Environmental and Ecological Aspects in the Overall Assessment of Bioeconomy

Abstract

Bioeconomy solutions potentially reduce the utilization demand of natural resources, and therefore, represent steps towards circular economy, but are not per se equivalent to sustainability. Thus, production may remain to be achieved against losses in natural resources or at other environmental costs, and materials produced by bioeconomy are not necessarily biodegradable. As a consequence, the assumption that emerging bioeconomy by itself provides an environmentally sustainable economy is not justified, as technologies do not necessarily become sustainable merely through their conversion to using renewable resources for their production. A source of the above assumption is that the utility of bioeconomy is mostly assessed in interaction between technology developers and economists, resulting in biased assessment with private commercial technology benefits being included, but environmental costs, especially longer term ones, not being sufficiently considered in the economic models. A possible solution to this conceptual contradiction may come from bioethics, as a strong concept in environmental ethics is that no technological intervention can be imposed on nature beyond its receptive capacity. To achieve a better balanced analysis of bioeconomy, environmental and ecological, as well as non-economic social aspects, need to be included in the overall assessment.

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

“…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].…”

Identifying the challenges of implementing a European bioeconomy based on forest resources: Reality demands circularity

“…[61,62]. Panels could also use composites of cellulose nanomaterials to decrease car and aircraft weight and fuel consumption [64,65]. Due to high surface area, cellulosic nanomaterials in the form of porous aerogels and foams have already been used in absorbent products and designed for lightweight components, respectively, and this trend is expected to grow.…”

Bio-Based Production Systems: Why Environmental Assessment Needs to Include Supporting Systems

“…Biodiversity loss, ecosystem degradation, land-use-change, freshwater depletion, and greenhouse gas emissions are all examples of possible environmental impacts from unsustainably managed bio-based systems [4,[19][20][21]. Therefore, planning and transitioning towards a sustainable bioeconomy calls for assessment methods that are tailored towards the specific environmental issues of bio-based production [19,22]. This, in turn, requires a comprehensive understanding of the specific characteristics of these systems (mode of operation, critical environmental aspects, etc.…”

“…It is important to note that the regenerative capacity of biological resources is not static. On the contrary, it is tightly correlated with both the state of the resource stock itself and the state and availability of other limited resources (e.g., water, land, nutrients, soil or suitable habitats [19,22]). This entails that in order for condition (b) to be met, these critical resources need to be maintained within required limits to support regeneration.…”