Biotechnology unlocks planetary sustainability.

Brynne Stanton, Cassandra Padbury, Becky Donaldson, Chris Yates, “Biotechnology: From transforming healthcare to transforming our planet,” World Economic Forum, 09-14-2023, https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2023/09/biotechnology-sustainable-development-goals/

Biotechnology’s reach extends beyond the generation of life saving treatments to provide innovations that address critical planetary challenges.

Alternative forms of biotechnology are responsible for often subtle yet transformative contributions to our daily lives.

Biotechnology beyond medicine is actively helping us to achieve the SDGs in an inconspicuous yet powerful fashion at a time when meaningful progress is crucial.

Medical biotechnology (red biotech) has been transformative to our overall health and life expectancy, but leveraging biology as technology isn’t limited to breakthroughs in medicine alone. Biotechnology is being applied in ways that provide substantial impact on advancing the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Whilst specialists and non-specialists alike are often familiar with biotechnology delivering critical breakthroughs for life-threatening diseases, alternative forms of biotechnology are quietly making waves and delivering innovative, high tech solutions to some of the biggest challenges brought on by the current climate crisis. The enabling technologies underlying both groundbreaking healthcare treatments and environmentally-conscious industrial alternatives are identical, yet the latter is often overshadowed by their medical counterparts.

Here we’ve highlighted under-the-radar forms of biotechnology, with an eye towards showcasing these innovations as they pave the path to providing sustainable, scalable alternatives to some of the most pressing, climate change-induced challenges society faces.