Smart and Sustainable Bioeconomy Platform: A New Approach towards Sustainability

Abstract

The smart and sustainable bioeconomy represents a comprehensive perspective, in which economic, social, environmental, and technological dimensions are considered simultaneously in the planning, monitoring, evaluating, and redefining of processes and operations. In this context of profound transformation driven by rapid urbanization and digitalization, participatory and interactive strategies and practices have become fundamental to support policymakers, entrepreneurs, and citizens in the transition towards a smart and sustainable bioeconomy. This approach is applied by numerous countries around the world in order to redefine their strategy of sustainable and technology-assisted development. Specifically, real-time monitoring stations, sensors, Internet of Things (IoT), smart grids, GPS tracking systems, and Blockchain aim to develop and strengthen the quality and efficiency of the circularity of economic, social, and environmental resources. In this sense, this study proposes a systematic review of the literature of smart and sustainable bioeconomy strategies and practices implemented worldwide in order to develop a platform capable of integrating holistically the following phases: (1) planning and stakeholder management; (2) identification of social, economic, environmental, and technological dimensions; and (3) goals. The results of this analysis emphasise an innovative and under-treated perspective, further stimulating knowledge in the theoretical and managerial debate on the smart and sustainable aspects of the bioeconomy, which mainly concern the following: (a) the proactive involvement of stakeholders in planning; (b) the improvement of efficiency and quality of economic, social, environmental, and technological flows; and (c) the reinforcement of the integration between smartness and sustainability.

Bioeconomic Entrepreneurship and Key Factors of Development: Lessons from Argentina

“…It would be important to more thoroughly investigate this diversity of bioeconomic approaches, and to have a closer look at local initiatives that are not (only) based on sophisticated technologies, but also include social and agro-ecological innovations [64]. We further consider that any research initiative in this direction would benefit greatly from the methodological proposal put forward by D'Amico [65] in terms of stages to characterize bioeconomy development processes.…”

Future of Hydrogen as an Alternative Fuel for Next-Generation Industrial Applications; Challenges and Expected Opportunities

“…However, many are only in the early phases of development or suffer from intrinsic drawbacks. Hydrogen production routes from biomass are unlikely to play a significant role due to the overall limited resources of sustainable biomass; however, they may offer pathways toward harmful emissions via the sequestration of CO 2 [62,65,71,105].…”

The importance and interdependence of key bioeconomy concepts: A bibliometric analysis

“…Although some authors consider the bioeconomy to be sustainable by definition (Pfau et al, 2014;Stegmann et al, 2020), there are other voices emphasizing the existence of sectors where processes are not entirely based on environmentally friendly techniques (Pfau et al, 2020;Stegmann et al, 2020). Therefore, we have limited the concept of sustainable bioeconomy to use parts of bioeconomy, knowledge-based bioeconomy and bio-based economy, but we included the whole concept of circular bioeconomy based on the clarifications made by the European Commission (2018) that the bioeconomy in general, and the European one in particular, must be sustainable and circular at by default (Stegmann et al, 2020;D'Amico et al, 2022).…”