THE BIOECONOMY TO 2030: DESIGNING A POLICY AGENDA
I. The Bioeconomy Project
（生物经济项目背景）
1. The proposed OECD project will seek to identify the necessary steps to realize the potential gains of what is called the bioeconomy. The term “bioeconoy” is interpreted in different ways by different actors. The OECD project supposes the bioeconomy to be the aggregate set of economic operations in a society that use the latent value incumbent in biological products and processes to capture new growth and welfare benefits for citizens and nations. These benefits are manifest in product markets through productivity gains (agriculture, health), enhancement effects (health, nutrition) and substitution effects (environmental and industrial uses as well as energy); additional benefits derive from more eco-efficient and sustainable use of natural resources to provide goods and services to an ever growing global population. The bioeconomy is made possible by the recent surge in the scientific knowledge and technical competences that can be directed to harness biological processes for practical applications. Looking to the future, new techniques in biotechnology, genomics, genetics, and proteomics will continue to converge with other technologies resulting in potentially large scale changes to global economies in the next thirty years.
2. But if the potential is to be achieved, a number of scientific, technical, economic, industrial, social and governance issues will have to be addressed. Government policy can play a decisive role in this, by encouraging or blocking developments. Long term human capital formation, judicious investment in research and development, continual adjustment of regulatory oversight, new infrastructure investment for the medium and long term are but a few examples of challenges facing governments in capturing the benefits of the bio-revolution.
3. The aim of the OECD bioeconomy project is to evaluate the potential impact of biotechnologies and biosciences on the economy and identify those areas where public policy can be effective in removing barriers, encouraging innovation, and improving understanding and cooperation among the various stakeholders. Although it is often convenient to divide the bioeconomy along fairly traditional sectoral lines such as health, agro-food, energy, and so on, the bioeconomy will profit greatly from the convergence of a number of research domains, technologies, economic infrastructures, and government practices. As the bioeconomy’s impacts will be society-wide, the emphasis will be on cross-cutting issues where a horizontal, multidisciplinary approach is the most suitable. Of course, specific applications of biosciences will be studied as required to inform the debate, but this will not be an end in itself.
How is the bioeconomy different from other innovation cycles?
Affordability—The cost of biotechnologies has dcreased markedly in the past decade. For example, diagnostic and treatment devices, once only available to large corporations and well-financed R&D efforts, are now available on the general market for use by doctors and consumers.
Impact—Technology applications flowing from deveopments in the life sciences will have far-reaching impacts on other economic sectors. For example, the agriculture and chemical sectors were once linked through the use of pesticides in crop production, but emerging technologies will create biobased chemicals with decreased toxicity and increased effectiveness. Nano bio tools will be used for a large variety of applications, from medicine to security and environmental monitoring.
Rapid, discontinuous change—The biological sciences are among the most dynamic sectors of modern science. Discoveries in genetics, metabolics, systems biology and proteomics are leading to novel and eco-efficient products at ever faster rates. Meanwhile, the pace of discovery is accelerated by the growing—and global—human capital and fincial investment in bioscience. What had been an expensive, frontier scientific effort in 1990 is often now a routine, increasingly automated procedure.“Knowledge Churn” has become thmotor for advances in the biosciences.
The human factor—Unlike many other technologies, most biotechnologies involve a human element in development, production, and consumption. Products have to be developed in secure laboratories, tested with animal and human subjects, and in many cases consumed directly by humans. Individual and societal values will play an important role in decisions as to which technologies are explored and exploited. Public opinion will be a key determinant in this innovation wave (security, safety, privacy, ethics).
Safety—Biotechnology can affect human health dramatically. The same technologies that improve human welfare can be used for harm. It is imperative that safety issues be addressed in order to fully realise the potential of the bioeconomy.
Increased knowledge intensity A good example of this interplay is the linkage between innovations in the life sciences and informatics. Data can now be collected, stored, retrieved and analysed more and more quickly. This rapid increase in knowledge will lead to greatly shortened discovery paths.
Information—Information in the biological sciences is mre readily available today than ever before, but the complexity of that information and the problem of its reliability pose challenges for researchers and industrialists.
High opportunity costs—Innovation in the biosciences requres active support from government and industry. Those countries able to muster resources to invest in R&D and human capital formation—and equipped with policies to meet the challenges posed by new products and processes—wil move ahead, creating wealth within their societies and becoming leaders in innovation globally. Those who fail to keep pace with these changes risk losing new global markets and compromising growth at the national level.
All of the above—The biosciences offer a combination of factors that make this innovation wave different from past ones (i.e. the IT revolution). Governments need to map these possible future directions, match them to social and economic needs, and adjust policy agendas to reap the benefits of the bioeconomy.
