The sustainability of social-ecological systems has become a major concern in environmental policy and beyond, triggering many integrated cross-policy initiatives. An important example are bioeconomy strategies. Policies to promote a bio-based economy have been enacted in more than 50 countries around the world, often in response to the sustainability challenges posed by the fossil-based economy. However, the success and sustainability of the bioeconomy, in turn, depends on the resilience of the bio-based production systems on which it rests. Simultaneously, the continued delivery of the desired functions of these systems is potentially threatened by environmental, social, economic, and political short-term shocks and long-term stresses. Prudent bioeconomy policies would therefore identify potential disruptions and develop pro-active strategies to address them. However, little is known to what extent and which resilience challenges for a sustainable bioeconomy have been addressed in bioeconomy policies. To investigate the salience of resilience challenges in bioeconomy policies, we conducted a systematic content analysis of 78 national bioeconomy policy documents in 50 countries published between 2005 and 2020 to identify and discuss the specific challenges and the instruments directly aimed at addressing them. The results show that bioeconomy policy documents largely pay little attention to resilience challenges. If mentioned at all, challenges are mostly framed in economic terms, with few concrete instruments proposed to enhance resilience. Overall, the general neglect of resilience issues in global bioeconomy policymaking underscores the need for stronger foresight, cross-sector dialogue, and the explicit integration of resilience considerations into environmental management and bioeconomy policy design.

Governmental bioeconomy strategies around the globe promote the development of circular bioeconomies as pathway towards sustainable development. However, diverging bioeconomy visions emphasize either economic growth, sustainability, ecosystem biodiversity or biosphere compatibility. This article adopts a resilience perspective to explore how and why 78 bioeconomy strategies from 50 countries address the long-term viability of the bioeconomy. After assessing the strength of resilience orientations in these documents, the paper analyses how characteristics of the policy design space, which affect the willingness and capacity of bioeconomy policy designers, explain strong and weak resilience orientations. A fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) with five indicators for political, economic, land-use and environmental conditions confirms the assumption that high GDP and good governance are sufficient for strong resilience orientation, but only in connection with other factors. In contrast, low GDP combined with dependence on oil exports and specific land-use patterns explains many cases of weak resilience orientation.

Intensive livestock farming has significant environmental, health, and animal welfare impacts, driving increased societal pressure for legislative action, particularly in high-income countries. This study investigates the evolution of political discourses on livestock farming in Germany from the post-war period to 2021, using a corpus-assisted discourse analysis combining structural topic modeling and lexicometric analysis of parliamentary speeches. Sixteen topics were identified and grouped into four themes: structural change, animal welfare, environmental degradation, and consumer safety. Semantic analysis revealed changing concepts and priorities, from livestock farming as an exclusively economic activity, to criticism of declining family farming with growing attention to animal welfare. The combination of methods allowed to identify predominant discourses of animal welfare and structural change, while environmental risks and consumer safety were less prominent. The findings demonstrate the complexity of political debates surrounding livestock farming in Germany and the strength of combining topic modeling with lexicometric analysis to integrate thematic and linguistic dimensions. The analysis reveals that while the discourse on livestock farming has diversified to include environmental, welfare and consumer concerns, new topics were often adopted through recombination with established discourses. This corpus-assisted approach provides a transferable framework for analyzing political discourses across spatial and historical contexts.

The concepts of local food and food heritage have attracted increasing attention in academic and policy debates. Yet, both terms remain ambiguous, contested, and open to multiple interpretations. Within the EU, these notions carry particular importance: food has long been central to EU identity and governance, and current strategies for food system transformation and rural development frequently invoke related terms. While prior work has examined some aspects of the EU food policy framing, no systematic text analysis has specifically examined how the two concepts are being constructed and mobilised within the EUThis study aims to fulfil this gap by exploring how local food and food heritage are conceptualised and operationalised in EU policy documents. It adopts a qualitative research design grounded in a constructionist paradigm. Twelve EU policy documents published between 2011 and 2025 were selected from a broader corpus and analysed using Qualitative Document Analysis (QDA). The codebook was derived from the literature and refined through pilot testing. The findings reveal a shift in the treatment of local food: while earlier and less formal documents refer to it explicitly, more recent, strategic, and legally binding texts rely on indirect framings aligned with food producers’ economic priorities. Food heritage is more consistently present, primarily linked to traditional knowledge and cultural identity. The two concepts intersect most clearly in geographical indications system, and in discourses of local branding and rural development. The analysis demonstrates that EU policies frame local food in line with broader economic objectives, and that food heritage is recognised as part of the EU’s cultural identity and worthy of protection as such. We also conclude that a lack of coherent vision of what is the place of both concepts within the EU food governance risks them being primarily determined by producer competitiveness, thereby causing the relational and cultural dimensions that originally justified these concepts to become marginalised in policy.

