Author: SABio

On November 19-20, 2024, researchers from the SABio Project participated in the Regional Bioeconomy Conference, organized by the Universidad de la República and UTEC – Universidad Tecnológica in Montevideo, Uruguay.

Researchers involved in the SABio Project presented in the panel Results and Advances in Bioeconomy Theses. Daniel Kefeli, from the research group at the University of Münster and a member of UTEC (Uruguay), presented his thesis progress titled Challenges in Environmental Policies of the Forest Bioeconomy. Pablo Mac Clay, part of the University of Bonn research group and a member of Universidad Austral (Argentina), presented a synthesis of his doctoral thesis with a presentation titled Innovation Processes and Transformations in Value Chains: Perspectives from the Bioeconomy. Finally, Daniela Gomel, doctoral student at the University of Münster, presented her proposal titled The Factors That Shape Native Forest Policy Design and Implementation in Commodity Producer Countries. A Comparative Analysis of Argentina and Paraguay. In the same line, Celina Amato y Mónica Buraschi, associate researchers to the Münster group and members of the  Universidad Nacional de Córdoba (Argentina), presented the results of their research projects “De residuos a recursos: bioeconomía circular y modelos de negocio en cadenas de valor argentinas” y “La perspectiva de la gobernanza en cadenas globales de valor de la bioeconomía”, respectively.

The conference served as a valuable platform for exchanging ideas on regional academic research in the bioeconomy, highlighting the contributions of different research groups from Latin America and Europe.

More information: https://fcea.udelar.edu.uy/institucional/eventos-academicos/jornadas-regionales-de-bioeconomia.html

Between October 23 and 25, the Conference of the Argentine Association of Agricultural Economics took place in Rosario (Argentina), bringing together researchers in agricultural economics and agribusiness in Argentina and other countries in the region.

Within this conference, Pablo Mac Clay, researcher of the SABio project at the University of Bonn, moderated Dr. Jorge Sellare’s presentation entitled “Policy instruments to improve sustainability in agri-food value chains”, where he presented a synthesis of the current academic evidence on initiatives to improve environmental indicators in agri-food systems.

Additionally, Pablo contributed as co-organizer of the expert panel titled “Data Science and Artificial Intelligence: Transforming the Future of Agribusiness”. This panel presented cases of data science applications in agri-food systems, particularly in three technology verticals: AI & robotics, bioinformatics, and geospatial.

Link: https://aaea.org.ar/

Doctoral researchers Daniela Gomel and Carol Bardi, part of the research group SABio, have completed a two-month research stay at the University of Münster. Carol is Brazilian, and her research case study is also conducted in Brazil. She researches alternative forms of agricultural production that do not cater to global value chains and commercial markets, picking up on recent calls for more initiatives that may increase food systems’ sustainability. Carol’s research proposes to focus on the empirical evidence of potential contributions of food self-provisioning practices (FSP) in promoting just food transitions. Such practices can be roughly described as the outcome of people producing food mainly for non-commercial purposes.

Daniela is from Argentina and also conducts her research from her country. She is doing research on the factors that shape policy processes related to forest policies in commodity producer countries of soy and beef. For doing so, she will undertake field work in Paraguay and Argentina being that they share the Gran Chaco ecoregion, which host the second largest forests in Latin America and that face the consequences of the advancement of soy and beef production.

During their visit in Germany, Carol and Daniela developed several academic activities. They collaborated as a lecturer in a full-day teaching block in the Masters Course ‘Sustainability Transitions from an International Perspective’ at the Institute of Political Science, where students learned and engaged in discussions about ecofeminism and degrowth as well as the fundamentals of sustainability transitions from a critical perspective and the main components of policy briefs and advocacy. Part of Carol’s lecture was a hands-on workshop on the iceberg model approach to policy-making. Students shared their impressions on applying the model and noticed it helped them to show that policies usually do not get to the root causes of the problems they aim to solve.

Other activities in which Daniela and Carol participated were the SABio team several meetings to discuss career development, possible joint publications and to prepare collectively for upcoming conferences.  They were also active in the activities the Brazil Centre organised, including participating in an institutional lunch to discuss further collaboration in South America. Finally, Carol Bardi presented her ongoing academic work at two conferences: the joint Ecological Economics and Degrowth conference in Pontevedra, Spain and both, Daniela and Carol participated in the Annual Conference of the Society of Latin American Studies (SLAS) at the University of Amsterdam.

Carol Bardi and Daniela Gomel, doctoral researchers at the SABio project, have recently participated in the Annual Conference of the Society of Latin American Studies (SLAS) at the University of Amsterdam from July 1^st to 3^rd 2024, together with several other SABio project members. According to the head of the research group, Dr Karen M. Siegel, the conference marked the end of a period of working together in person at University of Münster. “It was great to see the outcome of this with presentations by Guilherme de Queiroz Stein, Dra. Lic. Celina N. Amato, Carolina Costa de Souza (Carol Bardi), Monica Buraschi and Daniela Gomel on biodiversity, circular economy, food systems and deforestation.”

