The BIOVOICES project is organising the Mutual Mobilization and Learning Workshop entitled “The bioeconomy in Italy: incentives, laws, norms” that will be held on October 17, 2019, in the afternoon in Rome as part of the Compraverde Buy Green 2019, the most important European and national event dedicated to public and private Green Procurement policies, projects, goods and services.

The day aims to be a moment of sharing knowledge about the experiences, the regulations and the existing laws at national and European level, and the necessities to push the development of the bioeconomy at national level.

Many speech are planned and discussion tables from which the needs and opportunities that the bioeconomy can open can be highlighted. The initial interventions will stimulate the discussion of the mutual learning workshop, which, using a participatory approach, will make it possible to understand the regulations, laws, practices and needs that emerge at Italian and European level in relation to the bioeconomy.

Please register and find the preliminary agenda here: https://www.biovoices-platform.eu/registeredarea/mmls/viewMml/5516

The workshop is promoted by the European Bioeconomy Network and it is the satellite event of the “European Workshop on Bioeconomy”, hosted by the French Ministry of Agriculture and Food and organised by the BIOVOICES project.

Addressing global challenges like climate change, land and ecosystem degradation and growing population forces industries, policy makers, researchers, but also end-consumers to seek new ways of producing and consuming that respect the ecological boundaries of our planet. End-consumers can play a central role in this systemic change toward a more sustainable model promoting growth and development thus preserving the ecosystem. Consumers and their behaviour play a major role in this transformation process. As demonstrated by a number of studies , consumer awareness, knowledge and education on sustainable production, consumption and lifestyles, are important factors determining behavioural changes toward a more responsible consumption. Despite several relevant intents , the bioeconomy policies have been criticised for giving marginal attention to civil society approaches and for their lack of transparency on who is involved in the formulation of policies . Initiatives to engage stakeholders and the public have been rare in the context of the bioeconomy, and most of them have tended to focus on one-way information transmission . Furthermore, the engagement has often been about public acceptance of policies rather than a true possibility to participate in the discussion about the nature of development . This is a missed opportunity as citizens’ involvement is key to identify and address current bottlenecks hampering the bioeconomy uptake, to develop bio-based products and applications that are considered valuable and desirable, to contribute to the design of the bioeconomy industry and policy agendas responding to the needs of civil society, and to accelerate the implementation of Bioeconomy strategies at national, regional and community level. This workshop will contribute to the above mentioned challenges through: • The collection of good practices, needs and requirements related to the citizens’ participatory approaches • Transforming the findings into actionable knowledge in the form of lessons learnt and recommendations for the design of the strategies, tools and activities to empower citizens to participate in the bioeconomy. The MML workshop will analyse the following challenges related to the bottom-up participatory approach involving citizens in shaping of the bio-based economy: • How to promote attitudinal, purchase and consumption changes, increasing consumers’ awareness and knowledge of potential benefits of bio-based solutions. • How to enhance the involvement of the citizens through a bottom-up, participative and ‘open science’ approach. • How to empower citizens to become active players in the design, implementation and monitoring of the bio-based industrial and political agendas. • What type of information the bio-based industries and policy makers need to better tailor their products and policies to the needs of civil society. • How to co-design and implement strategies, digital tools and live activities enabling end-consumers to provide direct inputs to bio-based products and applications in a wide array of daily life situations. The seating capacity is limited and interested participants are advised to register as soon as possible.

Notes: The exact address of the workshop is: Ministry of Agriculture and Food, DGER – 1 avenue de Lowendal, Paris 7, Metro station “Ecole Militaire”.

What is the Bioeconomy? What are the products of renewable origin of daily use? Is it possible to make more sustainable choices for the environment and for our health, replacing the fossil-based products?

Products of natural origin can answer these questions. Waste or by-products can be a great resource for the circular economy and for the bioeconomy: fabrics from coffee grounds, elephant poop paper, apple and orange peel, cosmetics from tomato peel or insects. Biodegradable toys, Spirulina as superfood, restoration with prickly pear, building applications from fungi, 3D printing with hemp: these are just some of the possibilities offered by the bioeconomy!

On 27 and 28 September 2019, the Italian edition in Frascati of the European Researchers’ Night will host the BIOECONOMY Village, promoted by the BIOVOICES, STAR-ProBio, Biobridges and LIFT projects funded by the European Commission.

At the BIOECONOMY Village UNITELMA Sapienza, FVA new media research, Curioctipus, Algaria and Ma.Re. Project will show you what the bioeconomy is!

Come and discover them in occasion of the European Researchers’ Night organized by Frascati Scienza, #BEES -BE a citizEn Scientist, the great event that brings science to the streets, among citizens, young people and students.

The Bioeconomy offers huge potential to tackle societal challenges such as resource efficiency, climate change, maintaining European competitiveness and creation of jobs.

Increasing public awareness and knowledge about all areas of the bioeconomy is a major challenge

Despite the important investments, strategies and action plans implemented at Regional, National and European level, the 2018 revision of the European Bioeconomy Strategy (pdf) declares that “increasing public awareness and knowledge about all areas of the bioeconomy remains one a major challenge, which the European Commission aims to address by supporting communication initiatives to raise awareness of the environmental and socio-economic impacts of the bioeconomy and bio-based products, and its benefits, such as more green jobs.

According to the European Bioeconomy Strategy “Consumers and their behaviour play a major role in the transformation process. As demonstrated by a number of studies, consumer awareness and knowledge are important factors determining responsible consumption behaviour. Additionally, raising awareness is also important to accelerate the implementation of Bioeconomy strategies at national, regional and community level, and also to allow the citizens to have their say and provide their feedback on bioeconomy-related issues, such as through the EU Citizens’ Initiatives tool.”

Need to share experiences in bioeconomy communication

Several initiatives and projects have been funded by the EC and State members to improve consumers’ awareness and knowledge, media and social media are increasingly paying more attention to sustainability themes and the large public is every day more interested and sensitive to these issues.

To design impactful bioeconomy communication, it is important to build on the previous projects and initiatives, share the experiences, learn from successful activities and identify gaps, barriers and areas of improvement. This should be done through mobilisation and mutual learning among stakeholders.

In this context, the workshop “The role of communication and education in promoting circular and sustainable bioeconomy” has been organized to promote the discussion and sharing of best practices and lessons learned through the bioeconomy communication activities.

The workshop will be jointly organized by four HORIZON 2020 projects: BIOVOICES, BioCannDo, Biobridges and LIFT (envisaged start: May 2019), all members of the European Bioeconomy Network which will play an important role in communicating and promoting bioeconomy at local and national level, as stated in the updated 2018 Bioeconomy Strategy.

The workshop will bring together EU-funded projects, European platforms and networks, Member States networks, together with quadruple helix stakeholders (Industry/Investors, Research/ Education, Public administration/Policy Makers, and Civil society) dealing with communication and awareness raising on the circular bioeconomy.

The event will take place on 8 July, as satellite event of the conference European Bioeconomy Scene 2019. The event is hosted by the Ministry of Education and Culture (Meritullinkatu 1, Helsinki – Finland).

The discussion will address questions like: communication formats and channels; multipliers to be involved; messages and arguments to be used (in terms of style, scope, terminology); etc. It will include an operative session that will focus on supporting the updated European Bioeconomy Strategy through communication activities: action plan, synergies and recommendations to maximise the opportunities and impact of bioeconomy communication at national and European level.

It is also expected that the workshop will facilitate the creation of synergies to maximise the opportunities and impact of bioeconomy communication at national and European level.

Article by Susanna Albertini