IPBES and after: do we need to fear global ecosystem decline?
A month ago, May 2019, a UN agency with the awkward acronym IPBES published a report on nature decline. It tells us: ‘nature and its vital contributions to people, which together embody biodiversity and ecosystem functions and services, are deteriorating worldwide.’ The report was met with mixed reactions – and actually, considering its dramatic message,
New Call for Proposals issued by BBI JU
The Bio-based Industries Joint Undertaking, BBI JU, one of seven JUs under the Horizon2020 program, recently published their next Call for Proposals, the sixth one on the path towards 2020. At an info day in Brussels, visited by over 600 attendees, the organization presented and explained its latest Call. Under the influence of results from
Do not avoid risks, but contain them
Brexit and The Wall not only generate news. These issues also provide for interesting comments that ultimately can apply to other, or much broader, areas like the bio-economy. Where continuous development is hampered by risk aversion, learning to identify and manage risks better is a necessity. I read a striking comment by CNN’s Chris Cillizza
Circular agriculture, the model of the future
In September 2018, the Dutch minister for agriculture Carola Schouten announced that circular agriculture will become her main policy goal. Circular agriculture, also known as low external input farming, is the model of the future. The minister intends to remove obstacles to it, and to stimulate this model all across the country. An old principle
Can we engineer life? 4.6 Golden rice
Golden rice symbolizes the protracted trench war between proponents and opponents of modern biotechnology. The Swiss Ingo Potrykus of ETH Zürich is the golden man behind the golden rice. With great ardour he defends this controversial rice, and attacks the opponents of gene technology. With his colleague Peter Beyer of Freiburg University he developed the
Lost in translation: Calls for Proposals are determined by language
The Bio-Based Industries Joint Undertaking, abbreviated as BBI JU, is in the final stages of the procedure to award funding for new research and development proposals. BBI JU is a €3.7 billion Public-Private Partnership between the EU and the Bio-based Industries Consortium. I participated in the evaluation of the 144 proposals that were submitted in
Tetraethyl lead, the scandal that never erupted
Modern history is full of stories of new chemicals sold on a large scale and afterwards causing problems. Sometimes, this causes a major upheaval. But by far the largest poisoning in history, that by tetraethyl lead, never ended in a scandal. It just faded away, even though oil and motor car companies neglected well-known dangers,
Don’t panic over oak processionary
At the moment, the Netherlands suffer from the oak processionary. Or, as one commentator put it: it has been causing a lot of trouble over the past few years, but now it has reached the major cities in the West. The caterpillar has toxic hairs on its body, intended to keep off its attackers; they
on: 19 July 2019