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Building a monitoring system for the EU bioeconomy. Progress Report 2019: Description of framework
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... 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. ...
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.
... 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. ...
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.
... 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). ...
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]. ...
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.
... 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]. ...
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.
... 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. ...
Celem opracowania było określenie, czy istnieją w Polsce możliwości rozwoju zrównoważonej biogospodarki bez narażania się na przekroczenie granic ekologicznych. Do oceny wykorzystano zaproponowane przez Global Footprint Network wskaźniki: biopojemności i śladu gruntowego. Przeprowadzono analizę i ocenę kształtowania się biopojemności i śladu gruntowego oraz wielkości eksploatacji biopojemności w latach 1961-2018. Badane wskaźniki przedstawiono na tle Niemiec i różnych regionów Europy. Na podstawie uzyskanych wyników określono perspektywy rozwojowe silnie zrównoważonej biogospodarki w Polsce. Przeprowadzone badania wykazały, że eksploatacja biopojemności w 2018 r. wynosiła 93% i była bliska gruntowej bariery ekologicznej. Oznacza to, że ekologiczny potencjał zwiększenia produkcji biomasy w Polsce jest mały. Większe możliwości rozwoju biogospodarki z ekologicznego punktu widzenia istnieją w całym regionie Europy Wschodniej i Północnej.
This document describes the progress made in 2022 for the development of the EU Bioeconomy Monitoring System. It contains an overview of the purpose of the system, its current status and future outlook for 2023. Technical details of the back-end and front-end are also provided. This is the third of an annual reporting scheme to document and inform the public of the progress in building the EU Bioeconomy Monitoring System.
The rise in temperature over the earth due to the increase in the greenhouse gas concentration in the Earth’s atmosphere is defined as “Global Warming”. The precipitation and temperature regimes do not continue in the usual order and the meteorological disasters experienced cause people to worry about the future. It also reveals more than just its claims on biodiversity, orientation, and food security. Agricultural production is one of the important sectors that will be directly affected by global warming and climate change, in the light of current information. Food production, which enables people to survive, takes place directly through agriculture. In today’s conditions, it is unthinkable to feed large masses without soil. The soil provides all the necessary nutrients to humanity, but only if it is sufficient. Soil health is at the forefront to produce ordinary food. Although what can be done is limited, practical measures should be taken by making projections on climate change. In addition, mitigation and adaptation studies should be carried out for the continuity of agricultural production activities. Due to the slow progress of these mitigation and adaptation strategies, green pursuits for faster action are on the top of the agenda. The pursuit of green has become a powerful weapon in the transformation of rural areas. As an extension of the Paris Agreement, the Green Deal has come to the fore as a strong effort and discourse that the European Union (EU) aims to spread environmental concerns to all policy areas. The agriculture part of this discourse includes “From Farm to Table Strategy” and “Common Agricultural Policy”. In this study, the place and position of the European Green Deal in the harmonization process of the effects of global warming and climate change on agricultural soils are also examined.
The urgent need to shift our economy towards a more sustainable, resource-efficient economy based on renewable resources that either makes less use of fossil resources or dispenses with them entirely , the so called bioeconomy, has been recognized all over Europe. As a result, many EU Member States (EU MS) have formulated national and regional bioeconomy strategies, related policies or initiatives. An important tool for the successful implementation of a strategy is the monitoring and evaluation of the success of the measures undertaken to reach the strategy´s goals. The EC review report of the EU Bioeconomy strategy concluded the need for better monitoring and assessment frameworks, "new actions are needed to develop relevant indicators and scientific evidence for policy making, and to implement a more holistic monitoring and assessment framework" (EC 2017). However, up to now, there is no commonly agreed set of indicators to measure the bioe-conomy at EU level. Because the main drivers for the transition towards a bioeconomy often strongly vary between EU MS on the country-specific economic and ecological settings, legal framework, and social demands, also the national or regional bioeconomy strategies vary in their goals and measures. Consequently, proxies and indicators used to measure the development of a national bioeconomy or the success of a bioeconomy strategy depend on the national goals, and are therefore often not applicable in any other country. Nevertheless, synchronizing the national bioeconomy monitoring-activities is necessary to ensure comparability of the results of the national monitoring systems. As a first step towards a common European bioeconomy monitoring-activity, it is crucial to get an overview over the numerous scattered ongoing monitoring activities at EU MS level. Therefore, there is the need for an overview study presenting information on existing approaches of monitoring bioeconomy strategies in the EU MS. This report presents an overview of existing bioeconomy strategies, policies or related initiatives and indicators to monitor and assess these at EU MS level, and the importance of existing bioeconomy sectors at national level. Furthermore, it presents the existing or needed most suitable bioeconomy key indicators and related indicators, and their respective data availability, for assessing and monitoring the progress of a bioeconomy at national level. The identified most suitable bioeconomy indicators important and feasible at the national context, can contribute to the further discussions when setting the frame for the development of a common EU bioeconomy monitoring system.
