Synaestivum aims to address four of the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals. We hope that the creation of heat-tolerant wheat, a technology to be expanded to other essential crops, will help advocate towards increased food security, climate security and sustainable systems.
Zero Hunger
In a 2021 report by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), moderate or severe food insecurity worldwide has been increasing, from 22.6% of the population in 2014 to 26.6% in 2019, rising up to 30.4% in 2020 with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic[1]. Decreases in crop yields affect populations in small and developing countries the most, since they often do not have means of feeding themselves other than local crops. When using our transgenic wheat farmers will experience fewer events of crop loss due to heat. We expect that our product will support these populations specifically through sustaining the food products they consume, reducing overall hunger.
Given that smaller-scale farmers are our intended main end-users, we aim to address target 2.3 of the zero hunger SDG. Since preventing agricultural losses increases productivity, we are also addressing target 2.4. Overall, our project is positively interacting with the zero hunger SDG through creating more food products from the same amount of resource input. However, it could also potentially negatively affect this SDG through unequal access to this innovation. The price of this engineered wheat strain could prevent certain groups from accessing it. Therefore, it could be accidentally negatively impacting SDG #10, Reduced Inequalities, through the long-term economic considerations of our project.
Sustainable Production & Consumption
Our wheat variety reduces overall crop loss, thus the total planting and harvesting attempts required to produce the same yield will decrease. This will result in less overall land used to produce the same amount of wheat, contributing to conscious production systems that don't overuse land resources (EEA). This will ensure more efficient use of the natural resource of land (target 12.3) and the reduction of biomass waste generated from agricultural practices (target 12.5), positively affecting the environment in the long term.
In assessing the impact of our project towards SDG #12, we consulted with the founder of Liven Proteins, a company meant to reuse byproducts from food processing in agricultural systems to produce plant-based protein. Her company has the same goal in contributing to food systems that result in less overall biomass waste. From a commercialization standpoint, which we have documented on our Entrepreneurship page, Fei Luo recommended we focus on the value proposition more than the technicalities of the solution, since at the beginning you are attempting to build a good business model in order to have the resources to carry out the technical aspects of the project. For the purpose of strengthening our value proposition, she suggested we seek feedback on our project from farmers and potential end-users outside Canada, since Canada is a cold country in general and hence their opinions on the need for our technology would be representing a small subset of the population that would actually use it. In response, we seeked advice from Indian and Peruvian farmers which is documented in our Integrated Human Practices page.
Apart from stakeholder consultation, we worked towards this goal through creating a podcast. The podcast discussed how to come closer to reaching this SDG through different initiatives, with speakers from various contexts who are working to reach SDG #12. This is documented in detail in our Outreach and Communication page as we hope it can serve as a source of inspiration for future iGEM teams. The increased awareness around initiatives meant to reach the Sustainable Production and Consumption systems aimed to address target 12.8 of this SDG along with our GMO panel which increased awareness on how GMOs can help reach sustainability goals. Overall, our work towards this SDG indicates that we are positively affecting the responsible consumption and production targets.
Climate Action
Synaestivum promotes climate action through our project being a direct counter-action to agricultural loss caused by a climate-based hazard. As such, our project this SDG's target 13.1 by “strengthening resilience and adaptive capacity to climate-related threats and natural disasters in all countries”. The universal, global aspect of this goal was addressed by the creation of our “International Accessibility of Synbio Innovations” panel, which discussed the infrastructure and funding resources implemented in developed countries that could be implemented in developing countries to be able to access synthetic biology innovations. Given that a large portion of synthetic biology innovations, including ours, is meant to combat climate-based threats, this positively contributed to the climate action SDG through promoting global access to climate solutions. This panel, along with our GMO perspectives panel, raised awareness of how synthetic biology can be used to solve some of the globe's largest problems, including climate change, hence also addressing target 13.3.
To work towards this goal, we consulted with local farmers about how well our system would address climate action in agriculture. The detailed notes from these interviews are in our Integrated Human Practices page. The main points farmers mentioned were about how our project would address the most dire climate-based parameters that are negatively affecting their crop yield. This exploration of how well our project addressed stakeholders' climate-based needs was able to reinforce our value proposition as outlined in our Entrepreneurship page.
Goal Partnerships
As mentioned above, a portion of our work towards the SDGs was done in partnership with iGEM Patras. Our panel on making synthetic biology technologies reach developing countries contributed most significantly to this SDG. The panel included synthetic biology academics and industry professionals from both developed and developing countries, such that those in developed countries provided examples of programs and initiatives that have facilitated the use of synthetic biology innovations in their country. This provided those in developing countries with examples of initiatives they could develop to increase awareness around GMOs and promote sustainable synthetic biology-based technologies. We positively worked towards this SDG through the promotion of long-term societal partnerships between representatives from developed and developing countries.
[1] FAO, IFAD, UNICEF, WFP and WHO. (2022). The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2022. Repurposing food and agricultural policies to make healthy diets more affordable. https://doi.org/10.4060/cc0639en