Exploring the Dedicated Knowledge Base of a Transformation towards a Sustainable Bioeconomy

Addressing responsibility in innovation processes for sustainability: Lessons for responsible management of sustainable innovation form a systematic literature review

Analyzing the impact of a sustainability agenda in research and innovation on system transition is a critical research topic. This literature stream aims to examine how research and innovation can deal with wicked-problems at a dynamic system level to create more sustainable future systems. However, this study addresses two main issues in the current sustainability transition literature. First, the literature to date offers little insight into concrete implications for the management of innovation processes at the organizational level. Second, sustainability is often addressed as per se desirable. While the concept of Sustainable Innovation (SI) can valuably contribute in addressing the first issue by providing essential features to analyze business management procedures and their broader implications on socio-technical systems, it falls short in addressing the second issue. Essential aspects of sustainability, such as the responsibility for potential future trade-offs through innovation, are not strategically integrated into the current framework. This study argues that without strategic integration of responsibility, there is a risk of contributing to a partially-sustainable-"irresponsible"-socio-technical system change as a result of business innovation activities. Therefore, an extended innovation process model for sustainability to embed responsibility at the core of innovation activities is required. For this purpose, the framework of Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) is utilized. This paper reports on findings from a systematic literature review of a representative sample of empirical studies from the SI and RRI literature. Thereby, the goal was to extend the understanding of management opportunities within innovation processes for sustainability through the implementation of RRI principles, in order to create sustainable socio-technical systems.

Biorefineries as the base for accomplishing the sustainable development goals (SDGs) and the transition to bioeconomy: Technical aspects, challenges and perspectives

Sustainable development goals (SDGs) are guidelines to improve the socio-economic and environmental worldwide situation caused by excessive fossil fuel use. These goals must be accomplished before 2030 by implementing a national sustainable development framework in all UN country members. Instead, biorefineries are the seed towards a more sustainable world since biomass upgrading into a series of value-added products and energy vectors can reduce current issues related to waste generation and climate change. Besides, biorefineries are the first step on the way to implement a bioeconomy. This review paper aims to elucidate the existing relation between biorefineries, bioeconomy, and the SDGs through a comprehensive analysis of the technical requirements, challenges, and perspectives of biomass upgrading processes. In this way, this review paper includes a discussion about the biorefinery, bioeconomy, sustainable development, and sustainability concepts. Moreover, this paper elucidates how the implementation of biorefineries is linked to the SDGs accomplishment.

Transition to a Sustainable Bioeconomy

Exceeding planetary boundaries, and especially climate change, requires economies worldwide to decarbonize and to incorporate principles of sustainable development. Transforming a traditional economy into a sustainable bioeconomy by replacing fossil resources through renewable biogenic resources offers a solution to this end. However, seemingly opposing transition perspectives (i.e., technology-based vs. socio-ecological) lead to fragmented efforts, and the exact form of the transition pathway to the goal of a bioeconomy remains unclear. We examine the issue by involving an international expert sample in a Delphi survey and subsequent cross-impact analysis. Based on the experts’ views, we present a list of events necessary to achieve the transformation ranked by the experts to reflect their urgency. The cross-impact analysis facilitates combining the eight most urgent events to create an integrated model of the transition to a sustainable bioeconomy. Our findings suggest that, rather than bioeconomy strategies, investment in the relevant sectors currently constitutes the main bottleneck hindering such a transition.

Systems entrepreneurship: a conceptual substantiation of a novel entrepreneurial “species”

In this paper, we explore the notion of systems entrepreneurship in the context of innovation systems (IS) dedicated to transformations towards sustainability. To this end, our paper draws primarily but not exclusively on the leverage points concept, which was originally proposed by Donella H. Meadows and recently refined by sustainability scientists. More precisely, we flesh out four general propositions about the systems entrepreneurial process that serve as a starting point for illuminating how systems entrepreneurs can intervene at deep leverage points to introduce a dedication to sustainability in IS. The paper touches the important issues of directionality, formal institutions, as well as information flows and network structure that have received insufficient attention from researchers, policymakers, and practitioners aiming at transformations towards sustainability (e.g., funders and other support organizations). Taken as a whole, the paper serves as a conceptual basis for further theoretical and empirical work on systems entrepreneurs and dedicated IS. It should be read as a reminder that the fundamentally uncertain processes of systemic change call for collaborative efforts that transcend mental and organizational boundaries.

Measuring the Contribution of the Bioeconomy: The Case of Colombia and Antioquia

This paper proposes a set of five indicators to monitor the bioeconomy in Colombia and Antioquia, one of the main regions of the country. The proposed indicators encompass the dimensions of sustainability and emphasize the role of knowledge and scientific research as driving forces of the bioeconomy strategies. To estimate the contribution of the bioeconomy to value added, employment, and greenhouse gas emissions, an input–output analysis is carried out. In addition, text mining analysis techniques are implemented to identify the research groups with an agenda related to bioeconomy fields. Our results reveal an important slot to foster the growth of a sustainable bioeconomy that enables local economies to achieve inclusive growth.

An urgent call for circular economy advocates to acknowledge its limitations in conserving biodiversity

This discussion paper explores the relationship between biodiversity and the circular economy and the potential implications of this relationship. The circular economy has emerged as an alternative model to a traditional linear economy. It aims to tackle the resource exploitation that accompanies a linear economy and decouple economic growth from reliance on primary resources. In the face of global environmental degradation and an urgent need for change, the concept has become popular around the world and has led to the release of national policies and strategies on the circular economy. Problematically, while the basic concept is clear, it is ambiguous in how it will achieve some of its objectives, and it fails to address some key issues. In light of the accelerating rate of change, precipitous biodiversity decline is one such key issue. Through a content analysis of relevant circular economy publications, authors demonstrate that biodiversity protection is rarely mentioned in theory and policy. While the circular economy holds many benefits for society, its evasion of scrutiny has prevented it from manifesting in a comprehensive solution to environmental issues. The circular economy advocates for biomimicry, ecosystem service valuation, bioeconomy, and renewable energy. Each of these, however, has its own set of conflicts with biodiversity protection. Given the imminent need to protect biodiversity, the authors call for further research on the interaction between biodiversity and the circular economy, and for circular economy advocates to explicitly acknowledge the concept's limitations, thereby revealing the need for intersectional and complementary policies which aim to protect biodiversity.

Sustainability Transition towards a Biobased Economy: Defining, Measuring and Assessing

This Special Issue proposes an array of 11 key papers aimed at investigating the complex and multifaceted nature of the biobased economy, focusing both on a conceptual understanding of the transition and on the measurement issues associated to it. More specifically, collected papers can be broadly divided in two groups: (1) those aiming at adding to our understanding of the transition process towards a sustainable biobased economy; and (2) those aiming at adding to the definition and measurement of the emerging sustainable biobased economy. In the guest editor view, papers collected in this Special Issue offer valuable and complementary insights to our understanding of the ongoing transition towards a biobased economy, providing a logical framework to understand the transitions, as well as an overview of existing tools to assess and measure it. Ideally, policy makers will benefit from the papers included in this Special Issue and, hopefully, it will contribute to make a further step to the much-needed transition towards sustainability.