Each year, the FII Institute invites prominent global leaders in healthcare, finance, energy and education, as well as investors and policymakers, to the Future Investment Initiative forum, where innovative ideas for a more sustainable future for all are discussed.
This year’s fourth edition took place on 27-28th January in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, with connections to different cities around the world. The conferences revolved around the concept of the “Neo-Renaissance”, a nod to history whilst looking forward to the future. The question underlying the talks was: How can we re-imagine the global economy, in the midst of the global Covid-19 pandemic and build a more egalitarian and just world scenario?
One of the speakers was Barbara Belvisi, CEO and founder of Interstellar Labs. She is passionate about science, space, and nature. It was this passion that led her to create Interstellar Labs, an organisation that develops and builds small space-inspired villages and all kinds of life-supporting technologies, with the aim of regenerating life on planet Earth.
Barbara puts it clearly: we need to find new ways to live sustainably without harming the planet. Technology can help; it can provide concrete solutions to help solve major global challenges such as feeding the growing population approaching 9 billion people or providing solutions to the growing number of climate refugees. Interstellar’s innovative work uses space technology here on Earth.
One of the latest technologies is the Biopod, a state-of-the-art greenhouse that acts like an indoor farm, replicating a rainforest habitat through an aeroponic growing process, which balances the level of oxygen and carbon dioxide, just as natural habitats do.
Biopod is a kind of container that creates an intelligent microhabitat, mirroring natural environments.
Why is it intelligent? Because it is associated with an app that automatically detects and regulates temperature, light, humidity, ventilation and “rainfall”, to ensure that the environmental conditions are optimal for the development of life.
The potential of this technology is that food (herbs and vegetables) can be grown inside the greenhouses.
It offers an alternative for feeding people who do not have access to natural conditions to have a vegetable garden.
On the other hand, it contributes to the conservation of certain species of animals that are currently at risk of extinction due to increasing deforestation.
For instance, amphibians such as certain frogs: Excidobates mysteriosus. Biopod creates a space for animals such as these to live and reproduce there.
Undoubtedly, Biopod is an initiative with great potential to contribute to the solution of major social (such as hunger) and environmental (such as biodiversity conservation) challenges, at an effective cost. Of course they work very closely with NASA. But they also work with more traditional industries. For example Saint-Gobain plays a role in supplying materials and Dassault, the aircraft manufacturer when it comes to designing the domes and the simulations. She adds that there is also a long list of players involved in more practical elements waste and water management for example. Belvisi believes that private companies and the venture capitalist industry have a very important role to play. They have something that government-funded projects do not usually have: funding. Therefore, they are motivated to achieve their goals and are interested in making progress in order to get a return on their investments. Belvisi stresses that Interstellar Lab has a long-term goal, so investment must follow this pattern also.
‘It is essential that venture capital investment adapts to sustain these long term goals and the lifecycle of investment funds need to change from -10 years to longer periods.’
As Berkely points out, venture capital thrives on disruption, and in 2020 there was plenty of disruption. According to Berkely, total deployments last year were at 300 billion which is a 3% increase on the 2019 statistics.
‘With this pandemic we’ve been given a little bit of time to look back at ourselves and make changes, and to look at the world we’re building and now. We have this very interesting opportunity to try to build a future on our planet.’
