iGEM & the Sustainable Development Goals
by Will Wright, Todd Kuiken, and Jake Finan,
on behalf of the iGEM SDG Working Group
Will, Todd, and Jake moderated a session on this topic at
iGEM’s 2020 Opening Weekend Festival (YouTube)(Bilibili)
This year begins a concerted effort within iGEM to work towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) set by the United Nations. In this post, we will be focusing on the role of the SDGs as a framework for iGEM projects, highlighting inspiration from case studies and discussing their role in the iGEM community.
The SDGs are 17 goals that are set to be achieved by the global community by 2030, and they represent indicators of technical progress and societal goals that we and others can help strive to achieve. In particular, the SDGs are a way for institutions to align their resources and to open communications and engage with stakeholders in addressing the global challenges we face.
In iGEM, we see the field of synthetic biology as one of the most advanced techniques for working with biology – synthetic biology is one of the major drivers for a circular bioeconomy, where engineered organisms can be used to help the world transition away from dependence on fossil fuels and towards more sustainable future.
When we think about the underpinnings of the SGDs, we find that iGEM interfaces with the SDGs at all levels – iGEM projects can gain inspiration from the SDGs that address the biosphere (#15 life on land, #14 life below water, #6 clean water and sanitation, #13 climate action), which feed to SDGs supporting societal goals (#1 no poverty, #11 sustainable cities, #16 peace and justice, #7 affordable and clean energy, #3 good health and well-being, #4 quality education, #5 gender equality, #2 zero hunger), which in turn feed to economic goals (#8 decent work and economic growth, #9 industry, innovation and infrastructure, #10 reduced inequalities, #12 responsible consumption and production), and support a sustainable bioeconomy through global partnerships and cooperation (#17 partnerships for the goals).
We view 2020 as an experimental year to explore ideas around how best to work towards the SDGs within the iGEM community. For the first time this year, iGEM is offering a special prize for Best Sustainable Development Impact to recognize teams that develop solutions towards meeting one or more of the SDGs. This special prize encourages collaboration between iGEM teams in working together towards the SDGs, and does not require that teams have access to a laboratory.
To gain insight on how iGEM teams can best approach the SDGs, we posed some questions to an expert panel:
What do you think is driving some of the great opportunities and challenges that we have when working towards the SDGs?
“The SDGs are a very broad, but at the same time commonly agreed on, agenda that enables states, companies, and civil society to speak the same language and converge on the 17 priorities. This is a great opportunity for iGEM teams that want to move their projects forward because they can communicate with funders who are increasingly using the SDGs as a key tool for defining strategies. There is a challenge, nevertheless, when you speak about the SDGs because they are written at a policy level and so can be a bit abstract.
My advice is to look at the targets that are inside each one of the SDGs, which makes them more concrete and tangible. Also, realize that even though the SDGs appear as separate from each other, they are interconnected issues and so you need to think systemically about how you are going to tackle each of them and not prioritize one to the detriment of another.
In developing your project, relate to the SDGs as much as you can because it will help us converge on a common agenda, but also make sure you are adapting that to the level of your own initiative to make it useful for you.”
What actions can iGEM teams take this year in order to achieve some of these goals?
“The SDGs are a good tool for generating innovation. If you are simply told to innovate, it is hard to know where to start. But if you use the SDGs as a framework, you can decide where you want to innovate, and then focus on a specific subcategory within the SDG you have chosen. For example, you can choose to innovate in SDG #14 Life below water, and then further choose to focus on the subcategory of biodiversity. Biodiversity under water then becomes your outside framework, and you build on top of that to help fuel your innovation.”
What role do you see open science playing in global crises?
“JOGL is an open platform that aims to build a giant community of contributors to advance science. This year we launched an initiative to foster collaboration to enable open collaboration between iGEM teams and also between iGEM teams and external collaborators. ”
You can learn more about the iGEM 2020 program on JOGL by watching the session “JOGL: Fostering Open Collaboration Between iGEM Teams” (YouTube)(Bilibili) or checking out our post on the iGEM blog.
“We have been designing JOGL to recreate the collaboration dynamics that you see among iGEM teams, and to enable teams to gain access to resources, access to mentoring, and access to different skill sets that they may not have available locally.
On JOGL, each iGEM project is annotated by the SDGs, but no one project alone can solve an entire SDG. You need to build on top of other projects with other people. JOGL notifies iGEM teams about other things that are happening so the teams can interact and partner to solve the goal together.”
“No one entity can tackle global challenges alone; what is needed is radical collaboration. Most start-up companies need help – some need help financially, but many also need access to mentorship, access to labs, and access to the more experienced kind of setting that big corporations have. The big corporations need the sparkle of innovation that come from small and mid-size enterprises because it is difficult to innovate when you are a big company.
There is actually a good fit between start-ups and the maker culture and the big corporations, but it’s really difficult to facilitate that kind of coordination. At Hello Science we have created a platform that is very transparent, taking the principle of open science and turning it into a way of incubating start-ups and connecting them with local partners, investors, and mentorship. It takes some time to foster radical innovation ideas into sustainable businesses, but there is a lot of willingness from the big organizations and corporations to help that movement. ”
When we look at the biodiversity loss within the challenges of the SDGs, are there any options or case examples of ecosystem recovery?
“Many people think of conservation as a field where the progress is made is by getting people out of a certain area and then preserving that area. We look at conservation differently, and believe that if you overlap the power of technology and the power of collaboration with some of the issues in conservation, you can make tremendous progress. We focus on the underlying drivers of extinction rather than the symptoms of extinction. The sixth mass extinction has been caused by humans and so we have the ability to fundamentally change that.