Carol and Daniela presented their ongoing research. Carol shared her work on Brazilian women’s food self-provisioning – when people produce food mainly for non-commercial purposes – and how cultivating food gardens may impact their autonomy and living conditions, co-authored with independent researcher Marina Colerato. Daniela focused on her work about the policy process of forest policy in beef and soy producer countries and how factors like the global economy affects such processes.

Pablo Mac Clay, researcher at SABio project, participated at the International Consortium of Applied Bioeconomy (ICABR) Conference in Ravello (Italy) between June 11 and 14 and the International Food and Agribusiness Management Association (IFAMA) Conference in Almeria (Spain) between June 15 and 19 presenting his research paper “Exploration strategies of agricultural input incumbents: the case of biologicals”, co-authored with Guillermo Bort, Roberto Feeney, and Jorge Sellare.

More information: https://icabr.net/ and https://www.ifama.org/

Pablo Mac Clay, researcher at SABio project research group, successfully defended his doctoral thesis on “Essays on the nexus between technological change, policies, and value chain governance for a transition towards a low-carbon economy” on June 05, 2024 at ZEF.

He received his doctoral degree from the Faculty of Agriculture of the University of Bonn.

His first supervisor was Prof. Dr. Jan Börner and his second supervisor was Prof. Dr. Roberto Feeney.

On Monday May 7^th, the SABio project kicked off its second phase with an in-person workshop in the Center for Development Research (ZEF) in Bonn, Germany. The event brought together researchers from both universities and began with a presentation by Dr. Karen Siegel, the head of the research group in Political Science at the University of Münster, who shared an overview of some of the most interesting findings and publications of the project’s first phase. The presentation also covered new bioeconomy research topics that emerged based on the first phase of the project. After a fruitful discussion, the new SABio doctoral researchers Daniela Gomel and Carol Bardi (University of Münster), Laura Rojas and Serena Olivera (University of Bonn) and senior researchers Pablo MacClay and Dr. Jochen Dürr (University of Bonn) presented their latest research developments.

This year doctoral researchers brought innovative and diverse research proposals ranging from biodiversity markets, transformation of the livestock sector, local food systems transformation and native forests policy making in commodity producer countries. Additionally, senior researchers presented their progress in their research agendas on biological inputs in agriculture and on the Amazonian socio-biodiverse economy. The presenters received valuable feedback from their peers, scientific staff and project partners, which led to an engaged debate on narratives on bioeconomy and global value chains.

The workday ended with a final discussion on future lines for project collaboration with South American universities and partners and overall comments from the senior researchers Prof. Thomas Dietz (Münster) and Prof. Jan Börner (Bonn).

We welcome Celina Amato PhD as a new researcher to join the research group in Political Science led by Dr Karen Siegel. Celina lives in Córdoba, Argentina, and comes from the field of management. In her country, she works as a researcher at the National Council of Scientific and Technical Research (CONICET).

She was awarded a postdoctoral fellowship from the WiRe programme of the University of Münster. She will do research on “Alternative business models for circular bioeconomy in Argentinean agro-industrial value chains”.

As a management researcher, she is studying the bioeconomy and how it affects value chains to make them more sustainable. Different ways of doing business have emerged because of this, aiming to reuse waste in production to create more value.

With her WiRe fellowship at the Institute for Political Science with Dr. Karen Siegel, she wants to look closely at how these new business models work in the agricultural industry in Argentina. By understanding these models better, she hopes to provide useful insights that can help shape policies, improve industry practices, and contribute to academic discussions on sustainable development.

WiRe is a fellowship program for international female postdoctoral researchers at the University of Münster in Münster, Germany, hosted by its Welcome Centre for Internationally Mobile Researchers. The WiRe fellowship program pays respect to the specific challenges of women in research.

You can follow Celina’s updates at:

CONICET: https://www.conicet.gov.ar/new_scp/detalle.php?id=41348&keywords=amato&datos_academicos=yes

ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9136-0516

RESEARCH GATE: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Dra_Lic_Celina_N_Amato/info LINKEDIN: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dra-lic-celina-n-amato-13a02615/

Between October 22 and 27, SABio researchers Guilherme de Queiroz Stein and Karen Siegel participated in the Radboud Conference on Earth System Governance in Nijmegen, the Netherlands.

Queiroz-Stein and Siegel coordinated the section “Climate change and biodiversity: Challenges for financing, governing and achieving fair outcomes,” together with Prof. Cristina Yumie Aoki Inoue, where they also presented their article “Promoting a fair and equitable sharing of benefits? An analysis of the new Brazilian biodiversity law”. They also took part in other events, such as the South-South Dialoguem Early Career Research Day and the task forces on Sustainable Development Goals and Governance of Nature and Biodiversity.

Check out the photos of our panel and the South South Dialogue below.