Sustainable Trade and Innovation transfer in the Bioeconomy: From National Strategies to Global Sustainable Development Goals

The bioeconomy is a broad field with many emerging technologies and a high potential to influence the industry landscape and to contribute to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (United Nations, “Transforming our World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development” 2015). However, bioeconomy is not necessarily sustainable. Therefore, this research project aims to improve the knowledge base for the design of sustainable bioeconomy policies with a focus on international regulatory frameworks, biomass flows and innovation transfer in selected bioeconomy sectors with an emphasis on major biomass and knowledge producing countries and regions. This will be done by mapping and measuring different parameters of the global bioeconomy to identify and quantify current conditions, drivers and outcomes of bioeconomic transformations. Also crucial for the future bioeconomy are key enabling technologies (KETs) that can accelerate whole branches of industries or even foster the creation of new ones. Moreover, the global bioeconomy scenarios will be explored via empirical evaluations and global trade model based assessments to identify unintended consequences of bioeconomy policy and innovation trends. The goal is to design governance frameworks for sustainable bio-based commodity trade and technology/knowledge transfers.