Regulation of nanotechnologies though engagement of the society

The EU-funded project GoNano, coordinated by the Danish Board of Technology over a period of 3 and a half eras worked on aligning the future development and use of nanotechnologies with the society needs and concerns By engaging citizens, civil society organization, the industry of nanotechnology and politicians in a co-creation process they created visions for nanotechnology in Europe.

Responsible technology development assures the ruture

Nanotechnologies – the aimed development of materials on atoms or molecular scale – have created big expectations. This is because of the potential this creates for energy, health, electronic, food and construction. At the same time it have also created a lot of worries about different unintended consequences of nanoscience. The question that occur is how development, science and the use of nanotechnology needs to be regulated.

Through engagement of citizens in science- and developmental processes regarding nanotechnology, GoNano have been demonstrating how collaboration with the civil society and different professional stakeholders have the possibility to create new suggestions for the future products of nanotechnology. The aim was to collaborate on concrete project suggestions within food, health and energy as well as illustrate the opportunities for innovation and development of political recommendations.

Results:  

The Project has illustrated the opportunities and challenges that occurs when including a large range of actors in co-creation processes on science and development of new technologies. When citizens and stakeholders of innovation across Europe are engaged early, the project have shown how to create consensus between societal values and -needs of development of nanotechnologies. Our results include among others:

• Methods development that helps communicate concrete recommendations and share experiences about co-creation and responsible science and innovation processes.
• Established a community of citizens, users- and stakeholder organizations, engineers and political decision makers, that all together have been working on ensuring a responsible development of nanotechnology within science and innovation.
• Shown that co-creation are able to create a wealth of product suggestions within energy, health and food, hereof five concrete product suggestions.
• Demonstration of the value of co-creation and engagement of stakeholders and citizens to ensue the innovation is aligned with the values of the society.
• Development of toolkits and training material that inspires science, innovation institutions and organizations to incorporate and engage the civil society further.
• Stated political recommendations to strengthen the accommodation towards the society needs, -values and -worries for the future applications of nanotechnology.

Read more, find toolkits, white papers, policy and industry –briefs and much more at gonano-project.eu  

GoNano (Governing Nanotechnology through Societal Engagement) was a 3½-årigt EU-project under Horizon2020, Grant Agreement no. 768622. It was coordinated by the Danish Board of Technology and have partners from nine other EU-countries.