Social dimensions of a forest-based bioeconomy: A summary and synthesis

Abstract

How perceptions of the forest-based bioeconomy differ across country contexts and social groups is important as it opens possibilities for the development of more inclusive, locally and socially relevant bioeconomy policies and strategies. Therefore, this special section explores the social dimensions of the forest-based bioeconomy by focusing on discourses and perceptions of different actor groups in Europe. We introduce six articles that range from review and discursive approaches to consumer studies. The section adds to the existing literature by focusing not only on political decision makers, stakeholders, and experts but also on the public, media and students. Patterns in the presented discourses and perceptions can be identified but more is needed to validate these and respond to the question of representativeness.

A global analysis of bioeconomy visions in governmental bioeconomy strategies

“…The relative salience of the research, innovation and technology goals category further reflects the much-noted techno-centric nature of the bioeconomy discourse (Hausknost et al 2017 ; Meyer 2017 ; Vivien et al 2019 ; Ranacher et al 2020 ; Vogelpohl and Töller 2021 ; Eversberg et al 2023 ). Its lower salience compared to the economic goals’ category might reflect a goal hierarchy and an instrumental role of research, innovation and technology for economic objectives.…”

“…They hence deserve particular scrutiny. Previous studies have identified bioeconomy visions in scientific publications (Bugge et al 2016 ; D’Amato et al 2017 ; Vivien et al 2019 ; Holmgren et al 2020 ; Ranacher et al 2020 ), newspaper articles (Sanz-Hernández et al 2020 ), population surveys (Eversberg and Fritz 2022 ), or in stakeholder interviews (Vivien et al 2019 ). Analyses of bioeconomy visions in policy documents were based on either selective (Hausknost et al 2017 ) or European-centric (Meyer 2017 ) samples.…”

Forests under the Southern Cross: The forest environmental frontier in Australia and New Zealand

“…Edwards et al 2019 ; Keenan et al 2019 ); and suggests opportunities for learning from elsewhere (e.g. Schirmer 2007 ; Ranachar et al 2020 ). In the urban and peri-urban frontier, ambitious urban forest strategies cognisant of social diversity (e.g.…”

Reflecting Regional Conditions in Circular Bioeconomy Scenarios: A Multi-Criteria Approach for Matching Technologies and Regions

“…We excluded mismatches by scanning titles and abstracts and added further publications from the reference lists of suitable publications during the reading process. The list of 17 publications [42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52][53][54][55][56][57][58] that was finally considered to compile the matrices is summarized in Table S2. For the second cluster, we used a combination of search terms referring to residual biomass, accessibility, and region.…”

“…Additionally, the comparison of public acceptance of biorefineries and aquaponics in a transition region compared to a non-transition region showed regional differences [53]. Particularly, familiarity or previous exposure to similar technologies appears to be a factor that favors support and is strongly region-dependent [42,52,57]. A body of literature furthermore acknowledges that various socio-demographic factors, such as gender, age, level of education and income, size of the place of residence, or the affiliation with certain social groups, correlate with the acceptance of BE [46,51,55,57,58].…”