Socio-economic and environmental impacts on the whole value chain update

The overall objectives of Work Package 5 (WP5) are to evaluate the socio-economic and environmental impacts on the whole value chain. 

Specific objectives are:

• To obtain consistent characteristics and data set of whole value chain
• To perform a socio-economic impact assessment of NPBTs and the whole value chain to gain knowledge about growth, job creation, distribution, competitiveness, value chains
• To perform an environmental assessment of NPBTs and the whole value chain in comparison to conventional reference systems
• To analyse societal issues facilitating or hindering chicory innovation

Updates

WP5 is tasked with evaluating socio-economic and environmental impacts on the whole value chain of the newly developed chicory crops. Therefore, a socio-economic impact assessment and an environmental assessment of NPBTs and the whole value chain will be performed. In addition to these quantitative assessments, qualitative research on societal issues hindering or facilitating chicory innovation will be applied.

Within the socio-economic assessment, the impact of different NPBTs on economic and social indicators will be quantified such as GDP, production volume, growth, competitiveness, and employment as well as the distribution of wealth and income between different sectors and regions within the EU and the global economy. The LCA will give information on e.g. greenhouse gas emissions, primary energy demand, water consumption, land use of the new value chain developed in CHIC. With broad input by all partners, concepts were defined that differ in aspects such as whether CRISPR edited chicory is regulated as GMO or not, whether it is grown in the open field or greenhouses, and what type of products are isolated from them. These concepts will be evaluated for their socio-economic and environmental impacts.