Over the past two decades, more than fifty countries worldwide have published bioeconomy policies to facilitate the transition from a fossil-based to a bio-based economy in response to resource depletion, environmental degradation, and climate change. This transition, however, is likely to increase already high demands on bio-based production systems and exacerbate social, environmental, and economic challenges. Nevertheless, there is a lack of empirical research on how bioeconomy policies affect the resilience of bio-based production systems. Presenting an exploratory case study which builds on the Resilience Policy Design Framework, this paper analyzes the bioeconomy policy mix that addresses the maize bio-based production system in Italy and assesses how it enables or constrains three distinct dimensions of resilience — robustness, adaptability, and transformability. Data include a detailed content analysis of relevant agricultural and bioeconomy-related policy documents and semi-structured expert interviews. The analysis finds diverging resilience orientations within the policy mix. While agricultural policies are mainly oriented toward robustness and adaptability, nominal bioeconomy policies prioritize transformability. The paper thereby contributes to current discussions about the governance of the bioeconomy, policy design and the resilience of social-ecological systems.

Governmental bioeconomy strategies around the globe promote the development of circular bioeconomies as pathway towards sustainable development. However, diverging bioeconomy visions emphasize either economic growth, sustainability, ecosystem biodiversity or biosphere compatibility. This article adopts a resilience perspective to explore how and why 78 bioeconomy strategies from 50 countries address the long-term viability of the bioeconomy. After assessing the strength of resilience orientations in these documents, the paper analyses how characteristics of the policy design space, which affect the willingness and capacity of bioeconomy policy designers, explain strong and weak resilience orientations. A fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) with five indicators for political, economic, land-use and environmental conditions confirms the assumption that high GDP and good governance are sufficient for strong resilience orientation, but only in connection with other factors. In contrast, low GDP combined with dependence on oil exports and specific land-use patterns explains many cases of weak resilience orientation.

The bioeconomy transformation has become an integral part of the global environmental agenda and its governance has become the subject of intense academic analysis and debate. A recurring theme in social science scholarship is the characterization of the bioeconomy as a neoliberal political project that seeks to commodify and marketize nature, while limiting social inclusion to ensure its success. While this literature has significantly advanced our critical understanding of the bioeconomy, it has been limited by ambiguous analytical criteria, conflicting findings, and a lack of systematic examination of the role and dimensions of the neoliberal state. To address these limitations, we develop a framework that identifies 13 analytical criteria of neoliberal states relevant for understanding the extent to which a state is neoliberal concerning bioeconomy matters. We apply these criteria to the case of the German bioeconomy and find mixed evidence of neoliberalism. Our study contributes to deepening our understanding of the nature of the state in bioeconomy matters, which is essential to achieving the bioeconomy transformation.

Resilience and in particular resilience-oriented bioeconomy policies have become essential for dealing with long- and short-term stresses such as climate change, pandemics, and geopolitical conflicts. Meanwhile, concerns are growing about the resilience of the bioeconomy, but the scholarly attention given to the resilience orientation of bioeconomy policies worldwide has been limited. To fill this gap, we build on the concept of resilience, the Resilience Assessment Tool, and the new policy design approach to study whether bioeconomy policies enhance the resilience capacities of bio-based production systems, namely robustness, adaptability and transformability. Our systematic content analysis of 78 national bioeconomy policy documents from 50 countries shows that bioeconomic policies are characterized mainly by adaptability and transformability. Our descriptive statistical analyses indicate that these two resilience capacities and resilience orientation at large vary strongly and widely across documents. Our correlational analysis identifies political, economic, and environmental factors that begin to explain this strong cross-case variation. Our findings contribute to a better understanding of the role of resilience in (bioeconomy) policy making and the strengths and weaknesses of bioeconomy policy designs with regard to the resilience capacities. In doing so, we aim to contribute to the design of inclusive and innovative policies that support sustainable solutions, ecological standards, and broad stakeholder involvement.

