BIOEAST Board issued a position paper on the unique opportunity bioeconomy and green investments offer for structural recovery
In the middle of sustainable transition process the world is facing a major crisis caused by COVID-19. The recovery after the crisis and the sustainability challenges require profound deliberation on the role of Central and Eastern European (CEE) bio-based resources, which can offer opportunities and benefits to reshape their fossil-dependent economies into sustainable and circular ones and deploy bioeconomy. In the local-global context the BIOEAST countries’ bioeconomies could benefit the European self-sufficiency. Being among the key drivers of the recovery, green investments could transform the CEE countries into a fair and prosperous society, resource-efficient and competitive economies could emerge. It is crucial to engage moderate innovator CEE economies, to invest in research and innovation, digitalization and education linked to sustainable food systems and new business models for biomass valorization. The BIOEAST Board members stress the importance of value-added processing of biomass including organic waste streams for the benefit of the entire European society. It calls on the national and European Institutions to pay special attention to the local bioeconomies and to help the countries’ public administration to benefit from and use these difficult year(s) ahead to create an enabling environment for green strategies and action plans.