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Illustration of the pyramid of information applied to the conceptual framework

Illustration of the pyramid of information applied to the conceptual framework

Context in source publication

Context 1
... framework is designed to contain different types of indicators, whose level of aggregation and complexity is defined by the criteria the indicator is meant to measure. At the foundation of the pyramid in Figure 2 are underlying statistical data that can be measured, followed by three tiers of indicators differing in complexity, and thus increasingly subject to interpretation. The indicator(s) are chosen based on their suitability to address the particular normative criteria that needs to be assessed (detailed in 4.1). ...

Citations

... In general, the scope of a monitoring system is reflected in its conceptual framework (Giuntoli et al., 2020). The developments of the EU food system should be monitored to address the question of whether it performs sufficiently well in terms of its environmental, economic and social impact and whether it stays within the planetary boundaries. ...
... 2019-2024/european-green-deal_en. debate between, the European Commission, other EU institutions, stakeholders and citizens (Giuntoli et al., 2020). ...
... The objective of the EU FSMF is to provide regular, accurate and up-to-date information about the state of the EU food system and measure its progress towards sustainability in the context of the EGD. According to previous research (Egenolf and Bringezu, 2019;Giuntoli et al., 2020), using a small number of indicators is appropriate for providing general overviews and statements, while using a large number of indicators is valuable for illustrating and highlighting detail. Data on the indicators must be published in a user-friendly way to inform policymakers, the general public and specialists in a structured manner. ...
Technical Report
The Joint Research Centre (JRC) the European Commission service providing evidence-based science and knowledge to support EU policies has set up its first monitoring framework to provide information on progress towards a fair, healthy and environmentally friendly food system, built on a set of environmental, economic and social (including health) indicators. More than 350 indicators on underpinning policies were screened and their suitability assessed for the intended objective. The selected indicators have been visualised in a monitoring dashboard, an information system and a communication tool created by the JRC. This report summarises the main steps taken to develop the system, the principles governing the selection of the indicators and plans for further work. This EU monitoring framework does not constitute a final product. The various Commission services acknowledge data gaps and intend to address them to ensure a more comprehensive approach and reflect new policy priorities. The monitoring framework will provide policymakers, stakeholders and citizens with relevant information about the sustainability of the EU food system. Considering the significant impact of the food system on the EU economy and citizens, the monitoring tool intends to assess the cumulative impact of all actions related to competitiveness, the environment and health in the EU.
... This area focuses among others on (bio)technology, intensified use of natural resources, reducing dependency on non-renewable resources, and preventing and adapting to climate change, all which can be already mapped by forest-related indicators (Wolfslehner et al., 2016). The EC Joint Research Centre recently developed a broad set of bioeconomy indicators, including forest-related indicators (Giuntoli et al., 2020). ...
Book
Full-text available
Reporting on Forests and Sustainable Forest Management in the Caucasus and Central Asia-Focus on Criteria and Indicators provides an overview of status and developments in reporting on forests and sustainable forest management in five countries of the Caucasus and Central Asia (Armenia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan). This reporting involves looking at forests in the context of the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, recognizing the multiple roles forests play in achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Criteria and indicators are tools used to define, guide, monitor and assess progress towards sustainable forest management that help our understanding and inform discussions about sustainable forest management. They operate at the global, regional, international, national, subnational, and even at forest management unit levels; and are a basis for informed decision making, establishing national forest policy and facilitating international reporting. A flexible framework of criteria and indicators helps to develop systems adjusted to the capacities, needs, and conditions in which they are applied. This publication provides information about the processes and results of national efforts in building criteria and indicator sets for countries of the region.
... Hence, these novel indicators can serve as a foresight approach with relevance for: 1) scientific and industrial actors seeking to improve their technological competencies by identifying opportunities for knowledge integration across technological knowledge areas [19], [65]; and 2) IDR institutions and funding agencies that wish to better understand, monitor and manage IDR and knowledge integration [30]. For example, the indicators developed in our article could be applied in long term monitoring studies such as the Bioeconomy Observatory, which aims at enhancing the knowledge base for policy-making in the bioeconomy by compiling and monitoring the process of the bioeconomy at European level [66]. ...
Article
Full-text available
