The Future of the Bioeconomy: circular and ecosystem services-aware?

This remote-learning course run in May 2020 addressing the current limits of the scientific and political definition of bioeconomy, by integrating elements from the concepts of circular economy and ecosystem services to forward its conceptualisation. The bioeconomy is emerging as a key concept at academia, policy and industry level in the Nordic countries and globally. The bioeconomy celebrates resources derived from living biomass as an alternative to fossil fuels, with knowledge and innovation being the key enabler of this sustainability transformation. While multiple understandings of the bioeconomy are being advanced, several experts have pointed out the limitations of this concept to forward sustainability transformations. Two concepts – the circular economy and ecosystem services - are relevant to advance the bioeconomy and related tools to monitor progress (inter)nationally, in line with the Sustainable Development Goals.

Video material from the course available freely at 

Course organizers: Adj.Prof. Dalia D'Amato (FBBS), Prof. Anne Toppinen (FBBS), Prof. Anders Roos (Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences), Prof. Lars Ottosen (Aarhus University). The course is funded by NOVA University network. More info at . Some video material was kindly provided by the "Perceiving the Forest-based Bioeconomy" network (), supported by the European Forest Institute. The overall course is part of the research dissemination plan for the postdoc project "Op­er­a­tion­al­ising eco­sys­tem ser­vices in busi­ness sus­tain­ab­il­ity: draw­ing from green and cir­cu­lar-bioeconomy" ().