The “Innovating for Sustainable Growth: A Bioeconomy for Europe” is the Bioeconomy Strategy of the European Commission sanctioned in 2012. De facto, it is an industrial strategy based on the replacement of fossil fuels with organic sources for the production of goods and energy, without questioning consumerism, economic growth and the extractivist model. In 2017, the Strategy was revised and, in 2018, updated by adapting it to European priorities as the New Industrial Policy (2017) and the process of digitization promoted by this, without considering that technological innovations is also associated with significant collateral hazards and new challenges (EEA, 2021). The Strategy considers the territory as a “box” full of resources to be exploited, without considering objectives, scales, models and production chains (Ciervo, 2016; Blonda et al., 2021) and risking to cause the same ecological and agrarian impacts, as well as environmental contradictions generated by bioenergy development based on the large-scale production chain (Ciervo, Schmitz, 2017).
As regards rural areas, Strategy supports development and provides jobs. What they are? The fifth objective of the Strategy contemplates “to boost local rural economies through increased investment in skills, knowledge, innovation and new business models” (EC, 2018). What innovations and new business models it referring to and what are their territorial impacts? Can the provision of a roadmap for implementation of biorefineries in rural areas be considered a sustainable policy?
Considering that the two key pillars of the Strategy are the large-scale biomass production and the use of high technology, the purpose of this communication is to verify the sustainability of the Bioeconomy Strategy for rural areas and to present the possible scenarios.
To this aim we also examine the rural bioeconomy portal launched by the ENRD Thematic Group on Bioeconomy in Rural Areas (https://enrd.ec.europa.eu/).
Mots clés : bioeconomy strategy|European commission|technological innovations|rural systems|sustainability
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