Abstract
ABSTRACT Regional bioeconomies promote sustainable, regional economies under the auspices of EU green growth policies. Combining prospects of rural rejuvenation, sustainability and innovation, they are employed to address climate change, societal challenges, and often benefit from substantial public funds. Yet, despite public finance's key role for bio-based transitions and (regional) bioeconomies, it has received little academic attention. Framed by conceptualisations on greening finance and (sustainable) policy narratives, this paper evaluates the public finance processes of three spatially variegated regional bioeconomy developments in Europe (Finland, Sweden, Spain). It provides empirical accounts from the case study sites and contrasts their public finance narratives with sustainable bioeconomy policy trajectories employed in EU policy promotion and benchmarking. This critical questioning of the current representations of regional bioeconomies in public finance narratives portrays a problematic mismatch between the dominant selective economic features and wider EU policy aims, particularly in relation to sustainability. Accompanied by the neglect of decisive local features in these benchmarking narratives, they promote a sustainably and spatially unreflective path forward for bioeconomy policy learning and development.
Highlights
The bioeconomy has become a primary political approach to promote and sustain regional economies under the auspices of the UN Sustainable Development Goals and green growth policies (e.g. OECD 2010; European Commission (EC) 2018a, 2018b; Fritsche et al 2020)
This paper aims to fill in some aspects of this gap by answering the following questions: (1) What are the narratives that dominate public funding of green/bio economic developments on different scales, (2) How do funding trajectories match the publicly promoted sustainable bioeconomy policy narratives, and (3) What are the potential consequences of the narratives on policy mobilization and learning processes in relation to bioeconomy policy implementation?
This paper analysed a set of regional bioeconomy narratives linked to public finance contributions
Summary
The bioeconomy has become a primary political approach to promote and sustain regional economies under the auspices of the UN Sustainable Development Goals and green growth policies (e.g. OECD 2010; EC 2018a, 2018b; Fritsche et al 2020). Combining the prospects of rural rejuvenation, sustainable growth and innovation, bioeconomy policies are part of a wider transformation deemed politically appropriate to address climate change related societal challenges. Such transformation requires large investments and both, public and private funding agencies are supporting new bio-based solutions. The European Union’s green growth-targeted funding for research, business development and SMEs such as Horizon 2020/Europe and the structural funds (ERDF) have become key to fund the bioeconomy
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
