Communique from Global Bioeconomy Summit: “promoting technologies, governance, cooperation” are key to sustainable bioeconomy.
The first Global Bioeconomy Summit in Berlin Germany released a communique:
“We, a community of experts and stakeholders from more than 50 countries, met in Berlin to review the state of bioeconomy in different parts of the world and to identify opportunities for accelerated transition to a more biobased economy, i.e., an economy that fulfills criteria of ecological and social sustainability.
“We note that in the past ten years many countries have pursued bioeconomy strategies with a particular focus on research and policy-making. We hold that there are manifold opportunities for learning from experience across national borders and institutional domains. We thus advocate sharing insights from bioeconomy research and innovation. We have also identified significant large-scale research projects that would benefit from global cooperation.
“This communiqué highlights key elements of the emerging global agenda for a sustainable bioeconomy. We emphasize that a sustainable bioeconomy will make essential contributions to achieving Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as its potentials are particularly geared to the SDGs related to food security and nutrition (Goal 2), healthy lives (Goal 3), water and sanitation (Goal 6), affordable and clean energy (Goal 7), sustainable consumption and production (Goal 12), climate change (Goal 13), oceans, seas and marine resources (Goal 14), and terrestrial ecosystems, forests, desertification, land degradation, and biodiversity (Goal 15).”
Stakeholders at the summit agreed to focus on: promoting innovative as well as proven technologies and measures for a sustainable bioeconomy, establishing good governance for a sustainable bioeconomy, initiating and strengthening international dialogue and cooperation.
And the delegates agreed to:
1. To establish an international forum for bioeconomy as an informal network to foster strategic dialogue with policy-makers, private sector, civil society and scientists, including foresight and think tank oriented activities. In addition a shared understanding of sustainable bioeconomy, and monitoring and reviewing progress at an international level should be part of its agenda.
2. To explore opportunities for long-term international research and development collaboration to advance biobased technologies, processes and products in selected innovation areas, building on key themes identified at the Global Bioeconomy Summit in Berlin;
3. To initiate a dialogue among stakeholders regarding the knowledge, skills and competencies, which will be crucial for implementing the bioeconomy, and to promote mutual capacity building efforts.
4. To build up dialogue with civil society and the interested publics to render bioeconomy a venture based on a widely shared vision of a sustainable future; innovative ways of communication with the public must be identified and developed, based on principles of transparency, openness and evidence.
5. To include bioeconomy topics into ongoing discussions on how to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals at international and national levels.
6. To exploit synergies from collaboration at regional level, in particular by coordination of smart regional innovation strategies.
7. To hold the next Global Bioeconomy Summit in two years, and to maintain the IAC until then as an informal mechanism for international coordination and cooperation activities, incl. facilitating the above mentioned international forum.
Category: Fuels