Almost fifty countries have placed the promotion of the bioeconomy on their political agendas. However, bioeconomy activities are not necessarily sustainable, and sustainability issues are not often considered in the implementation of the bioeconomy. Considering this, FAO developed a set of Aspirational Principles and Criteria for Sustainable Bioeconomy, which were agreed upon by the International Sustainable Bioeconomy Working Group in 2016 led by FAO. In line with these Principles and Criteria, FAO seeks to provide technical assistance to countries in developing and monitoring the sustainability of the bioeconomy. The main objective of this report is to review existing approaches for monitoring and evaluation in order to identify already available indicators, from which the authors compiled two comprehensive lists:
indicators at the territorial level, including bioeconomy-relevant SDG indicators;
indicators at the product/value chain level, including indicators used for standards, certificates and labels.
To conclude, the authors propose a possible way forward to help countries and practitioners in their monitoring and evaluation efforts: a stepwise approach to select indicators for monitoring and evaluating the sustainability of the bioeconomy.
This report provides an overview of the result of the application of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to assess the environmental impacts of consumption in the European Union (EU) as a basis to support policies and to improve the appraisal of impacts and benefits thereof.
The content builds upon the results of the Life Cycle Indicators (LC-IND2) project1, which aimed to develop two sets of Life Cycle Assessment-based indicators for the assessment of the environmental impact of EU consumption: the Consumer Footprint and the Consumption Footprint.
Halving per capita food waste and reducing food losses along production and supply chains is one of the objectives fixed by the United Nations among the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This study employs a system-wide modelling approach, to simulate economic impacts of households' food waste reduction in 2030, focusing on the European Union. The paper provides market, food security, biophysical and environmental indicators resulting from food commodity specific waste reductions by EU households. The scenarios explicitly account for associated costs paid by food manufacturers derived from adjustments in the packaging, labelling and logistics. The model shows, under a series of market assumptions, a possible increase in household savings, a fall in agri-food production and a minor negative macroeconomic impact due to household food waste reductions. On the other hand, the effects on environmental indicators such as land usage, GHG emissions and water abstraction are positive. Future research on several aspects of the food waste topic is needed to better integrate all economic aspects.
The threats of climate change, food security, resource depletion and energy security are driving society towards a sustainable low-carbon future. Within this paradigm, biomass plays an invaluable role in meeting the food, feed, energy and material needs of future generations. Current EU thinking advocates biomass for high-value materials, which is not aligned with EU public policy support for ‘lower value’ bioenergy applications. ‘High-technology’ and ‘no bioenergy mandate’ pathways explore market conditions that generate a more equitable distribution between competing biomass conversion technologies and competing biomass and fossil technologies. In achieving greater equity, these pathways ease biomass market tensions; enhance EU food security; improve EU biobased trade balances; accelerate biomaterial sectors’ output performance and favour macroeconomic growth. Moreover, an additional 80% increase in the oil price signals a tipping point in favour of first generation biofuels, whilst simultaneously boosting output in advanced material conversion technologies even more than the high-technology pathway. © 2019, © 2019 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
The increased use of biogenic resources is linked to expectations of “green” economic growth, innovation spurts through biotechnology, development options for rural areas, and an increasingly regenerative resource base that is also climate-neutral. However, for several years the signs for unintentional and unwanted side effects have been increasing. In 2015, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development was published at the international level in order to address this problem and deliver a starting point for a comprehensive sustainability criteria evaluation catalogue. Impact indicators to quantify the environmental burden induced by national activities in foreign countries are especially lacking. In this article a comprehensive framework for the evaluation of the sustainability of the bioeconomy, considering key objectives and relevant criteria for environmental, economic, and social sustainability is developed. A special focus is set to the intersection area of the three pillars of sustainability, where the particularly important integrative key objectives and the indicators assigned to them (e.g., resource footprints) apply. This indicator set can be used as a basis for bio-economy monitoring, which uses and produces differently aggregated information on different levels of action, with a focus at the national level but also including global impacts of domestic production and consumption.
