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Socio-economic dimensions of the Bioeconomy – selected findings for trends in the recent past

Author

Listed:
  • Lara Ahmann

    (GWS - Institute of Economic Structures Research)

  • Martin Distelkamp

    (GWS - Institute of Economic Structures Research)

  • Dr. Christian Lutz

    (GWS - Institute of Economic Structures Research)

  • Dr. Markus Flaute

    (GWS - Institute of Economic Structures Research)

Abstract

In this documentation, the socio-economic dimension of the German bioeconomy (BE) is reported for the recent past. The presented findings were developed as part of the project SYMOBIO (https://symobio.de/), a research project funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) as part of the concept of "Bioeconomy as Societal Change". The research consortium is working to create the scientific basis for monitoring the bioeconomy (BE) in Germany by a systemic understanding and modelling of the German BE with respect to sustainability aspects on a national and international level. Work packages of SYMOBIO deal with the footprints agricultural land use, forestry wood, water and GHG emissions. In addition to this, the project deals with the challenges in monitoring the social and economic sustainability dimensions of the BE. To assess the sustainability of the BE a set of indicators has to be defined and quantified that simultaneously look at the economic, social and environmental sustainability of the BE (see Egenolf, Bringezu 2019). Hence, one part of the project is to identify and assess key indicators that show the impacts of the BE on the (global) environment due to domestic use and/or production. The indicators for the socio-economic dimension are presented in this documentation. One of the key challenges to assess indicators for the BE is the lack of explicit data for BE in statistical classifications and some of the new parts just emerged over the last years. Different sectors such as agriculture or forestry can mainly or exclusively be attributed to the BE. For other sectors and activities such as fuel use or electricity production, part of the sector belongs to the BE, other parts not. Therefore, the socio-economic performance of the BE cannot be directly observed from official statistics, but for certain parts of the BE the relevance of BE activities (within the activity at hand) has to be assessed, using secondary statistics. As already discussed in D 2.6.1, the assessment of BEshares on the base of IO-Tables is one of the options to deal with this challenge (Distelkamp et al. 2017). Main emphasis of this paper is to assess past trends for selected indicators that deal with the economic and/or social sustainability of the BE in Germany. Socio-economic indicators have been identified that reflect the global value chains.

Suggested Citation

  • Lara Ahmann & Martin Distelkamp & Dr. Christian Lutz & Dr. Markus Flaute, 2019. "Socio-economic dimensions of the Bioeconomy – selected findings for trends in the recent past," GWS Discussion Paper Series 19-2, GWS - Institute of Economic Structures Research.
  • Handle: RePEc:gws:dpaper:19-2
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    German bioeconomy; SYMOBIO; Sustainability;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • Q5 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics
    • Q2 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Renewable Resources and Conservation
    • O1 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development

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