From the beginning of our project, we felt like the tool we were developing could be used to tackle major issues of this century that are being addressed by the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). By exchanging with different stakeholders, this feeling was confirmed, and we are proud to say that FIAT LUX contributes to 4 major SDGs.
The landmark UN-report Our Common Future, commonly known as the Brundtland report, chaired by the Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Harlan Brundtland, in 1987, introduced the term “sustainable development”, in the light of the realization that human activity very much shapes the biosphere. He also explained that for humankind to continue its flourishing, measures should be taken to ensure that further developments were carried out in understanding of the interconnections between environmental challenges, economic growth and social equity.
During the Rio Summit of 1992, also known as the Earth Summit, a conference of the United Nations, a number of environmental targets and legally binding agreements led to the creation of the UN Millennium Summit of 2000, which spawned the eight international developments goals (Millenium Development Goals - MDGs) for the year 2015. The 8 MDGs covered areas such as reducing child and maternal mortality, combatting specific diseases, increasing gender equality and education and, defined in a single goal, ensuring environmental sustainability. Reporting progress in all areas, although not necessarily meeting all targets, the MDGs were followed by the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2015.
The SDGs all work towards a common global cause and try not to jeopardize each other along the way. All SDGs could actually be linked to each other. We decided to focus on three specific ones that we feel like we most worked towards: zero hunger, responsible consumption/production and climate action, although as all SDGs work together, more could be targeted by our project.
Fighting food losses efficiently
Producing and consuming planet-friendly
Getting rid of pesticides
Nowadays, around 8.9% of the world’s population is suffering from hunger. SDG #2 (Zero Hunger) aims at ending hunger, achieving food security and improved nutrition and promoting sustainable agriculture. It requires a multi-dimensional approach which involves a change in our agricultural practices. Zero Hunger (#2) is an ambition that we must meet in order to secure a future where everyone has access to adequate nutrition. According to feedback from different researchers in the field, such as researchers from inov3PT (FN3PT research entity, the French agricultural professional organization for potato seeds), our tool, by helping research for treatments against phytopathogenic bacteria, could considerably prevent crop and economic losses, which will contribute to the development of solutions aiming at meeting this SDG.
A potato producer from the North of France, part of the FN3PT, told us that he needed a tool that could study the kinetics of pathogen development under different conditions (humidity, temperature...), in order to better understand why, from one year to the next, the appearance of diseases in his fields was very variable: this is what we developed through FIAT LUX. Farmers need to better understand the pathogens, to adapt the treatments according to the climate and to considerably decrease crop losses.
This will also contribute to a reduction in costs, especially concerning organic and healthy foods, thus encouraging responsible consumption and production.
The development of biocontrol and more responsible agricultural practices that our project will encourage is closely related to SDG #12 (Responsible consumption and production). Its purpose is to ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns.
Biocontrol is a set of plant protection methods based on the use of living organisms, chemical mediators or natural substances. Aggressor control techniques are based on the mechanisms and interactions that govern species-to-species relationships in the natural environment. Unlike pesticides, biocontrol products are neither aggressive to soils, nor harmful to the environment or our health.
While the principle of pesticides is based on the broad-spectrum eradication of pests and pathogens, biocontrol is based on managing the population balances of aggressors in the fields (Ministère de l’Agriculture et de la Souveraineté Alimentaire, Ministry of Agriculture and Food Sovereignty).
By creating knowledge about phytopathogens, our project directly helps develop new biocontrol solutions, which require more precise knowledge of the conditions, than pesticides. By working for the development of new solutions that do not involve the use of pesticides, we are working in favor of the agriculture of the future.
In the long term, farmers can have better yields, without using more pesticides. They will therefore have more organic food to sell, thanks to fewer losses. It can help reduce the cost of organic food, and consumers will be able to buy sustainable food at a more affordable price. By facilitating the production of non chemically-treated goods, our tool will lead to a lowering of their cost and thus encourage a broader responsible consumption.
The scientists from inov3PT we interviewed were interested in the scope and positive impact of our project on the environment (see the Human Practices page). More precisely, Jérémy Cigna, R&D engineer and Mounia Khelifa, plant pathology engineer and biocontrol program manager told us that our project and our communication around the project (see Education and communication page), contributes towards a better societal acceptance of biocontrol, as pesticides represent a concern at the consumer’s level. For a smoother transition, there is the possibility of alternating between biocontrol and conventional use.
Pesticides affect the environment. Chemical pesticides are very persistent in the environment and can accumulate in animal tissues (M.A.Hassan et al. 2021). Continental surface and ground waters are contaminated by these substances. Indeed, because of the use of pesticides for decades, they ended up infesting the soils with residues. Most pesticides are not selective and affect species that are not a threat to harvest. Their use can thus hinder the proper functioning of existing ecosystems. Application of pesticides can lead to the contamination of the aquatic environment in several ways, and they can directly affect fish (Ministère Ecologie Energies Territoires, Ministry of Ecology, Energy, Territories). The cocktail-effect between different pesticides can be an additional hazard factor (M.A.Hassan et al. 2021).
