Background and introduction to the Initiative

Very few of the serious problems experienced by the disadvantaged of either the developing or developed world are being adequately addressed by modern biological technologies. These problems include the lack of sustainable food production, fragile rural economies, poor nutrition, environmental degradation, poor public health practices, insufficient attention to diseases and medical conditions of poor people or marginalized communities.

While the potential to impact all of these problems with biological technology of various kinds is undeniable, the discouraging lack of progress has at its core a structural failing associated with the use of science as an instrument of economic and social development.

Sustainable and equitable development can only happen through the committed and creative participation of those experiencing problems in the generation of robust local solutions.

If science is to be relevant as a component of this process, it must be part of an integrated process of democratic innovation that is sensitive to the operating constraints of problem solvers.

However, much of modern science – and in particular biological technologies – has evolved in a world of high-capital, high-margin applications that are often irrelevant to the poor or excluded communities that make up more than four billion of the world’s population.

This evolution of technologies – mirrored in the evolution of intellectual property regimes to protect and promote them and business models to develop and deliver their applications – reinforces the differential and furthers the disenfranchisement of the poor.

This cycle of exclusion is neither irreversible nor inevitable.

The Information and Communications Technology industries have evolved new innovation models that point to a productive way forward. The concepts of collaborative invention of core technology and its provision in a protected commons have now galvanised the software industry to new levels of creativity and democratisation in business and society, without compromising its profitability.

The explosion of patenting and the pace of discoveries and investment in biological sciences, while hinting at great opportunities, have created a thicket of rights and self-reinforcing barriers to innovation that continually marginalize those most at need.

It is not the products of biotechnology that the poor need, per se. This could never be sustainable or realistic, given the state of science, economics, business and society.

Rather what is needed is the opportunity to engage in collectively creating solutions to their own challenges using tools that meet their operating constraints, and which may be uniquely suited to these tasks.

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