Interdisciplinary research is an increasingly crucial source of emerging technologies like artificial intelligence, or bioplastics with the potential to alleviate the grand challenges of the 21st century. Nonetheless, assessing the degree of interdisciplinary research and resulting emerging technology networks remains somewhat ambiguous, as integrating and recombining knowledge from distant domains is a complex phenomenon. By drawing upon patents, patent citations, and their technology classification, this article seeks to elucidate how interdisciplinary research can be assessed, monitored, and visualized by taking technological knowledge areas as the unit of analysis. For our novel approach, we employ the case of bioplastics as an example of an emerging technology within the highly interdisciplinary Bioeconomy. We demonstrate, inter alia, how the importance of interdisciplinarity across technological knowledge areas has increased over time in the case of bioplastics, how different technological knowledge areas link up to form an emerging technology network, and, more generally, how this novel approach can help scientific and industrial actors to guide and plan their interdisciplinary research in emerging technologies. With regard to policy-makers, our novel operationalization of interdisciplinarity provides guidance for developing and monitoring the impact of science and innovation policies that are able to foster interdisciplinary research and emerging technologies.
... Nonetheless, not all criteria may be covered by existing SDG indicators, and the exploration of other sources of information and data is encouraged to cover all dimensions of sustainability. For detailed links between the P&Cs and SDGs, refer toGiuntoli et al. (2020), and Calicioglu and. When the scope of the monitoring is focused on the product or value chain, the selected indicators can be adapted for each bio-based product, based on the relevant product value chain and its hotspots. ...
... The EU Bioeconomy Monitoring System is a series of dashboards showing trends in indicators that were selected based on their relevance to the overall EU bioeconomy monitoring conceptual framework, as described in Giuntoli et al. (2020) and Robert et al. (2020), in collaboration with external partners, including experts from the Member States and international organisations through the Community of Practice on Bioeconomy (managed by the KCB) through workshops and online discussions (KCB, 2019;KCB, 2020). ...
... In the first years of the technical implementation of the EU Bioeconomy Monitoring System, the JRC will rely on an Administrative Agreement with RTD to ensure the development of the system evolves according to the expectations of the Core DG group responsible for the implementation of the EU Bioeconomy Strategy. The JRC estimates that the final stable Monitoring System as described as our aspirations and outlined in Giuntoli et al. (2020) and Robert et al. (2020) will be fully in place by the end of 2022. ...
Technical Report
Full-text available
The EU Bioeconomy Monitoring System is pursuant to the Action 3.3.2 of the EU Bioeconomy Strategy (COM/2018/673). It addresses the need for a comprehensive monitoring system by establishing a mechanism to measure the progress of the EU bioeconomy towards the five strategic objectives it tackles. It defines and implements a comprehensive monitoring framework for the EU bioeconomy, which covers environmental, social and economic dimensions of sustainability and relates to the overarching Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) context. This document describes the front-end and back-end system design as well as the content of the EU Bioeconomy Monitoring System as of December 2021. The EU Bioeconomy Monitoring System was officially launched in November 2020 on the occasion of the Global Bioeconomy Summit. The system is embedded in the Knowledge Centre for Bioeconomy at this location: https://knowledge4policy.ec.europa.eu/bioeconomy/monitoring_en.
... Such BE monitoring initiatives are in progress. The Joint Research Centre (JRC), e.g., works on indicators derived from the objectives of the EU bioeconomy strategy [11,12]. The Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) has developed a methodology to assist countries and stakeholders in developing and monitoring sustainable BE, including the selection of relevant indicators, both at territorial and product levels [13]. ...
Preprint
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Footprints are powerful indicators for evaluating the impact of the bioeconomy of a country on environmental goods, domestically and abroad. In this study, we apply a hybrid approach combining a Multi-Regional Input-Output model and land use modelling to compute the agricultural land footprint (aLF). Furthermore, we added information on land-use change to the analysis and allocated land conversion to specific commodities. The German case study shows that the aLF abroad is larger by a factor of 2.5 to 3 than the aLF in Germany. In 2005 and 2010, conversion of natural and semi-natural land-cover types abroad allocated to Germany due to import increases was 2.5 times higher than the global average. Import increases to Germany slowed down in 2015 and 2020, reducing land conversion attributed to the German bioeconomy to the global average. The case study shows that the applied land footprint provides clear and meaningful information for policymakers and other stakeholders. The presented methodological approach can be applied to other countries and regions covered in the underlying database EXIOBASE. It can be adapted, also for an assessment of other ecosystem functions, such as water or soil fertility.
... A good set of indicators is a prerogative of an efficient monitoring system and the design of indicators should be targeted to capture synergies and trade-offs across multiple objectives and multiple scales [52]. To this end, a broad set of measures at different aggregation levels and different objectives should be established [52]. ...
... A good set of indicators is a prerogative of an efficient monitoring system and the design of indicators should be targeted to capture synergies and trade-offs across multiple objectives and multiple scales [52]. To this end, a broad set of measures at different aggregation levels and different objectives should be established [52]. At the same time, the choice of indicators is also dictated by data availability. ...
