Week 1 HW: Principles and Practices

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Governance as a Design Decision Tree

This project treats governance not as an external constraint added after design, but as an integral part of the design process itself. Key technical uncertainties and scaling decisions are understood as ethical and governance decision points.

Decision Point 1: Living vs. Non-Living Pigment Systems

At the current stage of the project, it is not yet determined whether pigments will be used through living bacterial systems (e.g., embedded or encapsulated) or extracted from non-living biomass after bacterial deactivation. This unresolved decision is treated as a critical ethical limitation.

  • If living systems are used:

    • Primary risk: Loss of control over engineered organisms beyond intended environments
    • Governance implication:
      • Phase-gated governance becomes essential
      • Reassessment required before any transition beyond the lab
    • Relevant governance actions:
      • Option 2 (Phase-Gated Governance for Scale-Up)

  • If pigments are extracted from non-living biomass:

    • Primary risk: Reduced biosecurity risk, but continued environmental impact
    • Governance implication:
      • Biosafety-by-design is largely sufficient at early stages
    • Relevant governance actions:
      • Option 1 (Biosafety-by-Design Requirement)

This decision point highlights that materialization choices directly shape ethical risk profiles.

Decision Point 2: Laboratory Scale vs. Industrial Scale

Ethical and safety risks change significantly as the system moves from controlled laboratory conditions to pilot or industrial-scale production.

  • Laboratory-scale experimentation:

    • Primary concern: Lab safety and containment
    • Governance focus: Preventing incidents before they occur
    • Relevant governance actions:
      • Option 1 (Biosafety-by-Design)

  • Pilot and industrial-scale production:

    • Primary concern: Diminishing control, environmental exposure, and system persistence
    • Governance focus: Anticipating scale-induced risks
    • Relevant governance actions:
      • Option 2 (Phase-Gated Governance)
      • Conditional approvals tied to containment and disposal strategies

This decision point reflects the assumption that safety does not scale linearly with production.

Decision Point 3: Environmental Claims and Sustainability Narratives

Biological origin is often equated with sustainability. This project explicitly challenges that assumption.

  • If environmental benefit is claimed:
    • Primary risk: Replacing chemical toxicity with biological extraction harm (e.g., water overuse, biomass exploitation, ecosystem disruption)
    • Governance implication:
      • Environmental responsibility must be comparative, not absolute
    • Relevant governance actions:
      • Option 3 (Comparative Environmental Accountability Framework)

This decision point reframes sustainability as a measured and governed outcome, rather than an assumed property of “natural” systems.

Decision Point 4: Speed of Innovation vs. Depth of Oversight

Governance choices also affect the pace and openness of research.

  • If governance is too light:

    • Risk of irreversible harm emerging at scale

  • If governance is too heavy:

    • Risk of stalling exploratory research and creative experimentation

  • Design trade-off:

    • Early-stage flexibility supported by Option 1
    • Increased oversight introduced progressively through Option 2
    • Environmental accountability applied selectively through Option 3

This staged approach aims to preserve innovation while preventing loss of control.

Summary

By framing governance as a design decision tree, this project acknowledges that ethical responsibility evolves alongside technical decisions. Uncertainty—particularly around living systems and scale—is treated not as a failure, but as a signal for adaptive and anticipatory governance.