Bioeconomy Strategies: Contexts, Visions, Guiding Implementation Principles and Resulting Debates

By R. Meyer. 2017

171 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Over the last decade, bioeconomy policies, guided by integrated bioeconomy strategies, have developed. This paper presents a systematic and comparative analysis of official bioeconomy strategies of the EU, Germany, OECD, Sweden and the USA with regard to their context, visions and guiding implementation principles. In an additional step, the relationship between these strategies and important scientific and societal debates around bioeconomy is assessed. In conclusion, five major stumbling blocks for the further development of the bioeconomy are worked out. First, there is the risk of disappointment because far-reaching promises of the strategies are difficult to achieve. Second, the bioeconomy is not the only way to a low carbon economy so alternatives could impede the desired development. Third, persistent conflicts between the different uses of biomass for food, material and energy production could lead to unstable policy support with short-term shifts. Fourth, a broader success of new bioeconomy value chains could trigger new societal conflicts over bioeconomy if efficiency gains, cascading use, residue use and sustainability certification are not sufficient to ensure a sustainable supply of biomass. Fifth, the acceptance of bioeconomy could be compromised if bioeconomy policies continue to ignore the on-going societal debates on agriculture and food.

Subfields: General Agricultural and Biological Sciences, Molecular Biology, Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/4e7571e71b75f001c8f3081d7ed3f945ca9389d0

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In General Agricultural and Biological Sciences

1. Julio Berbel
2. A. Posadillo
3. Laia Pié
4. Carmen Priefer
5. A. Petit‐Boix
6. R. Meyer
7. Valeria Ferreira Gregorio
8. Sina Leipold

In Molecular Biology

1. Julio Berbel
2. A. Posadillo
3. Laia Pié
4. R. Meyer
5. Valeria Ferreira Gregorio
6. Antonio Terceño

In Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health

1. Julio Berbel
2. A. Posadillo
3. A. Petit‐Boix
4. Sina Leipold

Citations in the corpus

• A Systematic Literature Review of Bio, Green and Circular Economy Trends in Publications in the Field of Economics and Business Management (2018, background): “At a global level, increased adoption of bioeconomy strategies in recent years can be observed [6,8,22,23].”
• Review and Analysis of Alternatives for the Valorisation of Agro-Industrial Olive Oil By-Products (2018, background): “A recent review of official bioeconomy strategies [6] revealed persistent conflicts between the different uses of biomass for food, material and energy production, and identified a need for bioeconomy policies to take into account the societal debates on agriculture and food.”
• Transforming the bio-based sector towards a circular economy - What can we learn from wood cascading? (2020, background): “Such incoherencies are well known from other policy areas such as the bioeconomy (Meyer, 2017).”