Shaping the Quad's DNA: how can Quad countries manage biotech's opportunities and risks?
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This paper – authored by Dirk van der Kley from the School of Regulation and Global Governance – argues that biotechnology is set to be one of the most lucrative emerging technologies, offering an opportunity for Quad countries to cooperate on biotech standards, ethics, and joint research infrastructure. This opportunity also presents Quad countries a chance to play a role in shaping the biotechnology security debate. To ensure a common approach is taken to biotech, recommendations include a Biotech Standards Trade enabling program, a security and ethics dialogue, a Joint Research Infrastructure Sharing Arrangement, and an evolution of the Quad Vaccine Experts Group into a biotech dialogue with emerging countries.
Key points
Biotech will be one of the most economically lucrative emerging technologies. Many health, industrial and agricultural products will be replaced with more effective, cheaper and environmentally friendlier biological equivalents. Some predictions suggest that up to 60 per cent of all products could be made using biotechnology processes.
Three Quad governments – Japan, India and the US – have all recognised the need for dedicated bioeconomy or biotechnology strategies. Each has a dedicated biotechnology and/or bioeconomy strategy with a recognition that this will be a consequential industry. Australia too is devoting significant new resources to develop its life sciences sector.
The Quad countries should work together on biotech standards, ethics and joint research infrastructure initially. The most immediate overlapping national interests on biotech are ensuring that all four nations work together to have access to world class research infrastructure such as laboratories, computing power and gene banks; to develop a mechanism to harmonise technical standards in the rapidly changing sector; and a dialogue for ethics and security considerations in this rapidly changing sector.
The Quad can play a role in shaping security discussions on biotechnology. Biotechnology has the power to cheaply alter the genes of living organisms, from viruses to humans. Biological systems self-replicate and changes to one part of a system can cascade to other parts of the system. The Quad is a small enough grouping of powerful biotech countries with compatible forms of governance to start these difficult conversations about how to regulate this powerful set of technologies
Policy recommendations
- The Quad should establish a Biotech Standards Trade Enabling Program, to facilitate and promote standards harmonisation, technical alignment and regulatory coherence. This program will initially focus on finding areas of commonality. This program will allow for steady harmonisation where possible on emerging biotechnologies. It will also allow the four countries to present a joint position on issues of commonality at global standards organisations.
- The Quad should establish a dialogue on the security and ethical considerations of new biotechnologies. This dialogue can help resolve some of the key positions among Quad countries. These initial discussions will need to be broadened out to other countries further down the track.
- The Quad should establish a Joint Research Infrastructure Sharing Arrangement. Australia, Japan and India to different degrees struggle to commercialise their research and also face challenges in upkeep of expensive research infrastructure. This arrangement would allow for the infrastructure to be shared across more users.
- The Quad Vaccine Experts Group should evolve into a dialogue with emerging countries to explore the possibilities for future biotech technology and skills transfer. Lower- and middle-income countries want to be able to produce vaccines and develop their own biotech sectors. The Quad can transition from a provider of vaccines to an enabler of development.
About the series
This paper has been written for the Quad Tech Network Dialogue, as part of the Quad Tech Network (QTN) initiative. QTN is an initiative of the NSC, delivered with support from the Australian Government. It aims to establish and deepen academic and official networks linking the Quad nations – Australia, India, Japan, and the United States – in relation to the most pressing technology issues affecting the future security and prosperity of the Indo-Pacific.
