A framework to identify and coordinate responsibilities in industrial research and innovation

This doctoral thesis investigates the concept of responsibility in the setting of industrial research and innovation (R&I). Companies have multiple responsibilities in society: profit generation for shareowners, legal and contractual liabilities, as well as socially and morally binding obligations beyond legal compliance. These...

Responsible Learning about Uncertain Risks arising from Emerging Biotechnologies

The current regulatory regime regarding GMOs within the Netherlands and Europe does ensure safety but struggles in balancing this notion with innovation. In particular, the way the Precautionary Principle (PP) is operationalized in GMO legislation has resulted in a highly precautionary culture in which there is little room to conduct research...

Troubled wastewaters: the politics of transitions to a circular economy

Humanity faces major challenges because the boundaries of an ecologically safe and socially just space are transgressed.<br/>This thesis’ point of departure is that these societal challenges result from longterm, complex, unsustainable consumption and production patterns in sociotechnical systems such as energy, mobility, agriculture and water....

Towards water resource factories: Designing and planning sustainable circular wastewater treatment processes

In the current linear take-make-waste pattern the production of goods starts with raw material extraction followed by industrial conversion into products that are used and finally wasted. This linear system accelerates resource depletion and therefore hinders the development of sustainable societies. This is also valid for the use of water and...

Alternative aviation fuels in Brazil: Environmental performance and economic feasibility

The aviation sector is responsible for only 3% of the anthropogenic carbon emissions in the world. However, this transport mode – which demands 3-fold more energy per capita than other collective modes, such as railway and bus transportation – is exclusively supplied by fossil fuels, and it has grown at an impressive rate of 7.5% per year in the...

Inclusion in sugarcane ethanol expansion: Perceptions of local stakeholders in the Brazilian context

The global search for alternative energies has put Brazil's sugarcane at the centre of the debate about the pros and cons of first-generation bioenergy as a supplier of global needs for cleaner energy. In fact, the already mature and structured sugar cane sector attracted important investments for its expansion. However, this led to global...

Biorefinery Design in Context: Integrating Stakeholder Considerations in the Design of Biorefineries

Biobased production has been presented as a sustainable alternative to the use of fossil resources. However, emerging controversies over the impacts of biofuels (on, e.g., land use, food, and energy security), made it clear that this production approach cannot be assumed to be inherently sustainable or unsustainable. Behind these controversies...

The why’s and how’s of public sector scientists’ policy engagement: The lessons from agricultural biotechnology

The biobased economy is regarded as a possible solution for<br/>addressing the challenges associated with climate change and<br/>the growing human population. Due to progress in science<br/>and technology the biobased economy can provide additional<br/>food and renewable energy to meet the needs of the expected<br/>9 billion people by 2050.<br/...

Emotions matter for public engagement in the emerging biobased economy

This thesis explores the role of emotions for triggering public engagement in the emerging bio-based economy. Emotions have been found to be important in people’s communication, judgement formation decision making and interactions with our surroundings. In current engagement practises there is hardly any attention for emotions; how they can be...

Selection and development of innovative design alternatives: Ethical, social and uncertainty issues

Innovative engineering design shapes the development of novel technologies and is ethically as well as socially relevant, because it affects what kind of possibilities and consequences will arise. A major challenge in engineering design work on innovative technologies is the multitude of uncertainties in the form of known unknowns, unknown...

Enhancing Socially Responsible Innovation in Industry: Practical Use for Considerations of Social and Ethical Aspects in Industrial Life Science & Technology

The aim of the study presented in this thesis is to explore to what extent corporate researchers in the field of industrial Life Science & Technology (LST) can consider social and ethical aspects of LST innovation to improve their Research and Development (R&D) practices. Innovators, particularly those working in controversial scientific and...

Social Responsibility in Research Practice: Engaging applied scientists with the socio-ethical context of their work

How to encourage researchers to critically reflect on the ethical and social dimensions of their work? That is the central research question of this thesis. It starts from the assumption that the neutrality view of the social responsibility of the researcher – the view that researchers have no business with the social and ethical dimensions of...