Unravelling global future scenarios in the perspective of bioeconomy planning

Abstract

The transition to bioeconomy and the broader low-fossil carbon economy requires long-term investments, whose environmental and economic performance will be affected by various future conditions. When assessing the consequences of such future investments, considering multiple background future scenarios instead of one single projection could greatly enhance the robustness of the decision support. Here, we systematically reviewed six internationally well-recognized global environmental scenario studies and one intelligence report, selected as highly relevant in terms of bioeconomy implications. The aim was to uncover the key variables and cause-effect relationships at play in these scenario studies. Through constructing causal loop diagrams for each reviewed study, we identified the variables with the greatest number of causal connections, the “cause” and “effect” variables, and the most reported cause-effect relationships across all studies. Our main findings are: (1) the top 5 causal variables are mitigation policies, technological progress, consumers’ awareness, economic growth and education level, while (2) the top 5 affected variables are climate change, materials use, food security, natural ecosystems, and social justice. Amongst the top 10 causal and affected variables (3), 68 connected pairs were identified with no disagreement in their causal relationship direction. The three most reported pairs were (4) mitigation policy → climate change, healthy and sustainable diet → land use, and population → materials use. Finally, (5) we highlighted that all the reviewed studies share a limited worldview where economy and cost-competitiveness is the dominant consideration defining the future sustainability.