At Conservation X Labs, we have two strategies – one is to have one of our labs build technologies that are needed, the other is to run prizes and challenges around open innovation. Examples of open innovation include a cooling prize to find air conditioning units that are five times more efficient than those on the market, an artisanal mining project to mitigate the impacts of small scale mining on the environment and human health, and finding re-use systems to prevent the entry of microfibers into the environment.
One of the technologies we are building is a DNA bar code scanner that enables you to do species verification in 45 minutes using a hand held device that is faster, quicker, cheaper than other devices on the market. You can see the utility of this device with COVID-19. We are in the process of creating an RNA assay that can be used in that device to detect disease, and are hoping this will become a platform that will enable people to do diagnostics in a really cheap way in rural areas and refugee camps to stop transmission of disease”
How do we assess whether a business is sustainable?
“This is a big question because if you want to take the responsibility for your entire business being sustainable you must consider many different elements. It is about your supply chains; it is about your human practice.
If you want to use the SDGs as a way to estimate, it’s not just about which resources you are using on the planet or what you may be letting out as a consequence of your production. It is also how the business is structured within your organization – do you support equality through gender and also the way people are distributed? Where does your supply chain go? Does it go to areas in other countries, and what are the regulations there? And it becomes even more complicated because what you might experience as normal or good from a Western or similar perspective might be different from the day-to-day practices of people in other regions.
An example is that you might want to live up to a regulation that says workers are not allowed to live in fabric or clothing plants. But if that means workers then have to travel four hours back and forth and living at the factory is the only alternative, what do you do in these sorts of situations? One way is to at least make sure to be aware. Have an overview so you are not caught off-guard and address the issues that you can. But also, don’t drown in all of the areas to address because otherwise you might end up doing nothing. Have a clear vision and some clear priorities as your main goals, and then otherwise be informed.”
“The human practices component of iGEM asks you to think about what happens outside the lab – from a biosafety standpoint if something were to escape the lab, and also from the standpoint of people who are actually going to utilize the innovations. The SDGs are a good way for teams to begin to evaluate some of those questions. You may be focused on one SDG, but it’s very possible that your innovation may be detrimental to one or multiple SDGs. As Emily said earlier, it is really important not to become overwhelmed by trying to solve all 17 SDGs at once; that’s impossible. Instead use the SDGs as a way to think about an evaluate the innovations you are looking to create.”
Can you start a business on an international scale by working with people you don’t know?
“When you look at the types of problems we have around the world, not everything can be solved using a business. A business is very good when you work on a problem where the people that are touched by the problem can buy the solution. That is not everyone. There are also problems where the cost of R&D is so high, because we know so little about the problem, that a company cannot face the cost by itself. That’s where open and collaborative science comes in. We need to come together and share knowledge with the whole ecosystem, so we can de-risk a lot of things that will enable companies, public institutions, and NGOs to use those tools and knowledge in the field.
Always ask yourself about what kind of impact you want to have and if it absolutely needs to be a start-up. It’s not an easy question because there are so many models, and each model is very complicated. You need to talk with as many people as possible to understand what it is to be an entrepreneur, in the for-profit world, in the non-profit world, in the institutional world.
In thinking about working on an international scale, you cannot start a business with people you don’t know. It’s important to start a business with people you know very well and can trust. However, you can collaborate with people that you don’t know because the mission is to advance common knowledge or a common tool. But if you need to come up with an actual solution, to go together as a team to face all the difficulty in the world, that’s where you actually need a strong team of people you can trust. ”
Is there one piece of advice you would like to give the iGEM teams for this year?
“For those teams who decide to create a business or non-profit to attack one specific SDG, always try to be bold and ambitious with what you create, but try to navigate by a step-by-step approach. Make sure you have your road map well defined and know the indicators you want to follow. From there, you can go deeper and deeper with time, and with your increasing expertise, to be able to navigate into different SDGs and make an even broader and more systemic impact. Expend most of your time and energy trying to figure out what the problem that you want to tackle is; speak with as many people as you can to be sure you know what the problem is, and from there find the solution that will best target the problem. ”
“It’s important to challenge business as usual. There is a new market for different kind of method, a different kind of organization, and different kind of impact. There is money out there and there’s a lot of resources. You have to challenge the system a bit as it is now. ”
“Keep your eye on the problem – What are you solving? Who are you solving it for? I’ve worked with a lot of start-ups, and I’ve had a start-up myself and made the mistake of forgetting the basics. Revisit whether the problem you are solving is a pain point that’s big enough and frequent enough that it needs a solution.”
“Many times, in start-ups or in settings like iGEM or Unleash, people start thinking ‘I could do this and I could that’, instead of thinking about why they are doing something. Start with knowing what is the problem. Have a clear insight into the problem you are trying to solve, and throw your idea for a solution out the window for a bit. Have a clear theory of change because having a clear theory of change will continuously make sure that you are sticking to the basics, keeping your eye on the prize and not getting too broad.
It’s important to know who your users are – who you are creating this for? Not just the stakeholders, not just the people you might want to sell this to or go into a business with, but also the person on the ground who will eventually have to use your product. Always think about what it is they are standing with and how your solution will help them. ”
“If you have a good team, you can go anywhere. Find the right people that you like to work with. At the end, the idea and the goal doesn’t really matter; you are just going to enjoy the journey. Find a good problem you want to solve and go for it, and you’ll enjoy it. ”
“It’s easy to see the light very far, but it’s very hard to make little steps and confront yourself. Something that helps is to have key impact indicators linked to the SDGs that you want to tackle. These become your key performance indicators so you have little goals for yourself that you gradually can reach, because you cannot reach immediately super far. Even if you dream about it, you have to cut it into little pieces. ”
In closing, we hope this information has given you some inspiration about the direction of iGEM projects towards the SDGs. We look forward to continuing the rest of the journey with you this season!
