Contribution of the European Bioeconomy Strategy to the Green Deal Policy: Challenges and Opportunities in Implementing These Policies

Abstract

The Green Deal is an ambitious European development strategy that aims to create a carbon-neutral and environmentally friendly economy. This strategy encompasses key environmental policies such as climate change, circular economy, and sustainable development. Due to its broad and comprehensive definition and sectoral coverage, the European Union’s Bioeconomy Strategy, which is linked to the supply and demand of natural resources, is also crucial to the implementation of the Green Deal. However, there has been very little evaluation of the role of bioeconomy development in the European Green Deal. Therefore, by comparing the documents of these policies, the aim of this paper is to identify the main roles of the bioeconomy in the European Green Deal and overlaps, highlighting the opportunities and challenges of the implementation of these policies. The bioeconomy goals overlap with the European Green Deal targets. Looking at the eight main goals of the European Green Deal, all of them are related to the implementation of the bioeconomy. Preserving biodiversity and Farm to Fork actions are directly linked to the development of the bioeconomy, while the residual actions are partly linked to this development. In order to implement the Bioeconomy Strategy and the European Green Deal policy, it is essential to evaluate the vulnerability of biomass to the effects of climate change and the growing food crisis caused by the war in Ukraine. Furthermore, the sustainable use of biomass and the promotion of biomass consumption in the energy, building, and transport sectors need to be examined.