, but here we are getting some progress. We now have about 2% of the diesel in Sweden produced from the forest. And in certain places, we fill your gas, we pump your car, you can have about almost 50% renewables in your diesel. So there's a lot of things happening here. But the question then is how to move into this new sector and how to sort of continue to develop this for like the more advanced products. When I was part of the, I am part of the Swedish National Forest Program, and I was a specific working group on the bioeconomy and how to develop it. And we did this little scoping exercise at the very beginning of this and looking at sort of what do we have in the future or obstacles in terms of future bioeconomy development. And we looked at, of course, we have substantial land area and also a very productive land area in terms of forest growth, given our northern latitudes and the fact that our forests take up to 80 or 120 years to sort of complete the life cycle. We're still quite productive. That's because we have very efficient supply chain structures and very intensely managed forests. We have a lot of forest and forest levels as well. And another thing that is important to mention in this regard is that there's a lot of research going on and there's been a lot of investment as well in terms of, especially actually in the traditional forest industry, moving into a lot of, I think something like 3 billion euros in terms of investment in the coming year. So there's a lot of activity going on and there's a lot of interest from the policy perspective as well. However, looking at from the outside and I talk to a lot of friends of mine and I see that, yeah, well, the forest industry that's like a pretty, that's not very sexy, is it? So it has this, not only the sort of the perspective or the image of being a mature industry, it's maybe lack of innovation, but I would guess to some sort of, there's a truth to that as well and that's because you have a lot of, you have a lot of products and you have a lot of capital invested in existing facilities, so then you have to sort of push yourself even further to do these radical changes. And this sort of image might be a reason why you have difficulties in attracting the best and brightest in terms of students and young, excellent people. So there's a sort of risk there to not be able to go into to find the specifically targeted people. And then here I sort of drift into Mathias territory as well, policy uncertainties, and this digs very much into the role of bioenergy in the Swedish bioeconomy and I think this is a very important thing to bring up here and that is if you look at sort of the key questions for the future I think the bioenergy issue is of key importance for Sweden's bioeconomy and here I see mainly two viewpoints when I look a lot in the situation in Brussels there's a lot to talk about bioenergy sectors of threat to the bioeconomy. So I read this report that basically said that to develop the European bioeconomy we have to get rid of bioenergy whereas my viewpoint and I think a lot of the sort of viewpoint in Sweden is bioenergy could be an enabler of the broader bioeconomies or building structures and so on. Another thing to look at in terms of key questions for the future is to be pragmatic about this. Bioeconomy is an excellent thing but to me I see it as a toolbox so we shouldn't just go for solutions based on their being bio-based if they're not the best solutions for society then do something else so I think that's an important thing to have in mind. And also connected this how do we find synergies with other sort of rapid societal developments. We shouldn't see electrification in fact to develop the bioeconomy should find synergies. How do we link to those sort of inevitable or very quick developments. The same goes with sort of the circular economy thing as well. That's not a threat. That's the sort of thing we need to link into and the same goes for digitalization and so on. So I think it's important to look at the bioeconomy and the development towards a more bio-based economy as a thing that we as a tool toolbox but not as a mean or an end in itself as a means. Thank you. Thank you Ulle. As many of you have probably noticed we're lagging a little bit behind time but I hope that we'll be able to just extend a little bit. Because we are now very honored and privileged to have with us Professor Kallestos Juma from the Belfair Center for Science and International Affairs in Hardwood Kentucky School hopefully with us now because this is technology I'm always a technology skepticism. So this is via video link so I don't know Professor Juma if you can hear us and see us. Ian our technician is helping out here a bit. So while Ian is sorting out the practicalities I can tell you as many of you already know Professor Juma is one of the world's renowned thinkers and authorities on genetic resources management and innovation and has written quite a few books amongst two of them are the New Harvest Agriculture Innovation in Africa and Innovation and Its Enemies Why People Resist New Technologies and now we can see you Professor Juma and we can see that you speak but we cannot yet hear you but we are getting there You can't hear me yet. Now we can hear you. Can you hear and see us? I can hear you but I don't think you can hear me. Yeah we can hear you now. Okay good. Fantastic. Okay so with that I have introduced you already to our audience here. So in short I said we are very honored and privileged to have you here with us and thank you for being able to attend this book launch so I would like to give the word back to you. We have been from Africa to Swedish Forestry and now we are going back to Africa I believe. So over to you Professor Juma. Thank you so much for having me. I found the last session extremely interesting when you asked Ola to say something about how you produce beer how you improve Swedish beer Sweden could start producing beer from wood. And then I thought oh there comes FAO with another report which would be wood versus booze. So let me first of all really commend Ivar and Jane for a really wonderful book that