Bioeconomy Transitions through the Lens of Coupled Social-Ecological Systems: A Framework for Place-Based Responsibility in the Global Resource System

Abstract

Bioeconomy strategies in high income societies focus at replacing finite, fossil resources by renewable, biological resources to reconcile macro-economic concerns with climate constraints. However, the current bioeconomy is associated with critical levels of environmental degradation. As a potential increase in biological resource use may further threaten the capacity of ecosystems to fulfil human needs, it remains unclear whether bioeconomy transitions in high income countries are sustainable. In order to fill a gap in bioeconomy sustainability assessments, we apply an ontological lens of coupled social-ecological systems to explore critical mechanisms in relation to bioeconomy activities in the global resource system. This contributes to a social-ecological systems (SES)-based understanding of sustainability from a high income country perspective: the capacity of humans to satisfy their needs with strategies that reduce current levels of pressures and impacts on ecosystems. Building on this notion of agency, we develop a framework prototype that captures the systemic relation between individual human needs and collective social outcomes on the one hand (micro-level) and social-ecological impacts in the global resource system on the other hand (macro-level). The BIO-SES framework emphasizes the role of responsible consumption (for physical health), responsible production (to reduce stressors on the environment), and the role of autonomy and self-organisation (to protect the reproduction capacity of social-ecological systems). In particular, the BIO-SES framework can support (1) individual and collective agency in high income country contexts to reduce global resource use and related ecosystem impacts with a bioeconomy strategy, (2) aligning social outcomes, monitoring efforts and governance structures with place-based efforts to achieve the SDGs, as well as (3), advancing the evidence base and social-ecological theory on responsible bioeconomy transitions in the limited biosphere.

Time to Say ‘Good Buy’ to the Passive Consumer? A Conceptual Review of the Consumer in the Bioeconomy

“…A domain that only receives relatively little attention is responsibility for usage (B4) with in total 13 publications addressing the issue and only three putting a strong emphasis on this domain. The publications address issues such as the link between the usage of biobased products, physical health, and biodiversity (Schutter et al, 2019), or the shift in consumers' perception regarding usage and ownership (Barčić et al, 2019).…”

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

“…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]. The bioeconomy represents a restructuring of the relationships between socio-economic systems and the environment, centred around bioresources and bioprocesses sourced from nature [12].…”

“…These examples use the language of natural capital, or adjacent themes, to illustrate arguments that environmental sustainability is a necessity for the bioeconomy's success, but do not connect the two on a conceptual level. Conversely, one paper does present a social-ecological systems framework for the bioeconomy that includes the variety of impacts and dependencies between the bioeconomy and the environment, but does not include any reference to natural capital or ecosystem services [12].…”

“…The bioeconomy argues this degradation may be addressed through more efficient use of biological resources, enabled through biotechnological capabilities [6]. However, the interactions between the bioeconomy and nature are bidirectional; a growing bioeconomy will also apply pressure upon the environment [12]. These pressures manifest as the conflicts of competing resource demands to achieve food security, energy security (the food versus fuel debate), and a supply of homogeneous, high-quality bioresources [17,41,59].…”

“…The "agroecology" or "bioecology" narrative has some resemblance to the natural capital approach in this respect but retains the language of public goods leaning towards the traditional economic lens and retaining a focus on service flows, rather than the asset base [8,45]. A social-ecological systems framework proposed by de Scutter touches upon the combination of private commodities (provisioning services) and public goods (regulating and cultural services) that contribute to the bioeconomy, but their framework does not draw the connection to ecosystem service classifications or the natural capital approach [12]. As such, this natural capital approach serves as a complementary tool that considers the broad spectrum of bioeconomy narratives to better understand the ecosystem services they emphasise, the implications for natural capital stocks, and the application of related methods to bioeconomic activities.…”