Bioeconomy as a promise of development? The cases of Argentina and Malaysia

Abstract

All bioeconomy strategies contain certain claims and promises, though these differ from one world region to another. Proceeding from an analysis of bioeconomy debates and the appropriation of the concept by key actors in Argentina and Malaysia, we argue that both countries regard the bioeconomy as a development strategy primarily geared towards the industrial upgrading of agricultural value chains. Its aim is to increase value added in the soy (Argentina) and palm oil (Malaysia) commodity chains by adding further domestic processing steps and developing new branches of industry. This is to lead to social and environmental upgrading and enable the countries to outgrow their subordinate role as biomass exporters. Referring to the world-systems approach and the global value chain literature, we argue that such upgrading strategies must be understood in the context of the hierarchical global division of labour and the position of individual countries in global markets. We show that the promises of industrial, social and environmental upgrading associated with hegemonic bioeconomy visions in Argentina and Malaysia have failed to materialise. Very few new jobs were created, while soybean and palm oil production continue to rely on environmentally harmful techniques. The socioecological long-term costs of the current production model remain unaddressed and unresolved, primarily because property relations and the underlying profit-oriented production model based on mechanisation, monocropping and a greater use of pesticides are never questioned. Should Argentina and Malaysia continue on their current paths, their chances of attaining the bioeconomy’s purported socioeconomic and environmental goals are very slim.

The more things change, the more they stay the same: promises of bioeconomy and the economy of promises

“…In the parlance of Eversberg et al, they thus present another 'reality check' to the promises of those strategies. Drawing on the examples of soy in Argentina and oil palm in Malaysia, Puder and Tittor (2023) confront these policies with the empirical socio-ecological effects of large-scale monocultural biomass production for and in a bioeconomy. They show that the focus of these countries' bioeconomy policies on expanding production for export in these sectors not only fails to deliver their own promises of social and environmental 'upgrading', but also reproduces the dependent positions of these countries in the global division of labor and nature (see, e.g., Alarcón 2022).…”