has said that just does a great job in preparing the ground for how you could bring Africa and Europe together to work on bioeconomy in the 21st century. I think that we didn't really work together in the 20th century we had a lot of conflict associated with traditional raw material export policies the GMO debates and I think it's because we didn't really define the bioeconomy then in terms of areas where we have common interests we defined it mostly in terms of areas where we had individual interests and the article automatically led to conflict and one thing that I found in the book the last few pages at 267 to 270 you saw the 10 point list of what could be done for Europe and the 10 point list of what could be done in Africa and it's really interesting if you swap those two lists find that in fact what's being proposed for Europe is exactly what needs to be done in Africa and vice versa and you can find a better illustration of the convergence of interests other than really just doing that simple exercise and the timing for me is very important because as of Monday we have a team gathering together 40 participants from nine African countries and the African Union here in Cambridge who will spend with us about four days or so working through issues of technology innovation and entrepreneurship for Africa and one of the teams that we are addressing over those three days is in fact the bioeconomy and so what I would like to do is basically share with you a little bit how we are thinking in terms of how you frame bioeconomy in the 21st century for Africans and I think you will see that it really resonates very well with the work that Ivar and Jen have really done which is just really outstanding for us the first thing that we started to think about in terms of getting Africans inspired about the bioeconomy so that they don't think of it as yet a traditional agricultural system that they are very familiar with is really to think of an inspirational model that could allow them to start thinking about the bioeconomy as something that is science based entrepreneurial and dynamic and so for that purpose we started to draw parallels between what the modern bioeconomy would be like with what they are now Africans are now very familiar excited about which is the digital economy are there ways by which you can start to think about bioeconomy the same way as we think about the digital economy so that it can generate the same level of enthusiasm especially among the youth and the obvious way to really express this is to start thinking about the bioeconomy not as a collection of products and services but it's really as a platform upon which you can see a broad base of industry and that platform really is guided by two very basic principles one is a better understanding of the biodiversity of the African continent this is something that we have paid little attention to and every time we've looked at biodiversity we've tended to look at it largely in the context of conservation and less in the context of sustainability use and what makes it possible now that we're first century to think about it in the context of sustainability use is advances in genomics especially with a significant reduction in the price of the sequencing of genomes now we are down to about a thousand dollars at the cost of sequencing the genome there's work going on across from here at MIT where they are now at the capacity to sequence a complete genome every two hours and this completely changes what you can do in the area of the bioeconomy in the first century compared to what we could do last century which is based largely on traditional knowledge and very basic industries and very limited range of technological options and so if you combine the range of possibilities arising from advances in genomics particularly the sequencing of genomes with the biodiversity of the continent where we can now extend exploration beyond terrestrial species to start looking more closely at microbial species, marine species it becomes in fact more interesting for young people because they start to see it both as a new scientific area of exploration but they also start to see new possibilities for establishment of new enterprises and so you could take that and then say what are the kinds of sectors one can think of and I think we had really fairly clearly from Inver and Gen the various sectors particularly starting off with the primary production which is agricultural energy where you can start to expand the possibilities which includes now a better understanding of species that may have we may have considered as weeds but now with a better understanding of their genomic characteristics we can now start to see them in fact as potential energy or bioenergy sources and so that basically makes it possible to do new things in the area of primary production we couldn't do in the past we could extend that even to marine environment with a fresh look at algae and other products and the second area again which I think Gen covered is really well is the area of health and here I would just like to mention the work really very interesting work by my colleague Professor Sujata Bhatia at the University of Delaware who is gone beyond just looking at the genomic characteristics of various plants and animals that lead us into the discovery of new therapeutic applications but starting to look at biomaterials so it is a whole new area of taxonomic work whereby looking at the biomaterials so it is basically from the genomes you can then start to see possibilities for the development of new vaccines new diagnostics new areas of application and regenerative medicine for example using biocompatible material to facilitate regeneration of tissue this is very interesting work that Professor Bhatia has done that expands the possibilities for looking at a bio economy from a pharmaceutical sector approach and what is interesting in this regard is also the possibility of starting to engage young people the work that Professor Bhatia has done is actually been with undergraduate students going back and just looking at very basic materials like agricultural residue and then exploring