... In particular, when monitoring highly disaggregate sectors, a lack of data can be an important bottleneck in the creation of an efficient system of monitoring indicators. In those cases, basic indicators and proxies are typically favoured [52]. ...
Article
Under the auspices of the EU's new Circular Economy Action Plan and Bioeconomy Strategy, the usage of sustainably renewable biomass for bio-based chemicals is a part-solution for addressing the multidimensional challenges of (inter alia) growth and employment, food and energy security, climate change and biodiversity. Unfortunately, the lack of a formal system of European data classification and collection presents a major obstacle to measuring, monitoring and ex-ante modelling of the bio-based chemicals sector, which clouds the ability to make science-based policy and legislative judgements. Employing a combination of different data sources and plausible assumptions, this paper seeks to overcome some of these data gaps through the compilation of a meaningful set of economic and sustainability indicators for specific bio-based chemical activities and products. Due to the variety of data sources employed for each indicator, a data quality index is constructed, whilst rigorous comparisons with other studies and further critical discussion reaffirms the general observation of poor data quality. Subject to these data and methodological limitations, this paper analyses the performance of bio-based chemical industries. As long as official data sources lack adequate information systems, the current paper serves as a springboard for lowering the data ‘entry costs' behind this intricate sector, encouraging further knowledge-sharing and serving as a replication template for other regions.
... This area focuses among others on (bio)technology, intensified use of natural resources, reducing dependency on non-renewable resources, and preventing and adapting to climate change, all which can be already mapped by forest-related indicators (Wolfslehner et al., 2016). The EC Joint Research Centre recently developed a broad set of bioeconomy indicators, including forest-related indicators (Giuntoli et al., 2020). ...
Article
Full-text available
Almost 30 years after their introduction, criteria and indicators for sustainable forest management (C&I for SFM) still rank high in public and political interest. They are meanwhile an increasingly common policy tool to implement sustainable forest management and to define related targets, which should improve monitoring, reporting and assessment of key aspects of sustainable forest management (SFM). Available online at: https://unece.org/sites/default/files/2021-04/Final_Policy%20Brief_CI_Linser-27.4.21.pdf
... Until now, methodologies measuring the contribution of bioeconomy towards sustainable development are under development and discussed [7]. In this contribution we focus on a consistent methodology for assessing the value added of the bioeconomy. ...
Article
Full-text available
p>This paper measures the development of the national income share of the bioeconomy for 28 European Union Member States (MS) and 16 industries of BioMonitor scope from 2005 to 2015. The paper proposes a model which includes the up‐ and downstream linkages using Input‐Output tables. The results show that for the majority of the MS the value added of the up‐ and downstream sector is at the band of 40–50% of the total bioeconomy value added and has on average increased since the financial crisis.</p
... Joining the EU and international perspectives, the JRC, at the forefront of the EC's task to establish an EU Bioeconomy Monitoring System, is co-chairing the Bioeconomy Indicator Working Group of the International Bioeconomy Forum (IBF) with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) to prepare guidelines for the monitoring of the bioeconomy. To ensure compatibility with the international arena, the JRC is following the International Sustainable Bioeconomy Working Group (ISBWG) structure of 10 aspirational principles and 24 criteria [13,31] in its implementation framework by mapping them to the five EU Bioeconomy objectives. ...
... Table 1 introduces the proposed framework highlighting the link with SDGs. Additional details and in-depth description of the framework can be found in [31]. The criteria provide a guideline for which indicators will be selected, with a preference for established indicators that are already used in other monitoring processes. ...
... [53]). Experts from various bioeconomy fields reviewed candidate indicators and created a "passport" containing the characteristics of each indicator (see Table 5 in [31]). The passport includes information such as the source of the indicator, the availability of recent and frequent estimates, the geographical coverage, the accessibility and the current use in other monitoring systems. ...
Article
Full-text available
The EU Bioeconomy Strategy, updated in 2018, in its Action Plan pledges an EU-wide, internationally coherent monitoring system to track economic, environmental and social progress towards a sustainable bioeconomy. This paper presents the approach taken by the European Commission’s (EC) Joint Research Centre (JRC) to develop such a system. To accomplish this, we capitalise on (1) the experiences of existing indicator frameworks; (2) stakeholder knowledge and expectations; and (3) national experiences and expertise. This approach is taken to ensure coherence with other bioeconomy-related European monitoring frameworks, the usefulness for decision-making and consistency with national and international initiatives to monitor the bioeconomy. We develop a conceptual framework, based on the definition of a sustainable bioeconomy as stated in the Strategy, for a holistic analysis of the trends in the bioeconomy sectors, following the three pillars of sustainability (economy, society and environment). From this conceptual framework, we derive an implementation framework that aims to highlight the synergies and trade-offs across the five objectives of the Bioeconomy Strategy in a coherent way. The EU Bioeconomy Monitoring System will be publicly available on the web platform of the EC Knowledge Centre for Bioeconomy.