What is the Bioeconomy?

The bioeconomy is the part of the economy which uses renewable resources from agriculture, forestry and the marine to produce food, feed, materials and energy, while reducing waste, in support of achieving a sustainable and climate neutral society.

The Bioeconomy

The bioeconomy is the part of the economy which uses renewable resources from agriculture, forestry and the marine to produce food, feed, materials and energy, while reducing waste, in support of achieving a sustainable and climate neutral society.

The bioeconomy recognises the value of nature, soils, land and seas to generate prosperity and mitigate climate change. It supports sustainable agriculture, forestry, fisheries and aquaculture. It also supports industries to sustainably produce food, timber, nutrients for plants and animals, chemicals, packaging and energy, while reducing waste. It ultimately supports the development of an innovative, knowledge-based, sustainable, climate-neutral economy and society.

Many of the products and services we use today such as food and energy are produced using unsustainable fossil resources that harm our climate, nature & society. Our world is searching for alternative approaches that provide a fair and prosperous future for us all.

The bioeconomy offers society a path to apply knowledge, science, technology and innovation to how we use and consume resources from our soils, fields, forests and seas that respects nature and increases social equality by reducing our use of fossil resources and developing green practices, products and local jobs in places where we wish to live.

It will value and support us to farm for carbon and nature and be less wasteful as a society. It will allow us to produce sustainable fertilizers for our fields and nutritious food for our healthy and active lives. It will also offer us sustainable packaging for the goods we buy and innovative materials to both build our homes and support our industries to re-use its waste and reduce its energy use.

The bioeconomy is a critical component of the circular economy  which offers an alternative to the linear (‘take-make-waste’) model of production and consumption, one in which we keep resources in use for as long as possible, extract the maximum value from them whilst in use, then recover and regenerate products and materials at the end of life. 

Many of the sectors that form the bioeconomy provide the renewable resources we increasingly need to produce food for humans, feed for animals, materials and energy, while reducing waste. By linking the bioeconomy and the circular economy through   the concept of biocircularity we can diminish our reliance on fossil-based resources and carbon intensive resources and boost our use of renewable biological resources. We can, not only enable the production of renewable feedstocks in terms of biomass yield but we can maintain essential natural capital.