On the Circular Bioeconomy and Decoupling: Implications for Sustainable Growth

By Mario Giampietro. Ecological Economics, 2019

285 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract This paper explores the existing confusion around the conceptual definitions and interpretations of the term circular bioeconomy. The co-existence of diametrically opposite interpretations of the concept indicates lack of a serious discussion of its theoretical foundations. Two narratives on circular bioeconomy are explored in depth: (i) the new economic paradigm based on technological progress (the economics of technological promises) that seeks perpetual economic growth; (ii) an entropic (thermodynamic) narrative that reflects on the limits on economic growth imposed by nature. The latter narrative makes a distinction between primary, secondary and tertiary resource flows and helps to identify what can and cannot be re-circulated within the metabolic pattern of social-ecological systems. Adopting the biophysical view, it becomes clear that the industrial revolution represented a linearization of material and energy flows with the goal to overcome the low pace and density of biological transformations. The required level of productivity of production factors in contemporary developed economies (flows per hour of labor and per hectare of land use) is orders of magnitude larger than the pace and density of supply and sink capacity of natural processes. Relying on nature to ‘close the loop’ will simply slow down the economic process.

Subfields: General Agricultural and Biological Sciences, Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/a3504c28e1ed92e8e80ed5c1e4db180fa86947f1

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. M. Junginger
2. C. Spash
3. P. Stegmann
4. M. Londo

In Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment

1. M. Junginger
2. C. Spash
3. Steffen Lange
4. Johanna Pohl
5. Tilman Santarius

In Sociology and Political Science

1. M. Junginger
2. C. Spash
3. Steffen Lange
4. W. Vermeulen

Citations in the corpus

• Digitalization and energy consumption. Does ICT reduce energy demand? (2020, background): “…(Kallis, 2011; Kallis et al., 2018, 2012; Vandeventer et al., 2019; Weiss and Cattaneo, 2017), a-growth (van den Bergh, 2011; van den Bergh and Kallis, 2012), economies without growth (Jackson, 2016; Lange, 2018; Victor, 2019) and parts of the literature on a circular economy (Giampietro, 2019).”
• The circular bioeconomy: Its elements and role in European bioeconomy clusters (2020, background): “However, this only holds true if the CBE does not follow the paradigm of continuous economic growth (Giampietro, 2019), offsetting its potential benefits with excessive biomass use and rebound effects (Dalia D’Amato et al., 2018).”
• Analysing European Union circular economy policies: words versus actions (2020, background): “…social justice and global ustainability also needs to be further researched and understood, specially taking into account the impacts of entropy and the reound effect ( Mayumi and Giampietro, 2019 ; Millar et al., 2019 ; oreau et al., 2017 ; Murray et al., 2017 ; Temesgen et al., 2019 ).”
• ‘The economy’ as if people mattered: revisiting critiques of economic growth in a time of crisis (2020, background): “tems of resource throughput and low entropy dependency (Giampietro, 2019).”