the physical properties of those residues and the possibilities of then matching them with various regenerative properties of different different human organs and the third area which is the area of industry the creation of the development of new specialty chemicals if you think for example of the possibility of expanding the data industry in the countries like Ethiopia and industry that uses very highly toxic chemicals and if you can start to get into new enzymatic and bioreactors you can start to do new things in those areas and the final area is really the area of bioinformatics particularly building on functional genomics and expanding into the new areas of bio engineering so I just would like to conclude by offering at least three possible areas where I see real possibilities for advancing the first one is the role of universities but if you define this as a knowledge based sector universities automatically become really important and the second area is to focus more on entrepreneurship which is the way you can then start to engage young people particularly and finally to rethink the role of the public sector how the public sector can help to support these new areas particularly the universities and the role of role of entrepreneurship and I see here the possibility for being able to broaden that into building international partnerships and I see the possibility for reopening new ways by which countries like Sweden could collaborate with African countries and on this account I just would like to report that the African Union has set up a new high level panel on emerging technologies which is I'm actually co-chairing at the moment with a colleague of mine from Senegal, Professor Ghassama who is a former minister science and technology in Senegal and one of the areas we've been asked to explore specifically is international partnerships in the area of emerging technology so I look forward to being able to collaborate with you and to reconnect with your very famous one wind ever again. Thank you so much Professor Juma, I would like to ask all now, all of the presenters to come up here and then we'll have a moderated discussion by Mathias Goldman and I can run around and hand out microphones so that people also following can hear what you are asking so over to you Mathias Thank you so much and thank you so I don't think you'll see me Professor Juma but hopefully you'll hear me Oh wonderful well there's been so much talk about beers I'm worried that the participants here are excited about going for drinks fairly soon but before we do that I'd love to ask you and then move over to the other speakers here first of all you started at the back of the book much like I did with the action plan and I totally agree with you that there's a strong convergence of interest between Africa and Europe but what really tops your list in terms of getting into action? I think from those points the one thing that stood out for me and also from people's own comments is the role of science advice to African leaders this is both important for African leaders but also important for European leaders for African leaders to try to get them to see to see the new part not so much as a revival of traditional sectors but as a new beginning of leveraging emerging knowledge to help expand basically the productive base and because of the dynamism of that area you need continuous advice to leaders in that area we've seen in the case of African agriculture we're starting to see real progress and because of the commitments that heads of state have actually made on the European side I think there's a need to be done to advise European leaders to start seeing Africa as a place where there are new opportunities for engagement and not the continuation of all traditional partnerships that were defined centuries ago and that is again would be the area of science advice for example if you people can be better informed about say just if you take the area of biodiversity with the characterization of genomes of some of the traditional crops you could start to open up the eyes of leaders to really new opportunities that's really the area I would start of because you need that policy commitment to actually get much done it also requires a change of perspective and you need that on both sides Thank you Professor Jumi also within these recommendations there's been a strong emphasis underneath for bioenergy or actually bioenergy and bioeconomy strategies do you have any positive examples to bring forward there when it comes to strategies? I think the interesting thing about bioenergy is when you look at ethanol for example one of the reasons why ethanol is faced a lot of challenges in Africa and elsewhere is because people have thought of ethanol which is produced in abundant rural areas supporting the automobile industry in cities and you quickly get into the economics of transportation of the final products because of the distance between the cities and the rural areas and one area that I've been interested in is to see the extent to which you can start to think about smaller bio refineries that actually serve more rural communities or emerging smaller cities in rural areas for example and for public transport for getting buses in localized communities some of these have been tried out in some parts of Brazil with great with great success I think if you think of it that way you can start to see new possibilities for expanding bioenergy beyond just a classical way of producing bioethanol in rural areas for up and consumers and that also then inspires rural areas to see that the resources that they take for granted can actually have utility in their own communities Thank you so much for a while Juma we're going to let you listen to the other panelists here and I know that you've got things they want to say I'm going to first turn to you Ivor because already in Luisa's introduction it was mentioned that bioeconomy is one of those concepts that's often being spoken about along with circular economy and sharing economy and I realized that an hour and a half later we haven't actually properly defined bioeconomy so please do that for the