Bioeconomy and sustainable development goals: How do their interactions matter?

Abstract

Countries worldwide are leveraging the 2030 Agenda and its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for building a more resilient and sustainable future. One solution in this endeavour is transitioning towards a bioeconomy (BE), utilizing renewable resources and low-carbon value chains to meet food, energy, and materials demands. However, BE is neither inherently circular nor sustainable, compromising SDGs’ progress. Therefore, we conducted a detailed ex-post analysis using correlation, transfer entropy, and network analysis to understand the complex causal interactions between BE and SDGs. Moving beyond correlation, we explored the directional influence of interactions within the BE-SDG nexus. Our findings reveal a robust bidirectional influence between 19 BE criteria and 109 SDG targets across all goals among 48 European countries. While BE can drive progress toward SDGs, a balanced distribution of synergies and trade-offs constrains its impact. Collaborative efforts among European countries would effectively drive towards achieving both BE and SDGs. SDG 13 has positive influences from lowered fossil fuel emissions and negative ones due to land use changes and intensified agriculture, which releases stored carbon. Similarly, SDG 15 emerges as a positive influence, as healthy ecosystem services foster a resilient BE. Despite efforts towards SDG 12, Europe’s unsustainable consumption impedes BE supply chains. While BE practices are intended to accelerate sustainability, they fall short of playing a transformational role in achieving the SDGs. A shift towards a cohesive, collaborative strategy that leverages synergies and mitigates trade-offs can enhance the BE’s impact, advancing Europe closer to achieving the 2030 Agenda.

Keywords

SDGs / Bioeconomy / Bioeconomy database / Synergies and trade-offs / Causal interactions / Directionality

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Anne Warchold: Writing – review & editing, Writing – original draft, Visualization, Validation, Software, Methodology, Investigation, Formal analysis, Data curation, Conceptualization. Prajal Pradhan: Writing – review & editing, Supervision, Resources, Project administration, Funding acquisition, Conceptualization.

Declaration of competing interests

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgements

We acknowledge funding from the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) for the BIOCLIMAPATHS project (Grant No. 01LS1906A) under the Axis-ERANET call. Further, we acknowledge funding from the European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grant 2022 for the BEYONDSDG project (Grant No. 101077492). The funders had no role in the design, data collection and analysis, publication decisions, or study preparation.

Supplementary materials

Supplementary material associated with this article can be found, in the online version, at doi:10.1016/j.geosus.2025.100293.

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