Envisioning just transformations in and beyond the EU bioeconomy: inspirations from decolonial environmental justice and degrowth

Threatened sustainability: extractivist tendencies in the forest-based bioeconomy in Finland

Bioeconomy is portrayed by the EU and several national governments as a central element contributing to sustainability strategies and a post-fossil transformation. This paper critically engages with extractivist patterns and tendencies in the forest sector as one of the main bio-based sectors. It argues that despite the official endorsement of circularity and renewability in the forest-based bioeconomy, current developments of modern bioeconomy might threaten sustainability prospects. The Finnish forest-based bioeconomy and one of its well-known showcase projects, the bioproduct mill (BPM) in the municipality of Äänekoski, serve as a case study in this paper. The forest-based bioeconomy in Finland is scrutinized as a potential continuation or consolidation of extractivist patterns, rather than an alternative to these tendencies. The lens of extractivism is applied to identify possible extractivist and unsustainable characteristics of the case study which are discussed along the following dimensions: (A) degree of export orientation and processing, (B) the scale, scope, and speed of extraction, (C) socio-economic and environmental impacts, and (D) subjective relations to nature. The extractivist lens provides analytical value to scrutinizing practices, principles, and dynamics of the contested political field and vision of bioeconomy in the Finnish forest sector. The analysis results in a discussion of latent and manifest social, political, and ecological contradictions within the forest-based bioeconomy in Finland. Based on its analytical lens and the empirical case of the BPM in Äänekoski, it can be concluded that extractivist patterns and tendencies are perpetuated within the Finnish forest-based bioeconomy.

Is the EU shirking responsibility for its deforestation footprint in tropical countries? Power, material, and epistemic inequalities in the EU's global environmental governance

This paper critically examines the European Union's (EU) role in tropical deforestation and the bloc's actions to mitigate it. We focus on two EU policy communications aimed at the challenge: stepping up EU action to protect and restore the world's forests and the EU updated bioeconomy strategy. In addition, we refer to the European Green Deal, which articulates the bloc's overarching vision for sustainability and transformations. We find that by casting deforestation as a production problem and a governance challenge on the supply side, these policies deflect attention from some of the key drivers of tropical deforestation-the EU's overconsumption of deforestation-related commodities and asymmetric market and trade power relations. The diversion allows the EU unfettered access to agro-commodities and biofuels, which are important inputs to the EU's green transition and bio-based economy. Upholding a 'sustainability image' within the EU, an overly business-as-usual approach has taken precedence over transformative policies, enabling multinational corporations to run an ecocide treadmill, rapidly obliterating tropical forests. Whereas the EU's plan to nurture a bioeconomy and promote responsible agro-commodities production in the global South are relevant, the bloc is evasive in setting firm targets and policy measures to overcome the inequalities that spring from and enable its overconsumption of deforestation-related commodities. Drawing on degrowth and decolonial theories, we problematise the EU's anti-deforestation policies and highlight alternative ideas that could lead to more just, equitable and effective measures for confronting the tropical deforestation conundrum.

Global Inequalities in the Bioeconomy: Thinking Continuity and Change in View of the Global Soy Complex

As a proposed pathway to societal transformation, the bioeconomy is aimed at providing a sustainable alternative to the fossil-based economy, replacing fossil raw materials with renewable biogenic alternatives. In this conceptual contribution, we argue that it is impossible to transform societies into sustainable bioeconomies considering the narrow boundaries of the bioeconomy as a policy. Drawing on approaches including agro-food studies, cheap food, and agrarian extractivism, we show that the bioeconomy is entangled in a broader context of social relations which call its claim to sustainability into question. Our analysis of the global soy complex, which represents the core of the current agro-food system, demonstrates how the bioeconomy perpetuates global inequalities with regard to trade relations, demand, and supply patterns, as well as power relations between the involved actors from the global to the local level. Against this background, we propose a fundamental rethink of the underlying understanding of transformation in bioeconomy policies. Instead of thinking the bioeconomy only along the lines of ecological modernisation, its proponents should consider studies on social-ecological transformation, which would entail radical structural change of the prevailing food regime to cope with the social-ecological crisis.