Overview:
Ensuring the well-being of current and future generations without transgressing environmental limits is an overarching objective of the concept of sustainable bioeconomy. Achieving this objective will require major transformations of existing resource systems, value networks, business models, infrastructures and governance systems. The recent decision of the German government to phase-out coal mining will initiate major transition processes in the lignite mining region, the Rheinische Revier, creating a unique opportunity for understanding the socio-technical dynamics and implementation options towards an entire sustainable bioeconomy region. Against this background, Transform2Bio aims to systematically identify transformation trajectories for the implementation of a strong and sustainable bioeconomy in the Rheinische Revier.
Pooling expertise from (agricultural) economics, operations and innovation management, entrepreneurship, political science, economic development, consumer psychology, and socio-technical systems analysis, the research approach of Transform2Bio follows the inter- and transdisciplinary sustainability research agenda integrating orientation, system, and transformation knowledge. As part of this multi-dimensional approach, Transform2Bio will establish an interactive stakeholder network, the Stakes2Bio Lab. It will provide the room for both continuous stakeholder dialogue (‘society to science’) and the establishment of regional 'science to society' networks. These will provide bioeconomy implementation options based on cutting-edge scientific research, which can be readily tested against 'real world' stakeholder settings.
Contribution
Our contribution to Transform2Bio is part of work package 3 on "Transformation Trajectories and Assessment". Specifically, our group contributes to WP 3.1c “regional impact assessment of bioeconomy pathways” by
- Developing a regional CGE model, based on CGEBox, that allows connection to the global shared socio-economic pathways (SSPs) and simulation of alternative bioeconomy scenarios.
- Linking CGEBox to FarmDyn which provides farm scale economic simulation for the Rheinische Revier
Related publications
- Heckelei, T. (2016). Conclusions: The State-Of-The-Art Of Farm Modelling And Promising Directions, In: Shresta, S., Barnes, A., & Ahmadi, B.V. (Eds.), Farm-Level Modelling: Techniques, Applications And Policy. 206-213, Cabi International, Boston (USA).
- Neuenfeldt, S., Gocht, A., Heckelei, T, & Ciaian, P. (2018). Explaining Farm Structural Change In The European Agriculture: A Novel Analytical Framework. European Review Of Agricultural Economics, Jby037, 1-56.
- Jafari, Y., Britz, W., Dudu, H., Roson, R., Sartori, M. (2020). Can Food Waste Reduction In Europe Help To Increase Food Availability And Reduce Pressure On Natural Resources Globally? German Journal of Agricultural Economics (Forthcoming). https://ideas.repec.org/p/ags/ubfred/301858.html
- Jafari, Y., Britz, W., Beckman. J. (2019) The Impacts To Food Consumers Of A Transatlantic Trade And Investment Partnership, Bio-Based and Applied Economics 7(2):139-160