benefit of us who are still in doubt That's a tough challenge but to me the bioeconomy in itself is looking at ways of optimizing biomass utilization coming from the agriculture side is also a way of saying that the way the primary produce is not only used for food and feed but it's also used for for industrial feedstock and I think a very important component in the bioeconomy for me is the value addition and the processing side and converting waste to useful products we actually have that circular thing going in a bioeconomy but then of course bioeconomy should respond to there you have different opinions in a sense if it's going to respond to rural livelihoods but I think generally I think somebody says that the bioeconomy could be the green blueprint for achieving the SDG goals in a sense that what was mentioned the green heart of the SDG of achieving the SDG goals that's one way of putting it I love that Irina I would love to turn to you Jane both for hearing your definition but also linking that to what you put strong emphasis on how we need bioeconomy strategies why is that important and how do you develop one I think just to add to what Eva has said one of the key points is a bioeconomy actually sustainable and I think it's not by definition sustainable so it's absolutely essential that whatever we do to promote a bioeconomy has to be done with sustainability in mind and I think that's also where we start to come in with bioeconomy strategies because it's no good saying well we're just going to do all these fancy things but unless you actually do it with an idea of where you want to then it's not going to happen in a good way and I think unless people embrace the concept of a sustainable bioeconomy then the investment is not going to happen that will actually take it forward one of the things as well that I'm interested in and it leads on from what Colestis was saying in terms of the need for science communication and ensuring that politicians understand the importance of this I'm interested in understanding in the African context how we improve the link between the policies that are put in place at the African Union level and getting the people in the individual countries on board to actually implement those policies because there's a bit of a delinkage between say a commitment today you level that countries would invest 1% of GDP in science and technology and actually getting that to happen in many African countries and maybe Colestis has some comments on that if you do Professor Juma please join us yeah I think there is a way to think about it if we could learn one lesson from from agriculture with the Maputa declaration which committed itself the governments in 2003 committed themselves to increase agricultural R&D actually agricultural investment by 10% and actually a very small number of countries made those targets but the important lesson that was learned from that process was the ability of the African Union to keep pushing for these targets year after year the creation of a caldic secretariat a secretariat basically to implement these commitments reporting mechanism to heads of state and indicating to them where they are making progress and where they are not making progress and finally showing them which has just been done by Newport that was published this year that those countries that increased their commitment to the caldic targets are performing better economically and agriculturally than those that didn't there is very clear evidence of that and this is what has happened since 2003 is we are looking at more than a decade of commitments but what was important there was the continued engagement at the African Union level of reminding heads of state that they made these commitments which include targets now most of the decisions of the African Union don't include any targets if I could just quickly comment on the 1% of GDP to science and technology the reason this didn't really work at all is because it's completely mythical in that every country can see clearly that the smaller your economic base is the smaller the amount you will be able to devote to science and technology and therefore it will not make a big difference so it became almost as a ritual and secondly governments knew that this 1% of GDP was being lobbied purely by the scientific community not by the economy it wasn't going directly into the economy and that's why the caldic targets have actually done better because it links directly to the economy compared to the 1% of GDP that we've been talking about for science and technology for years so in this case actually scientists have been their own worst enemies about that we need a holistic approach well first of all is the holistic approach the most important or is the most important thing to have targets that are much more down to earth and much more sector based and then second if we do need a holistic approach I doubt that's going to happen well that's not being pessimistic about that I think we just have to keep on lobbying keep on emphasizing how important it is but is it really important when Professor Juma says that the most important is sector based targets well I don't I mean misunderstood that I don't think sector based targets are important but they're not the be all and end all they're not the whole story because you're only going to get results when you actually start to bring all the elements of the value chain together can I make a quick comment about the reason why the important point that Jen is making the reason why agriculture resonated with the African heads of state was the argument that agriculture you also grow the whole economy so even though it looked like a sector but actually it was a system that you couldn't decouple the two that you couldn't grow agriculture without growing the economy and you couldn't grow the economy without growing agriculture this was a sector that leveraged the system as a whole and this only is very much with what you emphasized the risk of having policy so which we just see exactly right today when the EU is changing all that we thought was given and it's now all up in the air again so how do we deal with