4. The project is not designed as a forecasting exercise, and could be summarized thus: biotechnologies being developed now hold tremendous promise, but fulfilling this promise requires a clear understanding of what is possible and what actions could help or hinder a desirable outcome.
II. The challenges and opportunities
（挑战与机会：项目领域部门）
5. Biotechnology and the biosciences more generally have the potential to generate significant economic, social, health and environmental benefits. Much of this growing potential is a result of unrivalled access to information about biological processes and the ability to process this quickly and link knowledge to outcomes in ways that have previously not been possible.
6. However, the policy and regulatory frameworks that currently govern bio-science based activities are often unsuited to the economic, social, and ethical issues now emerging. This is increasingly the case as knowledge about biological and genetic processes is combined with empirical evidence in shorter and shorter timeframes. The gap between opportunity and the existing policy response is widening.
7. The challenge facing policy makers—whether ingovernment, in private industry or elsewhere—is how to make choices that allow the opportunities offered through biotechnology, genetics, genomics and the biosciences more generally to be delivered. This can be problematic, since decisions taken today can influence whether unforeseen or unconfirmed future opportunities might be realizable. A degree of foresight or vision is therefore necessary so that, to the extent possible, short-term decisions can be taken without negative impacts on longer term opportunities.
8. Getting to this “no-regrets”form of policy makinfor the biosciences is the issue at the core of the OECD Bioeconomy Project, which seeks to identify the key opportunities and drivers in the different sectors of the bioeconomy and identify the key policy crossroads that will need to be navigated if the opportunities from genetics, genomics and the other biosciences are to be fully realized. In short, theproject is intended to develop a long term international roadmap for policy dialogue and formulation across the coming decades in six main sectors (health, industry, environment, agriculture, energy, and security).
9. Some of the main drivers within sectors and policy issues affecting the different sectors are summarized in the following paragraphs, though these are intended at this point merely to be illustrative of both the possible scope and methods of the project.
Health Sector
10. Biotechnologies influence most aspects of health care already. The main drivers here are pursuit of quality (including safety), efficacy and efficiency of products. Demographic factors are of significant importance, including increasing life expectancy; population ageing; decreasing fertility rates; and the desire to control reproduction. Economic drivers are crucial too, with strong focus on balancing health budgets including reducing development costs, increasing cost-effectiveness, and early diagnosis. Health is also the sector where biotech is most likely to impact on behaviours and life-styles, e.g., via the markets in self-diagnosis and self-care products or by offering solutions to non-pathological disorders.
11. Business competition and consolidation will intensify pressure on industry from governments to curb rises in the price of medical goods and services. In the face of these pressures, the life sciences industries will undergo considerable structural change. The distinction between pharmaceutical companies and biotechnology firms is already eroding.
12. Asian markets will expand faster than American and European ones (albeit from a low base), with
13. Many of the anticipated benefits of biotechnology in health care will come from a move to more evidence-based medicine, through better understanding of genetics, genomics, proteomics etc, and especially where such knowledge is combined with databases linked to health outcomes and, increasingly, nanotechnology. The extent to which such knowledge will deliver better health will hinge on the regulatory controls around the access, use and linkability of data as well as on whether policy in the private and public sectors can be co-developed to increase the efficiency of the research and development enterprise as well
as its quality and efficacy.
Industry and Environment Sectors
14. The change in perception about the potential impact of biotechnology in the industrial and environmental sectors over the past three to five years has been extraordinary. The OECD has played a role in driving this with its publication in 2001 of 21 case studies demonstrating economic and environmental benefits from adoption of the technology in increasing profitability while reducing the environmental footprint.
15. But it has been advances in the science—forexample, in enzymology, metabolomics and cell engineering—that have been the real drivers. Thecontribution that biological processes and biomaterials can make to the use of renewable materials, to eco-efficiency and to sustainability is sometimes referred to as the Biobased Economy (a trademarked term that has a parallel but narrower sense than the concept of a bioeconomy used in this paper).
16. Several OECD member countries have reacted by introducing a range of policy measures to leverage transition to greater use of biological products and processes by industry (particularly processing and manufacturing industries). These tend to be micro-level policies that focus either on supply or on procurement.
17. A broader scope analysis, backed by reliable metrics, is necessary to identify the wider policy opportunities and trade offs—and theactions required to deliver on these—to make such a transition asefficient as possible.
