Category: News & Events

The bioeconomy offers a way to transition away from fossil fuels and transform our economies. But, like any profound change, this transition won’t be without challenges. Who will benefit and who may be left behind? How are the new institutions and policies being shaped, and by whom? And how can the development of the bioeconomy be steered to addressing socio-economic and environmental issues without perpetuating the inequalities of the fossil economy (or creating new ones)?

These questions will be discussed at the book launch event: “The politics of bioeconomy and sustainability: Lessons from biofuel governance, policies and production strategies in the emerging world” by Mairon G. Bastos Lima.

Speakers:

• Mairon G. Bastos Lima, author of the book. Research Fellow, Stockholm Environment Institute
• Francis X. Johnson, Senior Research Fellow and Leader of the Initiative on Governing Bioeconomy Pathways, Stockholm Environment Institute
• Karen Siegel, Head of the research group “Transformation and Sustainability Governance in South American Bioeconomies”, Institute of Political Science, University of Münster
• Wahida Maghraby, Researcher, Indonesian Center for Agricultural Socio Economic and Policy Studies (ICASEPS), Ministry of Agriculture Indonesia

Zoom meeting 14:00-15:00 CEST online, register here to receive the link.

More information at https://www.sei.org/events/the-politics-of-biofuels-and-bioeconomy-who-wins-and-who-loses/

Karen Siegel, Thomas Dietz and Melisa Deciancio participated in the panel “Governing Sustainable Development Agendas in the Global South: Global, Regional and Local Governance of Bioeconomy Agendas”, addressing the challenges and potential that the implementation of sustainable bioeconomy strategies face in countries in the Global South across multiple scales.

Karen Siegel discussed to what extent the concept of bioeconomy fosters or hinders inclusive and peaceful sustainability transitions in South American natural resource governance.

Focusing on the Argentine case, Melisa Deciancio discussed how the implementation of a bioeconomy policy strategy can shape the development model and the risks of reproducing new forms of dependency in Latin America.

The other panellists included Rocio Diaz Chavez from Stockholm Environment Institute Africa Centre and Imperial College London who, focusing on gender equality and poverty reduction goals, addressed the need for sustainability indicators to monitor bioeconomy development in Africa; and Mairon Bastos Lima from Chalmers University of Technology, who addressed how corporate dominance by agribusiness can threaten the sustainability of the bioeconomy transition in Brazil.

The papers were commented on by Carole-Anne Sénit from Utrecht University.

Prof. Eduardo Brondizio, Indiana University-Bloomington

This presentation reflects on the opportunities and challenges of place-based sustainability initiatives in the Amazon in light of development inequalities, global markets, and climate change. The context is set with an overview of the findings of the Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). It then introduces the AGENTS project (Amazonian Governance to Enable Transformation to Sustainability), which has been documenting local-level initiatives across the Brazilian Amazon. These are place-based initiatives in rural areas pursuing changes in productive systems, governance arrangements, value-aggregation and access to markets with the goals of improving living standards and environmental sustainability. The presentation examines challenges and opportunities for local initiatives at the intersection with historical and current trends in economic development and policies in the region.

​Zoom meeting 16:00-17:00 CEST online, register here to receive the link.

More information at https://www.cedla.nl/30421

The Bioeconomy Science Centre of North Rhine Westphalia held its 5^th Symposium on 5 March which also celebrated the centre’s 10-year anniversary. The symposium was opened by Christine Lang, Co-Chair of the International Advisory Council for Global Bioeconomy and former Co-Chair of the German Bioeconomy Council. She outlined the growing importance of the bioeconomy in the global context. 49 countries already have bioeconomy-related policy strategies, 16 of them dedicated bioeconomy strategies.

Karen Siegel presented the SABio project in the section “Bioeconomy and Society”. Her presentation focussed on bioeconomy and the SDGs in South America and highlighted both, potential opportunities and important challenges in international cooperation on bioeconomy.

On March 19, Jorge Sellare spoke at the FAO Geneva’s webcast series Agriculture Trade Talks. The series started in 2018 and it aims to be a platform for dialogue where member countries can discuss about trade policies and agreements that are conducive to improved food security.

This latest iteration of the webcast was titled “Agri-food Value Chains (GVCs) & Sustainability Certification.” It counted with the participation from members of the academia, the private sector, development organizations, and representatives of three FAO member states. The panelists spoke about how standards can contribute to sustainable development, emerging trends in sustainably-certified products, and the potential of new technologies that can facilitate traceability across value chains.

Jorge Sellare presented a brief overview of the latest research on the impacts of certification under sustainability standards on smallholder farmers in developing countries. He presented some evidence that sustainability standards can have positive impacts on all three dimensions of sustainability, but highlighted that the average effects tend to be rather heterogeneous. He emphasized the importance of distinguishing between different standards and noted that we still have a significant knowledge gap regarding how value chain structures might affect whether and how smallholder farmers benefit from certification.

