Bioeconomy - balancing nature and the human economy

Humanity has always faced challenges to balance its needs with those of the surrounding environment – even well before the Industrial Revolution. Once, threats to human survival and ecological well-being were seen in terms of hunger, diseases and military conflicts.
Today, whilst humans live generally in a world with lower levels of conflict and with far lower impacts from disastrous events caused by famine and deadly diseases, we face the challenge of co-existence with the natural world around us. On the one hand fossil fuels and products derived from them have given us energy and materials to create the living standards which many enjoy, especially in the global north. One the other hand, fossil fuels and the emissions and pollution from them alongside global mass-produced food systems, cause new forms of disease, loss of natural systems and rising global temperatures which themselves have devastating knock-on impacts- heatwaves, drought, flooding and so on. This so-called “linear economy” also has another lasting and truly global impact-waste: which we find in every corner of the globe and even in our food, water, bodies and the air we breathe.