Agriculture Sector
18. The main drivers for using biotechnologies in the agriculture sector are increasing population (in developing countries) and rising standards of living creating demand for higher input foods, products and services, along with urbanisation pressures on land availability and the negative side-effects of trying to increase production via traditional means. Biotechnologies allow crops to be grown in less favourable conditions, and help meet consumer demands on food quality, e.g., regarding pesticides and shelf life. Biotechnology can also be used to transform plants into “factories”that can produce everything fromodified foods to commodity chemicals.
19. Despite slow progress in some areas, within the next few decades, virtually all widely marketed seed could be influenced in some way by gene technology. Crop productivity will increase as will quality.
20. Increasing value will be added at the level of primary production—though it is by no means certain whether the proportion of the value taken by the primary producer will also change. How this evolves in practice may transform what it means to work on the land and may—or may not—offer a way out of long-term agricultural subsidies whilst stabilising rural economies. The mix of policies and practices developed by the public and private sector will have profound impacts on the outcome of this balance.
Energy Sector
21. World primary energy demand will rise by almost 60% from now until 2030. Biofuels already substitute for petroleum-based transport fuels and other uses, including electricity production. Bioenergy resources currently provide 14% of primary energy supply with the potential to reach 50% during the next century.
22. Bioenergy offers opportunities for additional value to be derived from products already in the economy, but its competitiveness will depend on the availability of alternative energy options, relative costs and prices, and regulatory frameworks, as well as on the source and cost of starting materials for fuel production and the technological ability to deliver efficient conversion.
23. The environmental as well as economic viability of biomass for energy production relies heavily on local infrastructures and transformation, and it is suggested that expanded use of bioenergy could enhance rural economic development. Farmers may improve returns as marginal crops become viable, giving an additional source of income from energy byproducts, though a shift toward dedicated feedstocks may mean environmental tradeoffs.
24. Bioenergy raises policy issues around energy self-reliance, security of supplies, diversity of sources, sustainable development, clean air and climate change initiatives and life-cycle analysis. Governments have responded to some of these issues by introducing programmes to support renewable energy: cost-sharing research and development, demonstrations for new energy technologies as well as tax incentives to encourage market penetration.
25. Many of the broader environmental, economic and societal trade-offs are, however, insufficiently explored.
Security Sector
26. The security sector has also transformed significantly in the past five years, principally due to global events. The main drivers here are market demand for offensive and defensive technologies and strategies that vary from surveillance and detection systems, to risk management protocols around the dual use of materials and knowledge.
27. The key policy question at the heart of activity in this sector is one of determining the proportionality of responses and the costs and benefits associated with these—in particular in terms of the spin-offs and spin-outs to civil research and the opportunity costs associated.
Common Themes across Sectors
28. Some key common themes emerge from this short summary of activities and issues in the different sectors. First, that a broad medium-to-long term perspective of the opportunities offered by biotechnology and the biosciences—as well as the callenges to ensuring that these are captured—is necessary and by and large missing. Second, that the implications for policy beyond “biotechnology” policy, and the trade-off involved, need to be thought through and articulated. And, third, that solid metrics and indicators are necessary to underpin progress and any emerging roadmap.
29. These themes form a good match with those that underpin OECD work in general and the Organisation’s biotechnology work in particular—i.e., pursuing opportunities for sustainable growth; innovation; valuation and access to intellectual assets; globalisation and regulation; and development of indicators and metrics (a summary of current OECD biotechnology activities is in Annex 1).
III. The Project Details
（项目步骤及统计评价）
Project Approach
30. The project components are presented in the chart below as phases but could, to some extent, run concurrently.
Step 1: Establishing the Analytical Baseline
31. The initial phase of the project will focus on the recent evolution of the bioeconomy in the OECD and major non-OECD countries. This could include a characterization of the industry and market structure, the strategies adopted by the key players in each major sector (health, agro-food, energy, etc.) as well as the performance of the industry in terms of growth, profitability and ability to innovate. Existing metrics would be analysed to identify where there are potential gaps in the ability to quantify the bioeconomy. This phase could also provide a taxonomy of the institutional, legal and regulatory frameworks, both at the national and international level, which are having either a positive impact on future developments in the various areas of biotechnology or which appear to be lagging behind that of scientific and technical innovation.
What metrics can be used to measure the Bioeconomy?
Tracking the development of the bioeconomy will require measures and analysis that capture different aspects of biotechnology and its uptake and impact in the economy. A successful measurement system must include three key components of the bioeconomy: readiness (the technical, commercial and social infrastructures necessary to support technological developments), intensity (the state of technology production and the use, volume and value of transactions), and impact (value added and economic impacts potentially created by technology). This requires a combination of available statistical surveys, private data, and new innovative statistical work. It will also involve empirical analysis, following a wide range of approaches. Such empirical analysis will be needed since many of the impacts of biotechnology can not be derived from simple indicators; it will involve more complex measurements, as have already been used for other major technologies, such as information and communications technology.
