Best Practices for Stakeholder Engagement: Co-Creating National Bioeconomy Strategies

Many European countries and regions still need to develop strategies to unleash the potential of the bioeconomy. To achieve this, policymakers need to include all stakeholders to create and implement a credible long-term vision that can ensure all viewpoints are heard, and interests are balanced Based on experiences gathered from Austria, Finland, Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden, CEE2ACT has developed a replicable stakeholder engagement strategy which involves: Establishing a stakeholder engagement platform with all critical sector involved, including national ministry representatives; Defining the organisational set-up around an existing network or cluster, or establishing a new working group under the ministry’s control; Performing a complete stakeholder mapping at all levels and considering their strategic role in the bioeconomy; Establishing the platform’s business model and long-term sustainability, and;Proposing platform actions to build trust, exchange knowledge, and set shared long-term vision and strategy.