The rise of the bioeconomy is usually associated with increased sustainability. However, various controversies suggest doubts about this assumed relationship. The objective of this paper is to identify different visions and the current understanding of the relationship between the bioeconomy and sustainability in the scientific literature by means of a systematic review. After a search in several databases, 87 scientific journal articles were selected for review. Results show that visions about the relationship between bioeconomy and sustainability differ substantially. Four different visions were identified, including: (1) the assumption that sustainability is an inherent characteristic of the bioeconomy; (2) the expectation of benefits under certain conditions; (3) tentative criticism under consideration of potential pitfalls; and (4) the assumption of a negative impact of the bioeconomy on sustainability. There is considerable attention for sustainability in the scientific bioeconomy debate, and the results show that the bioeconomy cannot be considered as self-evidently sustainable. In further research and policy development, good consideration should therefore be given to the question of how the bioeconomy could contribute to a more sustainable future. Furthermore, it is stressed that the bioeconomy should be approached in a more interdisciplinary or trans-disciplinary way. The consideration of sustainability may serve as a basis for such an approach.

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Visions of Sustainability in Bioeconomy Research

The term bioeconomy and closely related notions like bio-based economy or knowledge-based bioeconomy (KBBE) are increasingly used by scientists and politicians in the last years. It does therefore have the potential of becoming an influential global discourse. Its role is however so far unclear. The general assumption that guides this paper is that discourses, resulting ideas and arguments are generally said to have performative power. They shape actors' views, influence their behaviour, impact on their beliefs and interests and can cause institutional change in a given society. Thus, the aim of this paper is twofold: first, it aims to analyse whether the ideas used in a bioeconomy discourse differs from those in other global meta-discourses of the last decades affecting forest discourses, such as the ecological modernization discourse or the sustainable development discourse. Second, this paper aims to analyse whether and how the bioeconomy discourse has started (or not) to reshape or overshadow the “cla...

Bioeconomy – an emerging meta-discourse affecting forest discourses?

Soy has become one of the world's most important agroindustrial commodities – serving as the nexus for the production of food, animal feed, fuel and hundreds of industrial products – and South America has become its leading production region. The soy boom on this continent entangles transnational capital and commodity flows with social relations deeply embedded in contested ecologies. In this introduction to the collection, we first describe the ‘neo-nature’ of the soy complex and the political economy of the sector in South America, including the new corporate actors and financial mechanisms that produced some of the world's largest agricultural production companies. We then discuss key environmental debates surrounding soy agribusiness in South America, challenging especially the common arguments that agroindustrial intensification ‘spares land’ for conservation while increasing production to ‘feed the world’. We demonstrate that these arguments hinge on limited data from a peculiar portion of the south...

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/03066150.2016.1146705

Sacred groves, sacrifice zones and soy production: globalization, intensification and neo-nature in South America

1. Rationalizing Politics The Rise of Social Regulation Science and Policymaking Expertise and Trust The Contingency of Knowledge The Reform Debate An Alternative Approach 2. Flawed Decisions Nitrites 2,4,5-T Love Canal Estimates of Occupational Cancer The Technocratic Response A Critical Counterpoint 3. Science for the People The Rationale for Public Science The "New" Expert Agency Scientific Advice and Open Government Judicial Review of Science Policy The Weakening of the Paradigm 4. Peer Review and Regulatory Science The Traditions of Peer Review Peer Review in Practice Instructive Failures Regulatory Science: Content and Context Implications for Regulatory Peer Review 5. EPA and the Science Advisory Board Early Political Challenges A New Cooperation Boundary Exercises SAB's Impact on Policy Conclusion 6. The Science and Policy of Clean Air CASAC and the NAAQS Process Science and Standards Redefining CASAC's Role The Carbon Monoxide Controversy CASAC's Effectiveness: Bridging Science and Policy 7. Advisers as Adversaries The Scientific Advisory Panel Implementing the Impossible Ethylene Dibromide Dicofol Alar A Fragmentation of Authority 8. FDA's Advisory Network The Scientific Evaluation of Drugs Expertise and Food Safety Advice and Decision 9. Coping with New Knowledge The Quest for Principled Risk Assessment Formaldehyde: An Uncertain Carcinogen Conclusion 10. Technocracy Revisited A Public-Private Partnership for Science Risk Assessment without Politics The Public Board of Inquiry Wider Applications 11. The Political Function of Good Science From Advice to Policy Acceptable Risk Scientific Advice as Legitimation: Negotiation and Boundary Work Defining "Good Science" Normative Implications Conclusion Notes Index

The fifth branch. Science advisers as policymakers

http://www.renewablefarming.com/images/2015Images/2015PDF/Glyphosate-soil-Argentina.pdf

Occurrence of glyphosate and AMPA in an agricultural watershed from the southeastern region of Argentina

Challenging the bioeconomy: The dynamics of collective action in Argentina

Esta ponencia constituye el marco teorico de una investigacion mas amplia - actualmente en desarrollo- orientada al analisis del rol del conocimiento tacito en el desarrollo y produccion de artefactos tecnologicos. Esta investigacion, a su vez, forma parte del proyecto PICT "Analisis de procesos de construccion social de utilidad y de la demanda social de conocimientos cientificos: estudios de caso y desarrollo conceptual" financiado por ANPCyT. El principal objetivo de este trabajo es analizar algunos abordajes del concepto de "conocimiento tacito" dentro de la economia y aportar algunas reflexiones sobre la produccion, la transmision, el aprendizaje, la codificacion y la perdida de conocimiento tacito en los procesos de innovacion y produccion tecnologica

/pdf/conocimiento-tacito-en-la-economia-del-cambio-tecnologico-la-54lwfb3e8h.pdf

Conocimiento tácito en la economía del cambio tecnológico, la economía política regulacionista y la economía neoinstitucionalista. una revisión conceptual

From 2010 to 2019, Argentinian medical students and faculty at the Universidad Nacional de Rosario worked with allies from grassroots movements to routinize new epidemiological data collection practices designed to call medical students’ attention to the public health consequences of industrial agriculture’s indiscriminate use of pesticides. This paper charts the rise and fall of their collective efforts to institutionalize participatory knowledge and pedagogy that directly challenged the political legitimacy of industrial agriculture. We anchor our study in a trio of concepts—sociotechnical regime, niche, and network—using these tools to describe the dynamic interplay among dominant and subordinate knowledge systems. Our analysis reveals that radical participatory projects cannot be understood without reference to the historical and institutional contexts that structure opportunities and constraints within which participatory knowledge research is developed, implemented, and sustained. 

Florencia Arancibia

Papers

Challenging the bioeconomy: The dynamics of collective action in Argentina

Conocimiento tácito en la economía del cambio tecnológico, la economía política regulacionista y la economía neoinstitucionalista. una revisión conceptual

Building Participatory Knowledge Infrastructure Against the GMO Agribusiness Regime: The Case of Los Campamentos Sanitarios