Shades of green: a social scientific view on bioeconomy in the forest sector

TLDR

The bioeconomy agenda promotes a shift to renewable biological resources for sustainable economic growth, yet actors emphasize different aspects—“shades of green”—and highlight innovation and sustainability as cross‑disciplinary priorities. This paper seeks to outline policy and socioeconomic frameworks and research areas that enable a holistic understanding of the forest‑sector bioeconomy and to pinpoint core social‑science contributions that can enhance it. It does so by reviewing studies from policy analysis, economics, and business administration, thereby offering diverse disciplinary perspectives on the forest sector within a bioeconomy context.

Abstract

Politics increasingly introduces initiatives supporting a shift toward a bioeconomy aiming at a society relying strongly on renewable biological sources while achieving economic growth efficiently and sustainably. However, the agenda of bioeconomy comprises different “shades of green,” in the sense that different actors stress different aspects of the concept, when embracing it in communication. This conceptual paper aims to present policy and socioeconomic theoretical frameworks and research areas relevant for a more holistic understanding of the bioeconomy concept applied to the forest sector, and identify a core set of potential contributions from social sciences for enhancing the bioeconomy in the forest sector. The paper focuses on studies within policy analysis, economics, and business administration disciplines. Thus it presents diverse disciplinary perspectives on the forest sector in a bioeconomy. Furthermore, innovation and sustainability have been identified as issues relevant to be approached across these disciplines.