The bioeconomy transition is a double-edged sword that may either address fossil fuel dependence sustainably or aggravate human pressures on the environment, depending on how it is pursued. Using the emblematic case of Brazil, this article analyzes how corporate agribusiness dominance limits the bioeconomy agenda, shapes innovation pathways, and ultimately threatens the sustainability of this transition. Drawing from scholarship on power in agri-food governance and sustainability transitions, an analytical framework is then applied to the Brazilian case. The analysis of current policies, recent institutional changes and the case-specific literature reveals that, despite a strategic framing of the bioeconomy transition as a panacea for job creation, biodiversity conservation and local development (particularly for the Amazon region), in practice major soy, sugarcane and meatpacking conglomerates dominate Brazil’s bioeconomy agenda. In what can be described as conservative ecological modernization, there is some reflexivity regarding environmental issues but also an effort to maintain (unequal) social and political structures. Significant agribusiness dominance does not bode well for smallholder farmers, food diversity or natural ecosystems, as major drivers of deforestation and land-use change (e.g., soy plantations, cattle ranching) gain renewed economic and political stimulus as well as greater societal legitimacy under the bioeconomy umbrella.

Biofuels have provided the earliest large-scale experience of bioeconomy deployment on the globe. Biofuel controversies, therefore, represent early bioeconomy contestations. Besides providing a state-of-the-art overview of biofuel technologies and production pathways, this chapter reviews various ecological and social issues related to bioeconomy promotion. It shows that, despite replacing fossil fuels or other fossil-based products, the sector's environmental sustainability is far from straightforward. From ecological issues (e.g., climate change mitigation, biodiversity conservation, freshwater consumption) to socio-economic ones, such as the food vs. fuel debate, the chapter reviews the potentials for rural development promotion through the bioeconomy and examines it also in terms of North-South equity. It characterizes strategies that help bridge the North-South gap and contrasts them with bioeconomy approaches that fail to address that gap-or which widen it (neocolonialist approaches). While advancing the concept of equalizing development to qualify strategies that help close that global gap, this overview expounds on the breadth of sustainability issues linked to biofuels and the bioeconomy. That is an essential step towards a critical understanding of what is at stake and of the multiple contestations in this policy area.

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Bioeconomies are yet to meet their sustainable development potentials. Thus far, mostly unsustainable production has prevailed, due to reasons on four different levels. First, domestic regulatory and economic incentives have favored conventional, input-intensive monocultures and big agribusiness-controlled systems. Second, some norms have been crucial in underlying those policies: (i) the economic but not political inclusion of smallholders and low-income countries; (ii) the preeminence of climate and wild biodiversity conservation over other sustainability issues, assuming "renewable" to mean "sustainable" and disregarding the performance of bio-based production on other social and environmental criteria; and (iii) an implicit urban bias that limits rural development strategies and prioritizes the provision of resources to cities. Third, state and private agroindustry agents who espouse those norms have formed winning coalitions to concretize policy beliefs held in common. Ultimately, there are feedback loops between agency, governance architectures, and allocation and access patterns. Therefore, the prevailing production patterns' very distributive outcomes can be identified as a cause underlying their dominance. As such, social equity reveals to be not just a normative goal but also a key determinant of governance. To not aggravate inequalities and be more sustainable, bioeconomy promotion needs policies that reconfigure allocation patterns and promote structural change.

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