The importance of Natural Products for enabling the Green Deal, Sustainable Economic Development and a Toxic-free Environment

Natural products provide opportunities to use locally-available ingredients and formulations for important societal benefits. They often offer the only affordable medical treatment in many underserved areas of the world and are rich local sources of nutrition. They can be used in products with both cosmetic and wellness benefits. Effective utilisation of such local natural sources as ingredients potentially contributes to solutions to societal challenges that we are facing including climate change, environmental costs of packaging and transport, poor dietary choices and overall lack of sustainability to many of our current economic models. Natural products even offer a source of potential alternative solutions to the COVID-19 pandemic, and ones which may be more affordable and accessible than drugs, in many regions of the world.

The European Green Deal aims to transform Europe into a modern, resource-efficient and competitive sustainable economy, where economic growth is decoupled from resource use and no person and no place is left behind. Actions include goals to invest in environmentally-friendly technologies, supporting industry to innovate with green energy-efficient technologies and to work with international partners to improve global environmental standards. Similar programs and goals are importantly shared with other regions of the world, providing a rational basis for action, in which strong and effective involvement by science, technology, industry and societal engagement holds promise to transform goals into change, if well-supported by governments. Significant European investment in the Green Deal is planned for the coming years with near-term programs including actions to protect our fragile ecosystem, to develop ways to ensure more sustainable food systems, to ensure more sustainable, more environmentally-respectful production cycles, measures to cut pollution rapidly and efficiently, and programs to achieve a “toxic-free” environment.

Both basic and applied research in natural products can provide valuable inputs into business activities that can progress the Green Deal on the market. However, it is not a correct assumption to believe that natural products do not have toxic effects. Like most chemical and biological substances, natural products have a range of activities including potentially adverse ones. Hence, there is a need and valuable contribution to be made to our improved understanding of natural products through an interdisciplinary scientific approach involving chemistry, biology, computer science and toxicology. Investment in and by the business sector, encouraged by government support, can transfer the knowledge to market products and services. Nevertheless, it will be the broader engagement of an educated, motivated and supportive society that will be a key success factor for these initiatives, in turn determining the world we leave to our next generations: one which can change, sustain and prosper while conserving our planet and its beauty and diversity, or one bound for destruction and failure. The purpose of this discussion is not just to raise such questions but to stimulate individuals and groups who see the potential to advance such goals with concrete ideas and development of solutions, in particular in this case with development of a range of product formulations that include natural products, greener ingredient substitutions, and SaferbyDesign methods applied across the life cycle. For those motivated to work, both hard and inspired, on such innovation, there is a lot of interesting and important work to do in the years ahead.

I will talk on this topic at OpenTox 2020 https://www.opentox.net/events/virtual-conference-2020/program