BioSTEP is an EU-funded project that aims to promote a participative governance of the European bioeconomy through engagemnt of stakeholders and citizens.
BioSTEP carried out a stakeholder consutation to provide insights on existing (policy) challenges related to the bioeconomy and potential (policy) measures to adress them.
This consultation includes views of 180 stakeholders, involving univeristies/research centres, government and private sector. The sectors represented in this survey are biofuels, biomaterials and biorefinery, 62% of the total participation in equal proportion, and the 38% represented forestry, food, environemnt, pulp and paper, aeronautics, biomass, bioenergy, policy, research, education, innovation and life sciences.
Overview of the responses:
Benefits and Challenges of the Bioeconomy
Perceived Benefits
Strongly Agree
-
Managing Natural Resources Sustainability
Agree
-
Supporting Investment in new infrastructures
-
Supporting investment in Knowledge, Innovation and Skills
-
Creating jobs and maintaining European competitions
Critical
-
Reducing dependence on non-renewable resources
-
Mitigating and adapting to climate change
Perceived Challenges
Strongly agree
-
Sustainable assurance
-
Policy coherence
Agree
-
Appropriate Financing
-
Participative dialogue with the public and bioeconomy stakeholders.
Potential Social Impacts and Challenges of the Bioeconomy
Perceived as Negative Impacts
Strongly Agree
-
Food Security
Agree
-
Participation (effective participation process, information transparency)
-
Distribution of revenues created
Concerns
-
Ethical implications
-
Health risk
-
Land Tenure
-
Employment and labour rights
Environmental Impacts of the Bioeconomy
Concerns
Strongly Agree
-
Resource Use (land use efficiency, energy efficiency)
Agree
-
Climate Change (life cycle based CO2 eq. emission, including direct land use change)
-
Water (availability, stress, quality, water use efficiency)
-
Soil (erosion, soil organic carbon, soil nutrient balance)
-
Biodiversity (protected areas, biodiversity conservation and management)
Strategies to address the challenges
Measures to Ensure Sustainability with in Emerging Bioeconomy
Strongly Agree
-
Measurement of sustainability performance
-
Incentives to improve sustainability performance
Agree
-
Mandatory sustainability certificated biobased feedstock
Ensuring Policy Coherence within emerging bioeconmy
Strongly Agree
-
Integrating bioeconomy strategies into agricultural, environmental, energy, regional, climate and industrial policies.
Agree
-
Adapting EU research & Innovation strategies and funding programmes
-
Developing policies promoting the availability of renewable raw materials
-
Developing appropriate regulations for the bioeconomy
Measures to improve Intra-governmental Communications
Strongly Agree
-
Establish multi-level working group(s) made up to central/regional/local government department representatives.
Agree
-
Scheduling regular inter-departmental meetings to promote dialogue between them
Measures to Promote Participative Dialogue
Strongly Agree
-
Establish working group(s) made up by public sector representatives and bioeconomy stakeholders
-
Introducing grant or loan-based financing schemes for public-private initiatives in the bioeconomy
-
Local/regional workshops attended by public sectors representatives and bioeconomy stakeholders
Agree
-
Establish national Knowledge Exchange Network to promote information sharing between bioeconomy actors.
Measures to share best practice
Strongly Agree
-
Establish networks of best practice bioeconomy regions in Europe
Agree
-
Organising best practice workshops for information sharing
Measures to Ensuring appropriate financing
Strongly Agree
-
Build investor confidence in the bioeconomy
-
Promoting public private partnership
-
Public funding for demonstration projects
-
Funding from national programmes for the bioeconomy
Agree
-
Implement green public procurement
The outcome of this consultation and engagement process will be a list of policy recomendations for the developemtn of balanced and informed bioeconomy strategies at the regional, national and Europena levels.
See the full report here