"The Price of (Non)Sustainability" - Daniela Thrän at the FONA Forum 2022
This year's FONA Forum "With Green Innovations into the Future" took place at the beginning of May. The focus was on the transfer into practice, so that research and education become new knowledge and innovations.
Who should be responsible for the right pricing of sustainable and conventional products? How can society and politics influence each other to achieve a more sustainable future? And what role does the bioeconomy play in this?
During the panel discussion with the theme "The Price of (Non)Sustainability", references were made between research and development, the climate crisis, pricing mechanisms and the bioeconomy. During the event, the co-chair of the Bioeconomy Council (BÖR), Daniela Thrän, discussed with Johan Rockström, Director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Marina Beermann, Head of the Sustainability Partnership at WWF Germany and Nicola Tanaskovic, Division Manager Corporate Responsibility at REWE Group.
According to the discussants as well as the participants, climate change is a global political problem that must first be addressed by politics. Research and development must be supported in order to be able to scale up quickly. In addition, resistance such as legal constraints must be eliminated in order to bring new biotechnological innovations to market. Examples of this are regulations surrounding the utilization of residual materials to produce food.
According to Daniela Thrän, positive examples from the bioeconomy must be made highly visible in order to create incentives among the population and politicians. Sustainable product alternatives would have to be offered to the consumer, and a uniform, standardized form of making the sustainability of the product recognizable would be necessary.
You can watch the recording of the FONA forum here (in German):