The Hijacking of the Bioeconomy Vivien, F.-D.; Nieddu, M.; Befort, N. ...
Ecological economics,
05/2019, Volume:
159
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Georgescu-Roegen used the term bioeconomy to refer to a radical ecological perspective on economics he developed in the 1970s and 1980s. In recent years, it has also become a buzzword used by public ...institutions to announce and describe a supposed current economic and ecological transition. We see in this use an attempt of semantic hijacking of the original term. To support this claim we analyze three different interpretations of the term bioeconomy, presenting each of them as narratives combining distinct visions of future economic development, technical trajectories and imaginaries associated with a particular relationship to nature. Finally, we discuss these narratives in relation to the endorsement they receive by different stakeholders.
•Reviews the bioeconomy as defined by N. Georgescu-Roegen in order to discuss the development of the bioeconomy.•Adopts a narrative-based approach in order to identify main narratives as ideal-types.•Compares three main narratives of the bioeconomy: sustainability-oriented, science-oriented, and biomass-oriented.•Science and biomass-oriented narratives are dominating and trying to hijack Georgescu-Roegen’ bioeconomy.
“Sustainable de-growth” is both a concept and a social-grassroots (Northern) movement with its origins in the fields of ecological economics, social ecology, economic anthropology and environmental ...and social activist groups. This paper introduces the concept of sustainable de-growth by mapping some of the main intellectual influences from these fields, with special focus on the Francophone and Anglophone thinking about this emergent notion. We propose hypotheses pertaining to the appeal of sustainable de-growth, and compare it to the messages enclosed within the dominant sustainable development idea. We scrutinize the theses, contradictions, and consequences of sustainable de-growth thinking as it is currently being shaped by a heterogeneous body of literature and as it interacts with an ample and growing corpus of social movements. We also discuss possible future paths for the de-growth movement compared to the apparent weakening of the sustainable development paradigm.
The article studies the diversity of models of sustainable bioeconomy by focusing on the productive strategies of the farmers who engage in it. To account for this diversity, we use the framework of ...analysis of Beckert's socio-economics of capitalism in terms of compromises between four institutionalised economic processes: commodification, competition, innovation, and financing. We complete it by a fifth institutionalised process: the social relationship to the environment. We apply this framework analysis to the results obtained through a qualitative survey of 85 actors in the Grand Est region (France) involved in the bioeconomy between 2017 and 2021. We identify four models for the agricultural non-food bioeconomy that fit into various value chains and which approach sustainability issues differently.
The objective of this article is to show that, along with the concepts of common property and common-pool resources, the concept of common patrimony can be relevant for analyzing collective natural ...resource management. We proceed in three steps. First, we present the concept of common patrimony and we distinguish it from common property and common-pool resources. We show that the notion of common patrimony allows identity, historical, territorial and institutional dimensions to be taken into account as it places social dimension at the center of the analysis. Second, we illustrate the common patrimony concept by using the case of water management policy in France. Third, we place common patrimony within the framework of social ecological economics and we identify links with other approaches addressing institutional dimensions of water resource management. We outline some research questions that can be developed to contribute to a better understanding of collective natural resource management.
•The notion of “commons” is abundantly mobilized in the literature, sometimes imprecisely•We clarify the concepts of common property and common-pool resources•We propose the notion of common patrimony to analyze collective natural resource management.•The common patrimony concept is illustrated by the case of water management in France. Patrimonial economics is set in the social ecological economics approach and is a fertile territory for interdisciplinary research.
De nombreux écrits des membres du Groupe des Dix portent sur des questions économiques. L’un des principaux thèmes de réflexion de ce collectif attaché à l’interdisciplinarité a été de repenser la ...notion de développement en l’inscrivant dans le prolongement de l’évolution biologique, en mettant en évidence sa multidimensionnalité ainsi que la nécessité de lier cet objectif avec celui de la sauvegarde de l’environnement. Certains de ces auteurs, comme René Passet et Joël de Rosnay, sont allés plus loin encore en proposant de redéfinir la discipline économique à la lumière des enseignements des sciences du vivant. S’ils appellent tous les deux de leurs vœux l’émergence d’une bioéconomie, nous montrons que celle-ci revêt des sens assez différents.
The Groupe des Dix met from 1968 to 1976. Many of its members’ writings deal with economic issues. At the crossroads of science and politics, one of the main themes of reflection of this group attached to interdisciplinarity focused on rethinking the notion of development by including this socioeconomic dynamic in the prolongation of biological evolution, by highlighting its multidimensionality and the need to link this objective with that of environmental protection. Some of the members of the Groupe des Dix, such as René Passet and Joël de Rosnay, went even further by redefining economic science in the light of the teachings of life sciences. While they both call for the emergence of a bioeconomy, we show that it has quite different meanings in the writing of these authors.
"La création conceptuelle s’alimente le plus souvent de circulations invisibles entre les disciplines, par emprunts aux unes et aux autres, par détournements et réappropriations, sorte de bricolage ...aventurier qui suppose beaucoup de travail et de rigueur mais aussi beaucoup de prudence dans la quête d’universalité. En quelque sorte, un commerce des idées que le « Groupe des Dix », qui fait l’objet d’un dossier dans ce numéro, illustre à merveille. Pendant 8 ans, à partir de 1968, des intellectuels français, issus d’horizons disciplinaires divers, ont échangé, au gré d’agapes mensuelles, sur des questions qui sont au cœur de notre projet éditorial : une interdisciplinarité à l’épreuve de la complexité, de l’évolution des relations sciences/société, des perspectives de développement à long terme, de la prise en compte de l’environnement…" (source : éditeur)
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