Chapter 16 - Bioeconomy and environmental sustainability: A social, political, and scientific nexus framework for life-cycle sustainability assessment

Abstract

The sustainability assessment of bioeconomy value chains among the conceptual tools and performance-based regulations of environmental life-cycle assessment has emerged as a potential important sustainable growth strategy over the past decades. The sustainability pillars of bioenergy-based network system facilitate innovation-driven and support-based policy framework models, which provide overall impact assessment and comprehensive comparison of the environmental performance aspects. This chapter sets out to propose a more comprehensive and complete analysis of life-cycle assessment (LCA) data models to map the pathways of sustainable transition in the context of environmental assessment to bridge the knowledge gaps through the integration of life-cycle inventory and performance reference points based upon operational bridging boundary objects. The present chapter also discusses and addresses the strategy-based key challenges for the successful implementation and alignment of sociotechnical shared concepts through pathways of evaluation and standard context-specific social LCA (sLCA). We suggest an establishment of local and national level cause-effect relationship considering the active and social bioeconomy network system in regional indicators and indices. Additionally, we have emphasized the future perspectives and research needs for environmental and social life-cycle sustainability impact assessment under the analytical role of social inventory and transition governance assessment phase.