Climate change, driven from our fossil-powered world, is threatening humanity. The effects of the climate crisis are becoming more obvious and brutal than ever before. It is vital that humanity transits to a resource-efficient and sustainable economy to mitigate and adapt to a changing climate while ensuring food security and job creation. The EU Bioeconomy Strategy, first published in 2012, enables a green and just transition and covers all of the aforementioned societal factors. The goal is to energise bio-communities, create synergies across Europe and increase value by attracting investments while respecting the ecological boundaries.
Progress is already evident, and has accelerated in recent years, regarding the above-mentioned objectives contributing to the European Green Deal but challenges remain. The bio-based sector is strengthened through private and EU funds. Actions promote research, scale-up of innovative ideas and networking throughout the Union. Despite the public interest in such activities, the regulatory framework and market access of end user products have created a bottleneck to develop large scale units and therefore replace fossil-based products. Funding opportunities are available, but assessments show uneven distribution of activities among EU regions. There are various tools to boost cooperation between Member States, share best practices and create regional action plans. However, investments in infrastructure are required to bridge the gap between research, startups, scaleups and policies. They will also help to move from small scale projects to a new ecosystem driving the bioeconomy and creating jobs.
The EU bioeconomy strategy needs to be strengthened since most of the initiatives already taken have received positive feedback from both policy makers and external stakeholders. However, stakeholders have agreed that sustainability should be the focal point of all actions to properly manage resources. Additionally, the level of engagement and communication between stakeholders of different regions and/or sectors shall be increased, especially among young people. To achieve this, the framework of monitoring and assessment of innovative ideas and their applications needs to be expanded further and take into account the socio-economic aspects and unique characteristics of each ecosystem. Certain areas that actions can be enhanced include:
- Transformation of the workforce
- Boosting research and innovation
- Increasing investment through policy and cooperation (such as product labelling)
- Raising awareness through consumer engagement
Besides the aforementioned areas, where progress is evident but there is still room to increase impact, certain fields remain practically untapped. Recent events have highlighted the importance of food security and the need to close the gap between supply and demand. To optimise the utilisation of resources, stakeholders must first perceive the ecological boundaries of land and water ecosystems and identify potential conflicts. Thereafter, a framework should be developed to resolve such issues taking into account the unique characteristics of each region (e.g. water scarcity), including demand on specific bioproducts. This framework along with relevant policy will help guide future investments towards a region’s specific sustainable path. Nevertheless, the burden on the environment should be mitigated in total by altering our consumption patterns. The progress achieved so far is promising and motivates towards further efforts to expand the bioeconomy strategy and relieve the pressure on the biological resources.
For more information please see the EU’s Bioeconomy Strategy Progress Report.