Forest bioeconomy at regional scale: A systematic literature review and future policy perspectives

Abstract

Bioeconomy transition has been recognized as a key solution to tackle emerging environmental and socio-economic challenges. Several scientific publications focus on forest bioeconomy across multiple disciplines at territorial level. However, no studies provide a deep review investigation on forest bioeconomy with specific focus on wood at regional scale in Environmental and Social fields. Stemming from this gap, we carry out a bibliometric and systematic analysis based on bibliographic coupling results for co-authorship and author-keyword co-occurrences. The analysis covers 61 peer-reviewed articles in Social and Environmental fields in the time span 2009–2021. The co-authorship analysis identifies six clusters of current research related to: forest ecosystem services and supply costs of wood; nature awareness and wood products performance; social acceptance of wood mobilization and innovative products; Short Rotation Coppice acceptance and woody biomass opportunity in marginal lands; social Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) in wood construction; whereas, the keyword co-occurrence analysis highlights five clusters such as: bioeconomy and forest management, sustainable forest management and climate change mitigation, bioenergy and forest policy, sustainable value chain, and social acceptance and LCA. Main findings highlight a diversity of approaches to investigate forest bioeconomy transitions at regional scale in social and environmental fields. Gaps and future research developments are identified for each cluster and relevant policy implications are discussed. These mainly recall the need of establishing adequate participatory approaches between communities and policy actors, particularly for small private forest owners, and adequate economic incentives to support market entry to implement a sustainable bioeconomy.