“I am convinced that this crisis will teach us many lessons and I am sure that the day after will find us working together to kick-star again our economies and drive our recovery towards a more resilient, green and digital EU.” Philippe Mengal, Executive Director of BBI JU, talks to Il Bioeconomista. In this exclusive interview, he tells us how the European bioeconomy is reacting to the crisis of coronavirus.
Interview by Mario Bonaccorso
International investor groups, including the Asia Investor Group on Climate Change (AIGCC), have encouraged global governments to ensure they are planning for a sustainable recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic by factoring in climate change risk into economic recovery plans.
An alliance has been launched in the European Parliament on the back of calls from 12 EU environment ministers who have signed an appeal for a green recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. The “green recovery alliance” was launched last Monday at the initiative of Pascal Canfin, a French centrist MEP who chairs the European Parliament’s committee on environment and public health.
It’s awesome! The emergency is finally over. We can go back to our life. The virus was defeated without waiting for the vaccine, because we all behaved in the best way, staying at home and respecting the physical distance. Now we can go back to meet, talk to each other and, if necessary, also to hug. We’ll always remember all the dead people and the sufferings. And also the physicians and nurses and all the people who spent themselves on others.
“We also need to careful that the warning bells don’t go unnoticed as we try to rebuild our way of life in the same mold as before. Already we are hearing murmurings about a need for cheap (and fossil) energy to stimulate ailing virus hit sectors. We do not need to go back in time, we need to move forward. Hopefully COVID will have taught us how bad things can get when we do not think, do not plan, do not collaborate, do not listen to the science, do not listen to early warnings. But the most important lesson, I think, is that through individual action and caring for others, people who were healthy and in “low” risk groups, stayed home. They were sacrificing for others; they were not thinking about themselves.”
To say it – in this exclusive interview with Il Bioeconomista – is Jennifer Holmgren, CEO of LanzaTech.
Interview by Mario Bonaccorso
We looked at the images broadcast on television from Wuhan as if they came from another planet. Until February 21, with the first case of contagion in Italy, the coronavirus seemed something that could not concern us. Then everything changes from February 23. Suddenly we plunged in fear, sometimes in panic, but above all we realized in one fell swoop that the human being is part of nature, even if at some point of the evolutionary history it seemed to break away from it to dominate it and break the balance on which it is based. The coronavirus and the disease that derives from it, called covid19, puts us again and dramatic ally in front of the limits of nature, our limits and our role on earth. It puts us in all its urgency in front of the issue of our development model, the interdependence of the globalized world, the solidarity between people and between countries, between North and South of the world.
The European Commission has adopted a new Circular Economy Action Plan – one of the main blocks of the European Green Deal, Europe’s new agenda for sustainable growth.
The new Action Plan announces initiatives along the entire life cycle of products, targeting for example their design, promoting circular economy processes, fostering sustainable consumption, and aiming to ensure that the resources used are kept in the EU economy for as long as possible.
The Bioeconomy is led by women. This year, as every year, for the International Women’s Day, we dedicate a tribute to all women who are making the bioeconomy happen all around the world. With their huge competences and their infinite passion, they are the stars of the world bioeconomy. Our best and warmest wishes to all women.
This is just a partial list.
Ylwa Alwarsdotter, Executive VP Sekab (Sweden)
Iris Aquilina Anderson, leader of the Bioladies Network (UK)
Catia Bastioli, CEO at Novamont (Italy)
Véronique de Bruijn, CEO at Photanol (Netherlands)
Joanna Dupont at EuropaBio (UE)
Carina Håkansson, DG at The Swedish Forest Industries Federation (Sweden)
Sarah Hickingbottom, CEO at BioVale (UK)
Jennifer Holmgren, CEO at Lanzatech (USA)
Virginia Klausmeier, CEO at Sylvatex (USA)
Christine Lang, chairwoman at German Bioeconomy Council (Germany)
Electra Papadopoulou, co-founder Greek Bioeconomy Forum (Greece)
Theodora Retsina, CEO at American Process (USA)
Kathryn Sheridan, CEO at Sustainability Consult (Belgium)
Mariagiovanna Vetere, Global Public Affairs at NatureWorks (USA)
Mari Walls, President and CEO at Natural Resources Institute Finland (LUKE)
Alex Ward, President at Origin Materials (Canada)
Marie Wheat, Industry Economist at USDA BioPreferred Program (USA)
Eleni Zika, Head of Programme at BBI JU (EU)
The EU bio-based industry is quickly evolving but clear data on the development of this emerging sector are still missing. A new JRC report illustrates the work of the JRC in building an extensive database of EU facilities producing different categories of bio-based products:
Novamont, Turin Polytechnic and University of Bologna launched in Rome, ReSoil Foundation, a new tool to boost a real change, starting from soil health and the key concept of territorial regeneration.
The new foundation aims at promoting activities in the fields of scientific research, technology transfer, training and dissemination, and the creation of awareness on issues related to soil health, a non-renewable resource, increasingly degraded by the anthropogenic action, pollution and climate change.
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