Forest Bioeconomy and Climate Change

The world states agreed, in 2015, on Agenda 2030, or the United Nations’ (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and the Paris Climate Agreement. It is widely agreed that the business-as-usual model––the policies, production and consumption habits we have been following thus far––will not help us to reach these goals. These agreements and goals can therefore be interpreted as providing a mandate to change the existing economic model–how we advance societal well-being. In this book, we argue that a forest-based bioeconomy is a necessary part of this transformation. There are many definitions of the bioeconomy, as well as usage of similar terms, such as biobased economy and green economy (D’Amato et al. 2017). In practice, the bioeconomy has turned out to be a changing concept and adjustable for various purposes. One useful definition is from the Global Bioeconomy Summit (GBS) 2015: “bioeconomy as the knowledge-based production and utilization of biological resources, innovative biological processes and principles to sustainably provide goods and services across all economic sectors”. The bioeconomy therefore encompasses the traditional bioeconomy sectors, such as forestry, paper and wood products, as well as emerging new industries, such as textiles, chemicals, new packaging and building products, biopharma, and also the services related to those products (research and development, education, sales, marketing, extension, consulting, corporate governance, etc.), and forest services (recreation, hunting, tourism, carbon storage, biodiversity, etc.). Hetemäki et al. (2017) extended this definition to a circular bioeconomy, also linking it to the natural-capital concept. A circular bioeconomy builds on the mutual efforts of the circular economy and bioeconomy concepts, which in many ways are interlinked. The European Environment Agency (EEA) has indicated that implementing the concepts of a bioeconomy and circular economy together as a systemic joint approach would improve resource efficiency and help reduce environmental pressures (EEA 2018). We further suggest that these two concepts, which are often considered separately, could create marked synergies when applied as a hybrid approach, making simultaneous use of both, as is the concept of the circular bioeconomy. In this book, we understand bioeconomics along similar lines to the GBS (2015), and the extension of this introduced by Hetemäki et al. (2017). We particularly emphasise three key aspects of bioeconomics:

• the transformational role of the bioeconomy in helping to mitigate climate change, and to replace fossil-based products (e.g. oil-based plastics and textiles), non-renewable materials (e.g. steel, concrete) and non- sustainable biological products (e.g. cotton in certain regions);

• the enhancement of the natural-capital approach to the economy, involving better integration of the value of natural resources and life-sustaining regulatory systems (e.g. biodiversity, freshwater supplies, flood control) with economic development, as suggested by Helm (2015) and in the action plan of Palahí et al. (2020); and

• the improvement of the quality of economic growth, making it sustainable and operating in synergy with SDGs rather than trade-offs.

source :

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/358769825_Forest_Bioeconomy_and_Climate_Change