this and how do we minimize this policy uncertainty? I think it's a question both of policy uncertainty and also again policy coherence in my the way I see it by economy concept one of the key sort of benefits of it is the opportunity in the governance perspective to look at all sort of the governance via resources in a coherent and sort of holistic manner rather than the way we do it now which have different regulations and I'm now talking from the EU perspective again we have different regulations of whether you're using a wood resource for or an agriculture resource for fuel or for different kinds of fuels if you burn it as a solid fuel then there's one set of rules if you convert it into liquid fuel there's one set of rules and so on so I think an opportunity and again I agree with you this is not going to happen but in the ideal world we would take the sort of by economy concept as an opportunity to sort of tear down all the policy structures that have been built up in terms of regulating all the different sectors differently and try to manage the whole sector in a coherent and comprehensive manner based and we had in the book the four F's that you can use within the bio-economy and that's only getting studied you also brought in the pharmaceuticals and the heat and so many other areas what should be the main criteria for deciding what goes where? the market but I think that's the whole discussion going on in the EU as well we have this sort of make choices so should we use the biomass for this or that I think that's not a political decision you should sort of again I'm sorry but I have to be idealistic and sort of point to where we should go and that's look to have as broad policy structures as possible and not sort of having as it is now in EU directive this is lining out if this is a resource eligible for this or for that or for that that to me is just going to kill the whole bio-economy concept exactly Eva wanted to join in but before you do we're going to open the floor for a few we know you all want drinks but before we do that a few questions from the four Eva just adding to that I think that looking at these different bio-economy pathways they do have various implications and I think that the way we would I see holistic approach in the sense is that we need more analysis on these different pathways in terms of because there are issues there are conflict of interest ahead of us that we need to address and shouldn't shy away from they should be dealt with and appropriately assessed you know in a transparent way so I think the holistic approach in that sense is important in developing strategies and going down different pathways or investing just in four different pathways we open the floor for questions raise your hand if you got one yes and please say your name and where you are from as well thank you I'm Sanjida Shamsher I'm from sweet watch and NGO we work with companies and supply chain and we look at their impact on human rights and environment thank you for very beautiful presentation I'm really looking forward to read the book and it's an honor that Professor Zuma is still with us my question is when we are looking at the theoretical part of the bio economy are we taking is as inside the approach that the indigenous knowledge would be considered or the human rights of the impact of these growing new crops or putting new industries would be considered like the whole theory would take these issues incorporated or that would be something that we need to impose if I'm clear with my question indigenous knowledge and human rights within the system as such or do we need to add for example the pharmaceutical products that it felt so interesting but in China and India hundreds of years they are using all these herbal methodology and herbs for as pharmaceuticals would we take it as our base for bio when we will explore more biological product thank you for that question I'm going to turn to Professor Zuma first did you get the question Professor yes I did it's a very interesting question in fact there's a good practical answer which is that Africa has a president now who is a scientist that maintains her own lab and that's the president of this of biodiversity and the pharmaceutical sector and she approaches it exactly in the same way by saying let's start off with the indigenous knowledge as the foundation for thinking about drug discovery and when you do that then you need to take into consideration the rights of local communities human rights it's very interesting coming both from a scientist and a head of state the starting point for bio economy particularly for the pharmaceutical area is in fact indigenous knowledge and she is a very very influential person and this is the way Africa started to really think about this particular sector Eva how is this included in this report it is in many aspects because I think the key message that we had in a sense is that we need to broaden the innovation agenda and that exactly means to address and include indigenous knowledge and also various groups that hasn't been addressed in innovation schemes before so I think before if we are serious about the bio economy and that we want to have it's going to have an impact we need systems to include for including whole scale farming systems indigenous people and to connect the formal science with informal science and informal knowledge as well and there are many many ways that we can do that and there are examples of that in the book additional comments on that or I think there are already a number of examples where for instance there are agreements between traditional healers and scientific community where they agree to share the knowledge on the basis that whatever comes out of it would include benefits that would go back to the holders of the traditional knowledge so I think those the systems are still nice and still being developed but there's very much a recognition that that's absolutely essential Thank you Let's take the next question Hi my name is Gerard Tours I'm a research fellow here at SCI I'm coming from climate change impacts that kind of area so I'm going to ask a very different