A Path Transition Towards a Bioeconomy—The Crucial Role of Sustainability

Abstract

The bioeconomy is a worldwide used strategy to cope with ecological, social, and economic sustainability challenges. However, we analyze current bioeconomy strategies and trends to point out potential sustainability conflicts and transition challenges. Our analysis shows that the bioeconomy is not sustainable per se, as mere input substitution may entail welfare losses. Instead, it requires further debates and actions to avoid exacerbation of ecological and social strains. Sustainability has to be the key concept behind the bioeconomy and predominantly requires (1) sustainability of the resource base and (2) sustainability of processes and products, especially by (3) circular processes of material fluxes, not least to gain consumer acceptance for bio-based products. Otherwise, the bioeconomy would only entail the substitution of fossil resources for bio-based resources potentially lacking the generation of additional societal and ecological benefits and contribution to climate mitigation. As markets alone will not suffice to fulfil this path transition towards a sustainable bioeconomy, we argue that innovative governance is necessary to reduce competitive drawbacks compared to fossil resources (enabling function) and to secure ecological, social, and economic sustainability requirements (limiting function).

Resources, Collaborators, and Neighbors: The Three-Pronged Challenge in the Implementation of Bioeconomy Regions

“…Furthermore, from the analysis, it was found that there is an increasing call for the development of socio-economic assessment and monitoring tools for assessing the potential impacts of bio-based technologies, industries, and their produced goods and services on a regional scale, and these should be given a high priority in the short term [77][78][79][80]. In this way, the potential impacts of technical developments on regional communities and society as a whole can be better assessed and thus provide a better understanding of how well the regional bioeconomy is performing.…”

A Natural Capital Lens for a Sustainable Bioeconomy: Determining the Unrealised and Unrecognised Services from Nature

“…It is premised on the replacement of fossil-based, non-renewable resources with biological alternatives. High-level representations of the bioeconomy concept in policy and academia associate it with economic growth, job creation, and value addition; move away from the linear, throughput economic model; and promote principles of renewable energy, circularity, and the cascading use of resources [8][9][10]. Environmental sustainability aspirations also drive the bioeconomy concept through the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, the prevention of pollution that threatens ecosystems and biodiversity, and the efficient use of resources that limits exploitation and land-use change [7,11].…”

“…Despite striving for a "win-win" for both the economy and the environment [13], it should not be assumed that all interactions between the bioeconomy and the environment are positive [14,15]. Rather, the bioeconomy's contributions towards achieving environmental sustainability are recognised as conditional on the surrounding system and context-dependent [9,14]. Bioeconomic activities may have negative impacts upon the environment if implemented incorrectly [16][17][18][19].…”

Biology in the 21st-Century: Transformation in biology science and education in supporting the sustainable development goals

“…The environmental burdens which possibly occur are 1) the risk of disappointment because promises of the strategies are difficult to achieve, 2) bioeconomy is not the only way to low carbon economy, 3) persistent conflicts of biomass uses for food, material and energy production could lead to unstable policy supported with short-term shifts, 4) 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, 5) the acceptance of bioeconomy could be compromised if bioeconomy policies continue to ignore the on-going societal debates on agriculture and food (Egenolf & Bringezu, 2019). Sustainability has to be the key concept behind the bioeconomy which predominantly requires the base resource, processes and products, circular processes of material fluxes (Gawel, Pannicke, & Hagemann, 2019). Bioeconomy has based an economic on biology and bioscience to develop around US$ 2 trillion of product in agriculture, food, bioenergy, biotechnology and green chemistry which were exported worldwide in 2014 (El-Chichakli et al, 2016).…”