Sustainable Land-Based Bioeconomy Development

Dear Colleagues,

The bioeconomy as a scientific concept was first introduced in the 1970s through an analysis of the economic process with respect to fundamental laws of physics, implying that negative impacts of resource extraction could be reduced by a circular economy with minimized resource throughput. This notion of the bioeconomy being closely linked to natural laws never caught up in political economics and was reinterpreted at the beginning of the new millennium as a political agenda for industrial biomass production in the EU. Following extensive criticism on having missed out on social and ecological sustainability, the EU revised its strategies as sectoral programs and inspired countries around the world to develop their own interpretations of a bioeconomy. A sustainable and circular bioeconomy is also a pathway to the achievement of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030 because the bioeconomy relates to a number of SDGs.

Today, the predominantly academically led discussion has developed into a so-called “mixed-source metadiscourse”, being on a par with comprehensive concepts such as sustainable development or global governance, providing a broad narrative for a decarbonized economy.

As a common denominator, all bioeconomy development perspectives anticipate increased biomass utilization which, in turn, puts land use and availability into particular focus. In light of this conclusion, the aim of this Special Issue is to encourage further discussions on the concept of sustainable bioeconomy development by providing a backdrop through presenting the recent state of the discourse. Further, approaches to monitor, assess and report the implementation of bioeconomy strategies have also become ever more important.

To provide an account on current approaches and implementations, we welcome paper contributions in the form of either empirical research or conceptual/theoretical works on selected perspectives of a land-based bioeconomy through policy analysis, literature reviews and indicator-based monitoring mainly in the following categories:

• Development of the bioeconomy concept;
• Economic perspectives of a land-based bioeconomy;
• Environmental concerns in a sustainable land-based bioeconomy;
• Socio-cultural aspects in sustainable land-based bioeconomy development;
• Transformational pathways for a knowledge-based sustainable bioeconomy development;
• Monitoring, assessment and reporting approaches for a land-based bioeconomy.

Dr. Stefanie Linser
Dr. Martin Greimel
Prof. Dr. Andreas Pyka
Guest Editors

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