Sustainable Consumption and Production is considered a leading principle towards reducing environmental impacts globally. This study aims at combining Environmentally-Extended Input-Output Analysis (using EXIOBASE 3) with up-to-date impact assessment methods to quantify the environmental impacts induced by final consumption in the EU Member States in 2011. The environmental extensions are characterized in 14 environmental impact categories used in the Environmental Footprint. A contribution analysis of key products and services as well as emissions and resources, which drive the environmental impacts of EU consumption, is conducted. Environmental impacts are mainly induced along the supply-chain of products and services. Several expenditures relative to services represent large shares both in the total final consumption and in the 14 impacts under study, despite a relatively low impact intensity. Food products, in particular meat and dairy products, are identified as key contributors regarding acidification, eutrophication, land use and water use, and to a lower extent climate change. Finally, several manufactured products, raw materials and basic products respectively importantly contribute to some impacts among human toxicity, freshwater ecotoxicity and resource uses. The total volume of final consumption expenditures per EU Member State appears a key explanatory variable to most of the impacts embodied in their consumption, yet to a lower extent regarding water use and fossils resource use. Finally, the current limitations in using EXIOBASE 3 for environmental impact assessment are discussed, with specific attention to EXIOBASE environmental extensions and to the case study on EU consumption. Since the classification of emissions and resources for impact assessment requires a number of assumptions that may influence the results, a sensitivity analysis is performed to exemplify some of the key issues relative to the characterization of impacts based on EXIOBASE environmental extensions.
As the EU is moving towards a low carbon economy and seeks to further develop its renewable energy policy, this paper quantitatively investigates the impact of plausible energy market reforms from the perspective of bio-renewables. Employing a state-of-the-art biobased variant of a computable general equilibrium model, this study assesses the perceived medium-term benefits, risks and trade-offs which arise from an advanced biofuels plan, two exploratory scenarios of a more ‘sustainable’ conventional biofuels plan and a ‘no-mandate’ scenario. Consistent with more recent studies, none of the scenarios considered present significant challenges to EU food-security or agricultural land usage. An illustrative advanced biofuels plan simulation requires non-trivial public support to implement whilst a degree of competition for biomass with (high-value) advanced biomass material industries is observed. On the other hand, it significantly alleviates land use pressures, whilst lignocellulose biomass prices are not expected to increase to unsustainable levels. Clearly, these observations are subject to assumptions on technological change, sustainable biomass limits, expected trends in fossil fuel prices and EU access to third-country trade. With these same caveats in mind, the switch to increased bioethanol production does not result in significant market tensions in biomass markets.
The monitoring of the European bioeconomy is hampered by a lack of statistics on emergent and partially bio-based sectors. In this study, we complete the picture of the bioeconomy in the European Union (EU) by first estimating a set of socioeconomic indicators in missing sectors. Second, we identify four broad bioeconomy patterns within the EU that differ according to the specialisation of Member States’ labour markets in the bioeconomy (location quotient) and according to the apparent labour productivity of their bioeconomies. The patterns are geographically distributed in (i) Eastern Member States and Greece and Portugal; (ii) Central and Baltic Member States; (iii) Western Member States; and (iv) Northern Member States. They are strongly related to the level of gross domestic product (GDP) per capita in Member States, and to their political histories (e.g., their year of accession to the EU, and the existence and maturity of their bioeconomy strategies). Within each group, diversity exists in terms of sectoral bioeconomy development. Third, we examine temporal dynamics over the period 2008–2015, stressing with the cases of Slovenia, Portugal, Greece and Finland that a transition from one group to another is possible. Finally, we take a closer look at the East–West bioeconomy disparities within Europe and suggest measures to promote EU bioeconomies.