FIAT LUX works in “Climate Actions”. Our project participates in the search for more environmentally friendly treatments. This will ultimately lead to new products for agriculture such as new non-harmful chemicals (pesticides, etc.) and new biocontrol tools. Industrial R&D services are targeted, in order to participate in the development of biocontrol to control pathogens and crop pests worldwide.
We also created a catalog for farmers to help them better diagnose pathogens and act fast. This is further described on the Supporting entrepreneurship page.
FIAT LUX is fully in line with the government's incentive to implement biocontrol solutions, instead of pesticides, which have negative impacts on the environment. These approaches, also called "agriculture of the future", should be complemented with genomic approaches such as varietal selection, or solutions that are more respectful of soil fertility, said Mounia Khelifa from inov3PT. Moreover, the SEMAE entity which meets all the seed and varietal selection trades (producer, breeder, farmer, distributors) supported our proposal. They told us that our project has a main impact on the actors of agriculture, because this market is tense due to the regulations restricting the use of pesticides, as there are no other solutions to replace them. Through our exchanges with these different actors, we understood that our tool therefore encourages the efficient development of alternatives to pesticides. This thus allows us to contribute towards building more environmentally friendly agricultural practices.
SDG #17, Partnership for the Goals, strives for the strengthening of the means of implementation and revitalization of the global partnership for sustainable development. It is based on the idea that “The Global Goals can only be met if we work together”, and that “we need to be supportive, empathetic, inventive, passionate, and above all, cooperative”.
It is the state of mind with which we decided to take part in the iGEM adventure: we believe in mutual learning and in the idea that together, we can go further.
That is why we drew inspiration from previous iGEM teams who worked on bioluminescence, and gained as much insight and feedback as we could from previous works (see Description page, Why we chose to work on this subject). Indeed, many previous iGEM teams had worked with bioluminescence, but not many of them had given a concrete application of their tool, especially towards SDGs.
All along the way, we have endeavored to grasp significant and precious advice from each and every person we interacted with, whether it was in the lab or through our human practices approach. It is still with this approach in mind that we initiated different collaborations with other teams, in order to share each other’s knowledge and experience on our respective topics and to think together while looking in the same direction: innovation for sustainability. All this sharing and mutual learning was very enriching each time on both sides, and certainly helped us go further and take the best of each encounter and exchange.
Globally, all the meetups and collaborations (described on our Collaboration page) fell within that partnership for the goals SDG, but as examples:
The meeting organized by Thailand_RIS team for teams working on agriculture allowed us to get constructive feedback on different aspects of our project and our way of communicating it. It really felt like teaming up with all the teams treating agricultural issues to achieve our goals together.
We also had a meeting with the Patras iGEM team concerning our human practices approach. We could provide each other insight on our vision of this part of the project and get an external opinion.
Furthermore, FIAT LUX contributes towards all 3 pillars of sustainable development:
Social: The cost of FIAT LUX (see Entrepreneurship page) is affordable compared to the current tools already on the market and the opportunities for tracing tools under development. Indeed, we have created an open-source software and feasible hardware, to allow complete accessibility of our tool (see Hardware and Software pages). Therefore, all countries can use this tool.
Environmental: participating in the search for treatments to replace pesticides.
Economical: help farmers to lose less crops thanks to the catalog, with more efficient treatments, to use less, consume less and lose less money.
Our project hence aims at addressing not three, but four Sustainable Development Goals:
Zero hunger, by preventing crop losses worldwide
Responsible Consumption and Production, by encouraging more responsible agricultural practices
Climate Action, by preventing the use of pesticides which have enormous negative impacts on the environment
Partnership for the Goals, by taking inspiration from previous iGEM teams, collecting insights from different actors, and teaming up with current teams.
The exchanges we had with different stakeholders demonstrated how needed FIAT LUX would be to address these goals.
Our tool, as well as our software and hardware, have been thoroughly documented throughout our wiki, to allow future teams to build upon it. Indeed, our tool could be used for many different purposes, thus giving the chance to many people to use it for other goals.
L'utilisation des pesticides en France | Ministères Écologie Énergie Territoires (ecologie.gouv.fr)
Ministère de l’Agriculture et de la Souveraineté Alimentaire (https:\\agriculture.gouv.fr)
2021, M.A.Hassaan, A. El Nem. Pesticides pollution: Classifications, human health impact, extraction and treatment techniques. The Egyptian Journal of Aquatic Research, vol. 47, p.335-336. (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejar.2020.08.007)
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