Step 2: Assessment of key drivers and their impacts
Endogenous factors
l Science: What are the key scientific developments opportunities and problems—within biotechnology but also in other scientific domains--that will drive change in the bioeconomy?
l Technology convergence: what progress in a broad range of technologies such as computing, nanotechnology, new materials, etc. is likely to facilitate the development of new biotech applications and reduce the cost of existing ones?
Exogenous factors
l Economy: what changes in consumption and production patterns are likely to increase the demand for particular activities or services?
l Demography and society: What impact will trends such as population ageing, urbanisation and changing social values have on the demand for bio-based products and services?
l Globalisation: How will future geopolitical, market and economic developments affect demand and bring about changes in industry structure and the organization of value chains?
Convergence and linkages
The bioeconomy is possible because knowledge of how living organisms develop, react, and interact at fundamental levels that range from nano molecular structure to genes is moving at such a rapid pace. This discovery process in turn drives innovation in a wide range of economic domains. The ability to understand and to exploit this potential depends on the convergence of a number of disciplines, which in turn benefit from progress in each field as well as related fields. This convergence cycle is blurring the traditional boundaries which separate chemistry, biology, mathematics, etc. Indeed the development of certain biotechnologies will be dependent on advances in other technologies such as nanotechnology and informatics.
Convergence and linkages across various disciplines at the heart of the bioeconomy are thus leading to a multiplication of potential applications. However, while such linkages are beneficial for the advancement of science and technology, conflicts can arise due to the scarcity of resources or possible negative spillovers from one domain to another. For example, a policy to promote bioenergy has to balance competing demands on land-use for food crops and energy feedstocks. It also has to take into account the overall net environmental benefit of “cean fuel” if there are environmental drawbacks such as a vast infrastructure to manufacture and distribute either the feedstock for the energy or the energy obtained itself.
Of course in the longer term new biotechnologies may provide integrated solutions. In the example above, multi-use crops that provide high yields of both food and energy could ease competing demands for land-use. But in the policy time-frame of the bioeconomy project, governments will inevitably be faced with a number of arbitration decisions. This reinforces the need to consider the bioeconomy in an integrated way, rather than assuming that its various sectors are relatively independent of one another.
33. Thus, steps 1 and 2 should provide a clear picture of the factors influencing the environment in which the bioeconomy is emerging and examine the likely impact of the interactions of these various trends and driving forces on the bioeconomy through to 2030. Although, once again, the emphasis will be on common, cross-cutting themes, the implications for individual sectors will also be considered.
Step 3: Implications for institutional, legal, regulatory and other policy frameworks
34. Step 3 will examine how, in the rapidly changing world of the next decades, the development of new and emerging applications would be influenced by existing and planned regulatory and policy frameworks. Where do these policy frameworks appear adequate? Where are they likely to be increasingly out of step with scientific, technological, economic and social conditions? Could decisions made now exacerbate these gaps? This phase of the project would, as well, look at the business models that might be needed to fully exploit the potential of new applications.
Step 4: Communicating Dynamic Change
35. For the full development of the bioeconomy, governments will have to buy in to this notion politically and make a determined effort through proper funding and regulatory measures. On the basis of the work conducted above, the final phase of the project would draw general conclusions and recommendations for governmental action. These could fall into several areas:
l Industrial and R&D policies: what rules should apply so as to ensure that public support is fully effective, without distorting competition?
l Business and value-chain models: what is needed to ensure the financial viability and market success of new applications?
l Legal and regulatory framework: What changes should be made to existing legal and regulatory provisions, both at the national and international levels, so as to facilitate the future development of the bioeconomy?
l Institutional arrangements: Is there a need at the international level to change institutional arrangements impacting on the bioeconomy? At the domestic level, what institutional arrangements might be appropriate for ensuring that national policy fully takes into account the interest of all stakeholders?
Mapping the Future
To explore the future, analysts can choose among various techniques, depending on the nature of the exercise involved. Forecasting is perhaps the most prevalent technique. It employs forecasting models that provide a simplified description of reality and of the relations that are believed to exist between independent or exogenous variables (the values of which are determined outside the model) and dependent or endogenous variables (the values of which are generated by the model).
Forecasting models are useful for short-term projections, but they are of little value for exploring the long-term future. This is because such models depend on “structural inertia”,i.e. they implicitly assume that the underlying structure of the model (more specifically the relation between the dependent and independent variables) does not vary over the forecasting period. While this assumption may be reasonable for the short term, it is unlikely to hold in the long-term. Attempts can be made to deal with this problem by developing several forecasts based on alternative values of some of the structural parameters. However, in this approach, uncertainty is treated as an excursion around a “preferred” or “most likely” path destination.
