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One of the most important Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) is SDG2 to “End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture”. Generally, the success of SDG2 is closely tied to SDG1 “End poverty in all its forms everywhere”. SDG2 highlights the complex interlinkages between food security, nutrition, rural transformation and sustainable agriculture. It connects the eradication of hunger and malnutrition to a transformation in agriculture, food systems and rural development.

Despite the global support for the SDGs, hunger is still on the rise worldwide. In 2017, about 815 million people worldwide suffered from hunger – this corresponds to 1 out of 9 people in the world. It is well known that hunger and malnutrition lead to severe physical consequences. Further, nutritious food in sufficient quantities is the foundation for human health and wellbeing.

Bioeconomy holds promising approaches to resolving the nutrition and health challenges of the future. These range from circular economy solutions that avoid food waste to urban farming and bio-based innovations with novel protein sources. Circular thinking plays a key role in the bioeconomy, especially when it comes to food waste. Currently, almost one third of the global food production for human consumption – an estimated 1.3 billion tons each year – is wasted. Bright minds aim to change this and have developed supply chains to transform waste into valuable products. In addition, new protein-rich products are conquering the market: pasta and burgers made of buffalo worms and drinks with algae or cricket snacks are becoming more and more popular.

The aim of the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 9 is to “Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation”. Usually, investment in infrastructure and innovation are important drivers for economic growth and development.

More than half the world population is living in cities, making transportation technologies, renewable energy and the establishment of new industries more important than ever. This technological progress is elementary in order to establish lasting solutions to current and future economic and environmental challenges, such as creating new jobs and reducing carbon dioxide emissions. The support and investment of sustainable industries, research and innovation are key steps to enable sustainable development.

Bioeconomy research and development has already resulted in exciting new goods and processes that are biocompatible, use fewer resources and protect climate and nature. Biotechnology, which uses living systems to make products, poses a key technology to accelerate these advances. By using raw materials to produce chemicals and fuels, industrial biotechnology is laying the groundwork for moving away from a petrochemical economy. Other exciting biotechnological applications are a brick “grown” by bacteria or detergents that use the power of enzymes, therefore saving chemicals and energy. Combining the life sciences and biotechnology with information and communication technologies offers great opportunities for green growth, for example in environmental technologies, precision agriculture or plant breeding.

The Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 12 has been created to “Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns”. Decoupling economic growth from resource use is one of the most critical and complex challenges of today. Worldwide material consumption has rapidly expanded in the past decade. Urgent action is required to stop the overuse and degradation of environment resources towards more resource efficiency, waste reduction and a mainstreaming of sustainability practices across all sectors of the economy.

Despite the global support for SDG12, global figures are currently worsening rather than improving. In 2017, worldwide material consumption reached 92.1 billion tons, a clear increase up from 87 billion in 2015. The rate of resource extraction has accelerated every year since 2000. The demand for natural resources has grown in the past decades, resulting in undue burden on environmental resources. Concerted political action and well-designed national policy frameworks and instruments are necessary to enable the shift towards new consumption and production patterns.

According to the United Nations, sustainable consumption aims at “doing more and better with less”, increasing net welfare gains from economic activities by reducing resource use, degradation and pollution along the whole lifecycle, while increasing quality of life. Bioeconomy embraces these objectives by promoting circularity and harnessing renewable resources efficiently instead of using scarce ones. In the paper, fashion and cosmetic industry these approaches are becoming increasingly popular. For example, elephant dung or meadow grass provide the basis for paper notebook and sustainable fibres are made from seaweed, milk protein or even coffee ground. In the cosmetics industry, eco-friendly products are produced with biological resources and processes.

The Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 14 aims to “conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development”. Oceans, seas and coastal areas are a critical component of the Earth’s ecosystem and essential to sustainable development. They cover more than two-thirds of the earth’s surface and contain 97% of the planet’s water.

The oceans currently contribute to 5 percent of global gross domestic product with an estimated output of 3 trillion US Dollar. More than 3 billion people depend on marine and coastal biodiversity for their livelihoods. There is increased attention on the ocean as a source of food and water, clean energy and as a means to mitigate climate change. However, many marine species, habitats and ecosystems have suffered catastrophic declines, and climate change is further undermining the ocean productivity and biodiversity. Especially overfishing, ocean acidification and marine pollution pose a major threat.

Marine and freshwater resources such as fish, seafood or microorganisms are not only important food and feed, but also sources of cosmetic additives, energy sources or active ingredients. The marine bioeconomy is concerned with the sustainable and cycle-oriented development and use of these resources. For example, algae, the latest buzz in the innovative food sector, can also be processed into clothing and shoes. More and more textile producers increase their attention to circular approaches and use by-products of the food industry, such as salmon skin, to turn them into accessories.

The Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 15 has been created to “Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss”. Plants provide around 80 percent of our diet – agriculture is not only an important economic resource, but also a means of development. Forests cover around 30 percent of the Earth’s surface and provide habitats for millions of species and are an important source for clean air and water. This SDG has been created as recent years have seen an unprecedented land degradation and loss of arable land.

There are some encouraging global trends in protecting terrestrial ecosystems – forest loss is slowing down and more key biodiversity areas are now protected. In 2018, the global mean percentage of each key biodiversity area covered by protected areas increased to 46.1 percent for terrestrial areas, to 43.2 percent for freshwater areas and to 44.7 percent for mountain areas. Despite this progress, land degradation continues and biodiversity loss is taking place at an alarming rate. Desertification, cropland expansion and urbanisation accelerate and worsen this trend. Species extinction is another fundamental and irreversible human impact on nature: The Red List Index has deteriorated from 0.82 in 1993 to 0.73 in 2019 (1 indicates no threat to any species and 0 that all species are extinct). 

In addition to agriculture, the forestry and timber industry are among the most important producers of renewable raw materials for the bioeconomy. In addition to contributing to income and employment, the use of wood makes a positive contribution to climate protection, particularly through the production of durable wood products, cascade use and the replacement of non-renewable raw materials. Bioeconomy examples with regard to SDG15 include innovative drinks and treats made from spruce biomass, or toys made from sustainably managed forests and sawdust, or charcoal from olive pomace as opposed to wood.