question but maybe we can build a bridge here now it is if you're looking at climate change adaptation policies towards Africa it comes very much from a secularization point of view risk point of view so my question would really be what do you think in the bioeconomy contribute to both adapting the people of Africa to the impact of climate change that are particularly severe for our culture what can it do to eradicate poverty and control the population growth because those are the concerns that most decision makers in Europe towards Africa have at the moment Thank you for that, who wants to start on how the bioeconomy can help us adapt to climate change and eradicate poverty I think one sort of clear example to me is the way we can build on and further develop all these fantastic African crops well suited to climate change we talked about Sorghum we talked about Cassava we talked about Millet many of these crops are often in a way that they're underutilized under researched and underdeveloped and that's again coming back to broadening the innovation agenda if we can improve them and improve them in various weather change we can also, by doing so improve livelihoods but also make that would also be weak for climate adaptation because there are crop production systems being more tolerant to climate change that's one way and there's yeah, there's a problem but that's one obvious maybe the rest I mean certainly just to add to what you're saying there are initiatives to develop drought tolerant crops which we're going to obviously have much more extremes of climate and the crops need to be able to be resistant to that and yeah that's where science starts to come into play to develop all these crops that can actually do that Professor Dilma, you'll take on this I just wanted to add one more element which is relevant for both for climate change but also for think about drought tolerance is that when we start to develop new crops, these crops, we focus on crops but as soon as we have the capability for drought tolerance I have actually thought that one of the most interesting early applications would be in ecosystem restoration independent of the agricultural part and that could then start to expand the base for agricultural production if you are able to also be able to basically do re-vegetation in areas that currently don't support crops and I see that as probably the most interesting application of synthetic biology in agriculture and some of the work that is going on in gene sequencing in gene editing this has I think huge implications for being able to adapt large ecosystems to climate change and this also applies to areas like wildlife areas which are now also being threatened because of climate change we are well into stoppage time and I would like to ask the four of you starting with you Professor Dilma this has been the launch of this wonderful book, it's a two year project, there's so many researchers, so many hours that's been put into it what are we going to do with this book now, top of your mind your main advice to the rest of us Professor? I would really argue or suggest strongly that this book should be known in Brussels so if you could do another launch in Brussels I think to be of great interest secondly I would like to work with you to explore how this book could be known say within the community of the African Union and one way to approach this is to maybe develop a shorter like discussion paper derived from the book which you can be shared both in Brussels and in other sub-barber to start raising awareness I think building on your conclusion just the conclusions alone I think are really very inspirational and could get really policy makers to start to think about it so that's why I would take this book as a next step Thank you so much for that concrete advice Professor Dilma, Jane Well from my personal perspective I'm busy editing a follow-up book that's about about the potential for genetically modified organisms in developing countries which links in very clearly to this and we have another set of 10 action points in that one Excellent we're looking forward to that launch as well Ulle I think it's interesting to tie in this because I see there's a couple of different discourses around the bio-economy once very much focused on resources once very much focused on the processes and the technology and once very much focused on the sort of the sustainability aspect of it all and I think we at least gotten some headway in this book to start tying these three together so I think that's one achievement and I think that sort of the whole concreteness of tying those together should be pushed further via this book Eva On top of making policy brief and including academia and politicians in a sense a wet dream to also enthuse us in the private sector in Europe but also in Africa to collaborate more intensively because I do think agreeing with you all that there's huge potentials for the private sector to take on and roll out many of these really potentially very useful innovations that we have there to really have an impact on the ground but I don't see academia or scientists probably making doing that it really needs to be really needs to include the private sector and they're hard to sort of to they're hard to enthuse us we need to think hard on how to sort of connect them to this discourse and for myself I believe that there is going to be a search in interest in investing in Africa it's got many economies that are growing it's certainly got a population that's rapidly growing as opposed to most other parts of the world and certainly a lot of the investments that are happening right now are not sustainable and not also based on the principle of actually learning from Africa I think this is wonderful advice for policy makers in Brussels and Stockholm for the academia but also for those who are interested in investing in Africa so that concludes our remarks I want us to give the panel and the others including the professor who could join us on Skype a huge warm hand thank you for those drinks we talked so much about show us three wishes glasses we'll save some for you thank you thank you