For futures that are inherently unpredictable, it is more effective to explore policy, economic, and technology decisions through a number of differing images of the future. The goal of these images is to describe a coherent future world by means of a credible narrative. Although no single image is likely to contain the true future state, taken together they are likely to contain the key elements. In addition, the same pathways and relationships may appear in a number of different future images despite differing external variables.
Since the bioeconomy’s drivers are vast and involve cmplex interactions with a wide range of variables and technologies over a long period of time, looking at alternative future paths is clearly preferable.
Data requirements for the project
36. Reliable data on the development of the bioeconomy and the impact of biotechnology and the biosciences on economic growth, health and environment are the foundation of objective policymaking. In parallel with the steps outlined above, the project will evaluate existing data and propose remedies where major gaps in current knowledge are exposed. Despite progress towards better biotechnology statistics and some preliminary measures of the impacts of biotechnology, further statistical development and empirical analysis is desirable. A separate, complementary paper sets out preliminary thinking.
IV. Value added by an OECD Futures Project
（OECD未来项目特别价值）
37. In addition to numerous national programmes, a number of international organisations, including the European Union and various UN agencies, work on aspects of interest to the project, e.g., the European Commission reported on its work concerning industrial products made from renewable agricultural and forestry feedstocks in a 2005 conference entitled “Towards a European Knowledge-based Bioeconomy”.However, the OECD project would be the only one to look at all the issues and interactions that could lead to a bioeconomy, including the public policy and econometric dimensions, as well as the scientific, technical, industrial and commercial questions across the range of activities that biotechnology contributes to.
38. Notably, the project would:
l Provide an assessment of the long-term prospects for the bioeconomy.
l Identify potential problems and define key elements of the policy framework needed for realising the potential development.
l Identify areas for private/public co-operation in the development of applications.
l Develop a framework for the articulation of bioeconomy metrics.
l Facilitate dialogue among diverse interests.
l Identify areas where international co-operation could be strengthened.
Comparative advantages of the OECD
39. The OECD has proved its worth as an “honest boker” in other key areas such as e-commerce and corporate governance, contributing to a better common understanding of the issues among stakeholders. If such an understanding could be found for the bioeconomy, it would provide a solid basis for the formulation of policy recommendations, and the political will to implement these, reflecting broad common ground among participants in the project and effectively contributing to sustainable economic growth that is consistent with the goals of the societies that comprise the OECD.
40. Factors that make the OECD a particularly appropriate platform for this project include:
(i) In many OECD countries significant public and private resources are devoted to the biosciences and most key players are within the OECD Member countries that together account for more than 90% of global R&D and command 80% of global economic resources. Any recommendations resulting from this project, especially if endorsed by the OECD Council, would receive attention in OECD capitals and should have an impact on the evolution of the bioeconomy as a whole.
(ii) The emergence of the bioeconomy is conditioned by the intensification of knowledge production and utilisation in a number of interlinked domains (as well as the development of tools and infrastructures needed to exploit this knowledge). The OECD has considerable experience in analysing knowledge as a fourth factor of production and in analysing how knowledge and innovation are linked to economic performance.
(iii) Many of the issues raised by the future development of the biosciences (e.g. access to markets, access to information and intellectual assets, industrial and scientific policy, regulatory development and harmonization) fall within the remit of the Organisation. Moreover, the Organisation has considerable experience and expertise in each of these issues in the biosciences domain.
V. Contribution of the project to OECD objectives
（该项目对OECD目标的贡献）
41. The economic, social and environmental benefits that could be derived from a more effective development of the bioeconomy are significant. The project could also contribute to enhanced international co-operation, and to achieving greater compatibility within the international legal and regulatory frameworks that condition the future evolution of the bioeconomy. More specifically, the Project supports several key priorities established by the OECD Council in March 2000 for the Organisation's programme of work:
(i) Biotechnologies and their applications are actually or potentially an important economic activity for many OECD countries in their own right, and helping to ensure the further development of these activities to create a bioeconomy would contribute to sustainable economic growth..
(ii) Identification and assessment of future applications of bio-related technologies and assessment of their long-term potential should provide useful inputs into the priority area of making best use of new technologies.
(iii) Sustainable development is a further dimension of the proposed project, since biotechnologies play an important role not only in environmental activities as such, but also in proposing the sustainable alternatives needed in areas ranging from energy to agriculture as world population and resources utilisation continue to grow in the coming decades.
(iv) To the extent that major non-OECD countries such as