Sustainability Performance of National Bio-Economies

Abstract

An increasing number of countries develop bio-economy strategies to promote a stronger reliance on the efficient use of renewable biological resources in order to meet multiple sustainability challenges. At the global scale, however, bio-economies are diverse, with sectors such as agriculture, forestry, energy, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, as well as science and education. In this study, we developed a typology of bio-economies based on country-specific characteristics, and describe five different bio-economy types with varying degrees of importance in the primary and the high-tech sector. We also matched the bio-economy types against the foci of their bio-economy strategies and evaluated their sustainability performance. Overall, high-tech bio-economies seem to be more diversified in terms of their policy strategies while the policies of those relying on the primary sector are focused on bioenergy and high-tech industries. In terms of sustainability performance, indicators suggest that diversified high-tech economies have experienced a slight sustainability improvement, especially in terms of resource consumption. Footprints remain, however, at the highest levels compared to all other bio-economy types with large amounts of resources and raw materials being imported from other countries. These results highlight the necessity of developed high-tech bio-economies to further decrease their environmental footprint domestically and internationally, and the importance of biotechnology innovation transfer after critical and comprehensive sustainability assessments.

From stars to stripes: RNA‐directed shaping of plant viral protein templates—structural synthetic virology for smart biohybrid nanostructures

“…Numerous excellent reviews and textbooks have taken this up so that only a few ones dealing with general concepts are exemplified here (Chen, Wilmanns, & Zeng, ; Hamley, ; Hasan et al, ; Hou et al, ; Y. Liu et al, ; Luo, Hou, Bai, Wang, & Liu, ; Luo, Weiss, Liu, & Tian, ; Payne, ; Shi et al, ; L. Wang, Gong, Yuan, & Wei, ; L. Yang et al, ). Further motivations for bio‐integrative industrial process chains lie in their energetic and environmental advantages so that “bio‐based” fabrication is part of the bio‐economy strategies developed for many countries (Biber‐Freudenberger, Basukala, Bruckner, & Börner, ).…”

Evaluation of bioeconomy in the context of strong sustainability

“…In order to thoroughly examine the role of bioeconomy in the context of sustainability, we exploited ScienceDirect, Google Scholar, and Web of Science databases by applying the query “bioeconomy AND sustainability.” The role of bioeconomy in sustainability (or sustainable development) was analyzed by Aquilani, Silvestri, Ioppolo, and Ruggieri (), Loiseau et al (), Ramcilovic‐Suominen and Pülzl (), Sadhukhana et al (), Lainez et al (), Koukios et al (), D'Amato et al (), Zilberman, Gordon, Hochman, and Wesseler (), Biber‐Freudenberger, Basukala, Bruckner, and Börner (), and Schütte (). Considering the development of bioeconomy and the two types of sustainability (weak and strong), Loiseau et al () argued that the conventional bioeconomy concept is rather related to weak sustainability as it focuses on using natural resource inputs in the production processes.…”

Policy Coherence and the Transition to a Bioeconomy: The Case of Ireland

“…Although not a pioneer in terms of bioeconomy strategy development, lessons learned from experience elsewhere meant that the significance of policy coherence and effectiveness was recognized as critical in the design of the NPSB [19]. Based on a global review of country-specific characteristics Ireland was recently categorized as having a high-tech bioeconomy [14].…”

“…However, on this it did provide detailed action plans for coordinating policy with the food sector with emphasis on sustainable food production and processing. It should be recognized that for long term bioeconomic growth to be sustainable it will need the benefits and risks of any bioeconomic innovation and policy implementation to be subject to an intensive process of evaluative scrutiny [14].…”

“…Its development is dependent on efforts across a spectrum of policy spheres [12]. Indeed, while the transition to a bioeconomy presents advantages and opportunities, [9] it is not necessarily sustainable [13,14]. There are inherent risks that should be considered in developing relevant policies [15,16].…”