London, United Kingdom
February 25, 2009
Source:
Economic & Social Research
Council (ESRC)
A group of leading UK scientists
and social scientists led by the ESRC Genomics Forum, based at
the University of Edinburgh,
calls for joined-up thinking on the emerging politics of plants.
Green is the new gold. The world is waking up to the potential
of plants — from food to fuel, industrial feedstocks to carbon
sinks, there is growing talk of plants replacing oil as the
cornerstone of the global economy.
But such fame comes at a price.
Recent 'food versus biofuel' debates are just one example of a
new 'politics of plants' that needs urgent attention at both
national and international levels.
Writing in the first issue of the new journal
Food Security, lead author Dr Emma Frow, research fellow at
the ESRC Genomics Forum, and her co-authors suggest that it is
not just a question of 'food versus fuel'. Food and energy
security are major concerns, but so are safeguarding human
health, tackling climate change, protecting landscapes and
global biodiversity, supporting rural communities, and providing
raw materials for industry. All of these issues are connected to
our use and management of plants.
Some of the world's major economic, political, environmental and
scientific institutions will have to be realigned if society is
to tackle these pressing problems.
"Our position paper argues that plants could be a perfect focal
point for joined-up government thinking on food security,
health, industry and climate change," comments Dr Frow.
"Scientific advances are creating opportunities for all sorts of
new and clever uses for plants — as biofuels, plastics,
'bio-factories' for chemical or drug production, and so on. In
principle, many of these applications could be both
environmentally sustainable and economically viable: a win–win
situation."
But Dr Frow sounds a note of caution: despite the growing
interest in using plants for new purposes, the amount of land
available for plants to grow is finite. "This is where conflicts
among competing priorities begin to emerge," she says.
The challenge is to make sure that positive strides in some
areas do not have long-term negative consequences for other
parts of the system. The sharp rise in cereal prices in 2007� —
fuelled in part by crop failures, increased biofuel production
and market speculation — is an obvious example of how plants are
linked to global food, energy and climate systems. The politics
of plants is likely to get increasingly complicated in the
coming decades.
"Lack of coordination is fuelling the emerging politics of
plants, and new efforts are essential to develop more integrated
and sustainable solutions," stresses Professor David Ingram,
co-author of the paper and former Regius Keeper of the Royal
Botanic Garden Edinburgh.
Describing some of the technological developments on the
horizon, co-author Professor Wayne Powell, Director of the
Institute for Biological, Environmental and Rural Sciences in
Aberystwyth, is optimistic:
"We will almost certainly see great improvements in our ability
to derive energy and other useful materials from plants," he
says.
Professor Powell adds: "The billion-dollar research question is
whether there is enough biomass to support all of our
environmental, social and economic objectives. We are learning
how to optimize the potential of plants, but the translation of
research findings into application is still rate-limiting. Land
and water availability are also key limiting factors."
How to balance these many roles of plants will become an
increasingly complicated challenge in coming decades, one that
we should openly acknowledge and debate. Interdisciplinary
research and joined-up government thinking will be necessary to
ensure that we can balance social, environmental and economic
objectives in a rapidly changing world.
BACKGROUND
- Article citation:
Frow, EK, Ingram, D, Powell, W, Steer, D, Vogel, J &
Yearley, S (2009) The politics of plants. Food Security
1(1):17-23. DOI: 10.1007/s12571-008-0007-6
The authors are based at the following institutions:
- ESRC Genomics Forum
(University of Edinburgh);
- Institute for
Biological, Environmental and Rural Sciences
(Aberystwyth University);
- Joint Nature
Conservation Committee (the statutory adviser to
Government on UK and international nature conservation);
- Natural History Museum
(London).
- The article is an output
from an interdisciplinary project on plant genomics based at
the ESRC
Genomics Forum
- Established in August
2004, the ESRC Genomics Policy and Research Forum is a novel
initiative in the field of social science research, funded
by the Economic and Social Research Council.
- As part of the ESRC
Genomics Network (EGN), the Forum acts to:
- integrate the diverse
strands of social science research within and beyond the
EGN;
- develop links between
social scientists and scientists working across the
entire range of genomic science and technology;
- connect research in
this area to policy makers, business, the media and
civil society in the UK and abroad.
-
Food Security is a new journal published by Springer. It
is the initiative of a distinguished international group of
scientists, sociologists and economists who hold a deep
concern for the challenge of global food security, together
with a vision of the power of shared knowledge as a means of
meeting that challenge.
- The Economic and Social
Research Council (ESRC) is the UK's largest funding agency
for research and postgraduate training relating to social
and economic issues. It supports independent, high quality
research which impacts on business, the public sector and
the third sector. The ESRC's planned total expenditure in
2008/09 is £203 million. At any one time the ESRC supports
over 4,000 researchers and postgraduate students in academic
institutions and research policy institutes. More at http://www.esrcsocietytoday.ac.uk
- ESRC Society Today offers
free access to a broad range of social science research and
presents it in a way that makes it easy to navigate and
saves users valuable time. As well as bringing together all
ESRC-funded research and key online resources such as
the Intute and the UK Data Archive, non-ESRC resources are
included, for example the Office for National Statistics.
The portal provides access to early findings and research
summaries, as well as full texts and original datasets
through integrated search facilities. More at http://www.esrcsocietytoday.ac.uk
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