More information about this event can be found at the FAO Geneva’s website (http://www.fao.org/geneva/news/detail/en/c/1379083/) and the full recording can be seen below.

 

 

No dia 25 de fevereiro, nosso colega, Guilherme de Queiroz Stein, participou da sessão Politics of Climate Change, organizado por Riley Dunlap, da Oklahoma State University, e Kerry Ard, da Ohio State University. Guilherme apresentou o trabalho intitulado “Does democracy metter? Exploring the influence of the political regime in energy transitions”. A pesquisa, previamente desenvolvida na Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, tratou de explorar a relação entre níveis de democratização e o percentual de energias renováveis presente na matriz elétrica em uma amostra de 136 países. Os resultados, ainda em caráter exploratório, apontaram uma alta correlação entre os dois fenômenos, sendo que a hipótese mais plausível para explicar a relação seria a adoção de políticas regulatórias. Assim, em sistemas democráticos, observar-se-ia um aumento da probabilidade de se adotar políticas que estruturam mercados de energias renováveis, as quais passariam a ser fundamentais para se avançar em transições energéticas.

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Confira abaixo a lista de todos os trabalhos apresentados na sessão:

Risk and Adaptations to Climate Change in China’s Ecological Civilization Project: For a Differentiated Analysis of Eco-Compensations in the Sustainability Debate – Niklas WEINS, University of Campinas (Unicamp), Campinas, São Paulo, Brazil, and Leila FERREIRA, Campinas State University, Brazil

Does Democracy Matter? Exploring the Influence of the Political Regime in Energy Transitions. – Guilherme DE QUEIROZ STEIN, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil

Democratic Values and Climate Change Views: A Cross-National Multilevel Analysis – Jennifer GIVENS, Utah State University, USA and Kyle KNIGHT, University of Alabama in Huntsville, USA

Public Engagement Under Authoritarian Environmentalism in China: Climate Change Communication Networks on Weibo – Yixi YANG, Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada

Power, Knowledge and Networks in Climate Change Policy-Making: A Japanese Case -Jeffrey BROADBENT, University of Minnesota, USA

The Geopolitics of Climate Expertise: State, Power, and North/South Relations – Tiago RIBEIRO DUARTE, University of Brasília, Brazil and Jean Carlos MIGUEL, Federal University of São Paulo, Brazil

Karen Siegel participated in the Science Slam Talk series on bioeconomy organised by Haus der Wissenschaft Braunschweig (in German). Using the example of the paper industry and the pulp mill conflict between Argentina and Uruguay during the 2000s, she discussed in which ways bioeconomy development may support sustainable, inclusive and peaceful development and what some of the challenges are. The other panellists included Ulrike Neumann with a presentation on microalgae and Sebastian Kistler with a discussion of ethical principles in bioeconomy. The discussion was hosted by Julia Offe and Holger Kühnhold.

Thomas Dietz, Karla Rubio and Jan Börner participated of The Global Bioeconomy Summit 2020 Plenary Session on November 20, presenting the Global Survey of Bioeconomy experts. In his second edition, after it was first launched in 2017, the 2020 survey was conducted among 5000 experts from 49 countries on centred in three main areas: background information, follow-up questions and government assessment. The overall guiding questions were to address how are we doing in promoting and regulating bioeconomic transformation and what can be done to improve bioeconomy governance. Based on the data analysis and results, the authors developed a set of recommendations for policy makers at the national and international level in order to fill bioeconomy governance gaps emerging from its promotion (enabling governance) and its regulation (regulatory governance).

Watch the presentation here:

To access the full survey:

https://gbs2020.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/GBS-2020_Expert-Survey_web.pdf

Virtual seminar with Daniela Gomel on 4 December “Mere deployment of renewables or industry formation, too? Exploring the role of advocacy communities for the Argentinean energy policy mix”.

Daniela Gomel is a political scientist (University of Buenos Aires) with an MSc in Energy Policy (SPRU, University of Sussex). She also attended postgraduate courses on electric mobility and the precautionary principle for sustainability transitions. She will present her research on the policy processes that result in policy mixes for sustainability energy transitions and how they impact on the socio-technical changes (for more information, please see: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eist.2020.02.003)

Daniela is now a policy specialist at Fundación Vida Silvestre Argentina and teaches energy and public policy in different universities. Previously she worked in the public sector and for other NGOs focusing on energy and agriculture policy and participatory processes.

Please e-mail Karen.Siegel@uni-muenster.de if you would like to participate in the seminar.

The IAMO Forum is an annual conference organized by the Leibniz Institute of Agricultural Development in Transition Economies. The 2021 edition of the conference will focus on how the transition to a bioeconomy may shape agrifood systems and affect global food and nutrition security. The conference will take place on 7-9 June 2021 and the deadline to submit abstracts is 24 January 2021.

Find out more here.