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Review
. 2022 Feb 20:808:152180.
doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.152180. Epub 2021 Dec 6.

Bioeconomy and green recovery in a post-COVID-19 era

Charis M Galanakis  1 , Gianluca Brunori  2 , David Chiaramonti  3 , Robert Matthews  4 , Calliope Panoutsou  5 , Uwe R Fritsche  6
Affiliations
Review

Bioeconomy and green recovery in a post-COVID-19 era

Charis M Galanakis et al. Sci Total Environ. .

Abstract

The spread of the COVID-19 pandemic has generated a health crisis and repetitive lockdowns that disrupted different economic and societal segments. As the world has placed hope on the vaccination progress to bring back the socio-economic "normal," this article explores how the bioeconomy can enhance the resilience and sustainability of bio-based, food, and energy systems in the post-COVID-19 era. The proposed recovery approach integrates technological innovations, environment, ecosystem services, "biocities," food, rural economies, and tourism. The importance of integrating culture, arts, and the fashion industry as part of the recovery is underlined towards building a better bioeconomy that, together with environmental safeguards, promotes socio-cultural and economic innovations. This integration could be achieved supporting communities and stakeholders to diversify their activities by combining sustainable production with decarbonization, stimulating private investments in this direction and monitoring the resulting impact of mitigation measures. Food systems should become more resilient in order to allow adapting rapidly to severe crises and future shocks, while it is important to increase circularity towards the valorization of waste, the integration of different processes within the biorefinery concept and the production of bio-based products and biofuels.

Keywords: Bio-based; Bioenergy; COVID-19; Food; Resilience; Sustainability.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of competing interest All authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Figures

Unlabelled Image
Graphical abstract
Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Bioeconomy opportunities to support green recovery and enhance system resilience in the post-COVID-19 world.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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