New issues to meet bioeconomy challenges and opportunities

Abstract

The challenge of bioeconomy is to reconcile 3 different approaches: the demands and behaviors of citizens-consumers, the preservation of ecosystems and their capacity to produce goods (from agricultural and forest biomasses and the availability of waste) and ecosystem services, and the cross-fertilization of the vertical flows (pathways) of biomass, energy and information to that of land uses (cropping and forestry systems, cities, regions, etc.). Following the European Bioeconomy Symposium on 28 and 29 June 2017 in Paris, which brought together 320 people from Europe, North and South America, and Africa, 5 key conclusions were identified: (a) the systemic paradigm needed to overcome the limits of disciplines and economic sectors (b) the technological, organizational and regulatory levers to be reinforced to support actors on the path of transition, (c) the need to develop representations and modeling to evaluate ex ante effects of technological or organizational choices in a long-term vision 2050, (d) the implementation of bioeconomic policies at the scale of territories based on their pedoclimatic, topographical, institutional and land characteristics, and (e) assessment of sustainability. 11 recommendations were made to promote the development of the bioeconomy.