Shades of green: a social scientific view on bioeconomy in the forest sector

Abstract

Politics increasingly introduces initiatives supporting a shift toward a bioeconomy aiming at a society relying strongly on renewable biological sources while achieving economic growth efficiently and sustainably. However, the agenda of bioeconomy comprises different "shades of green," in the sense that different actors stress different aspects of the concept, when embracing it in communication. This conceptual paper aims to present policy and socioeconomic theoretical frameworks and research areas relevant for a more holistic understanding of the bioeconomy concept applied to the forest sector, and identify a core set of potential contributions from social sciences for enhancing the bioeconomy in the forest sector. The paper focuses on studies within policy analysis, economics, and business administration disciplines. Thus it presents diverse disciplinary perspectives on the forest sector in a bioeconomy. Furthermore, innovation and sustainability have been identified as issues relevant to be approached across these disciplines.

Pathways to Shape the Bioeconomy

“…According to critics, two shortcomings result from this narrow understanding of the concept: on the one hand, an underrepresentation of certain disciplines and research topics, mainly in the social sciences; and, on the other hand, insufficient involvement of different societal stakeholders. The more far-reaching the consequences of a switch-over to another resource base, the more important a holistic view that encompasses different aspects of societal life, a variety of alternative implementation pathways, and a broad spectrum of research topics becomes (inter alia, [35,103,106]). Since this transition is a highly complex process that leads to fundamental changes in society, a strategy of diversity is needed that broadens the prevailing technology-based road by integrating socio-ecological approaches and opening up to new ideas that may arise from future challenges.…”

“…Social innovations are also attributed a key role with regard to the promotion of sustainable consumption patterns [101,102]. The social sciences are generally perceived as under-represented in bioeconomy research, and more interdisciplinary research is claimed [103][104][105].…”

What Is the Bioeconomy? A Review of the Literature

“…Consequently, research and innovation efforts often involve collaboration between actors with dissimilar competences, and the importance of research on issues such as consumer preferences is also stressed [10]. Innovation is also understood to require collaboration across sectors, e.g., that firms from the forestry industry engage closely with downstream actors [58]. According to McCormick and Kautto [9], the importance of cross-sectoral collaborations for bioeconomy innovation is also frequently underlined in bioeconomy policies.…”

Visions and Expectations for the Norwegian Bioeconomy

“…Within such socio-technical systems [31] or industrial economies, sectors have developed separately. The result has been conceptualized as 'siloed', activity-based sectors such as e.g., science/expertise [35] agriculture [36] and forestry [37]. Each sector is engaged with separate problems, has different stakeholders and is governed by different policy-regimes.…”

“…To succeed with a bioeconomic transition, integrated development is required [38] across sectors, between multiple actors and between institutions throughout society (see e.g., Kleinschmidt et al 2014 [37]). A shift to a complete bioeconomy would therefore demand cross-sectoral integration, or rather, a system change into a new socio-technical regime.…”