Designing Sustainability: The Limits of Technospatial Growth Imaginaries

• In Event: Regeneration, Promises and Innovation in the Bioeconomy

Abstract

In the wake of the global “food versus fuel debate” of the late 2000s, algae emerged as a promising sustainable material to transform the bad reputation of biofuels, and to add more to the bioeconomy by providing other bioproducts, such as vitamins, drugs, and cosmetics. The hope around algae gets concretized through various technoscientific projects expanding across different geographies. This paper traces the making of algae-based bioeconomies as part of sustainable futures with a focus on integrated algal biofuels projects that are designed offshore, particularly of the NASA’s OMEGA Project (Offshore Membrane Enclosures for Growing Algae). It investigates different sustainability imaginaries that activate algae as part of blue economies. Through this investigation, this paper unpacks the ways sustainability imaginaries enact particular understandings of the relations between economy and ecology and draws attention to the limits of technospatial growth imaginaries for sustainable living. Challenging these imaginaries, this paper instead explores alternate ways of engaging with oceanic organisms as a way to confront relentless reductions of life into technologically mediated resources, therefore, provides an alternative imaginary by linking this confrontation with a debate on Blue Degrowth.

Author

• Duygu Kasdogan, İzmir Katip Çelebi Üniversitesi