Groß Glienicker Lake and Sacrower Lake are two lakes in the Berlin-Brandenburg region that are facing significant challenges due to declining water levels associated with climate change. In this paper, we report on a study that employed a mixed-method approach, incorporating ethnographic research, a household survey and stakeholder workshops, to address: (1) public and stakeholder perceptions of these declining lake levels (2) the social structures that interact with these perceptions, (3) the willingness to act and perceptions of responsibility, and (4) the local practices for dealing with these challenges. Our analysis reveals that lake level loss offers a prism through which such a hazard becomes visible and understandable as shaped by the interdependence of natural and social processes. From this understanding, we develop possible paths forward in governing risks adaptively. Such an expanded understanding of lake level loss as a socionatural hazard enables the orchestration of more comprehensive solutions to such phenomena than is possible solely on the basis of technical remedies to such hazards.

Over the past two decades, the concept of the bioeconomy has gained significant traction in policy making and research. While the visions and goals of bioeconomy policy strategies are well-researched, the policy instruments used to promote them have received little attention. Addressing this research gap, this paper presents a comprehensive analysis of bioeconomy-related policy instruments as articulated in 78 governmental bioeconomy policy documents from 50 countries around the world. Qualitative content analysis was used to identify the stated policy instruments and to assess the prevalence, density, choice of instrument type, balance, and calibration of the instrument mix across policy documents as a whole, but also disaggregated by substantive policy focus, time, country income groups, and individual strategies. We find that bioeconomy policies are dominated by economic and nodal instruments focused on promoting innovation, research and development, while regulatory instruments, particularly those addressing environmental issues, are rare within the strategies themselves. Moreover, while bioeconomy strategies contain a significant number of statements about instruments, they rarely specify their calibration. These patterns suggest that while bioeconomy strategies play important agenda-setting and signaling roles, their limited balance and calibration may constrain their ability to provide actionable policy guidance.

Grazing livestock are potential prey of large carnivores. Effective livestock protection measures are considered essential for the sustainable coexistence of large carnivores and pastoral farming. Therefore, understanding the drivers of livestock farmers' intention to implement protection measures is indispensable, for example, in view of wolves recolonising Europe. In 2022, we conducted an online survey among pastoral farmers in Bavaria, Germany. Following the Theory of Planned Behaviour, we expected attitude, subjective norm, perceived behavioural control and, additionally, the emotional component of worry to relate positively to the intention to implement livestock protection measures. We set up structural equation models for different preventive measures, differentiating between owners of small and large livestock. Additionally, we addressed the influence of subsidies. Responses from 353 pastoral farmers showed that the intention to implement preventive measures and its drivers differed between measures and were often stronger in owners of small livestock. Participants generally reported great difficulties in implementing livestock protection measures. Subjective norm showed the strongest relationship with intentions, suggesting that the close social environment can facilitate or hamper the implementation of livestock protection measures. The intention to instal wolf-deterring fences differed between zones with different availability of funding and compensation payments, suggesting that financial support can be an effective motivation to implement livestock protection. Policy implications. Our analyses highlight the importance of subjective norms for human intentions in the context of livestock protection. Therefore, examples of successful livestock protection that foster learning among peers could facilitate the dissemination of protection measures. Practical help could be key to enhancing farmers' perceived behavioural control over livestock protection measures. Subsidies have the potential to promote livestock protection measures. Additionally, it seems conducive to make livestock protection mandatory for receiving compensation in the event of carnivore attacks. If a measure poses overwhelming non-financial challenges in terms of workload or incompatibility with farmers' lives, subsidies might not suffice to increase implementation.Read the free for this article on the Journal blog. Gro ss e Beutegreifer sind eine potenzielle Gefahr f & uuml;r Weidetiere. Pr & auml;ventive Schutzma ss nahmen gelten als Grundvoraussetzung f & uuml;r eine nachhaltige Koexistenz. Angesichts der Wiederbesiedlung Mitteleuropas durch W & ouml;lfe ist es deshalb wichtig, zu verstehen, wodurch die Intention von Weidetierhaltenden, Schutzma ss nahmen einzusetzen, beeinflusst wird. Im Jahr 2022 haben wir in Bayern eine Online-Befragung von Betrieben mit Weidehaltung durchgef & uuml;hrt. Basierend auf der Theorie des geplanten Verhaltens erwarteten wir, dass Einstellung, subjektive Norm und wahrgenommene Verhaltenskontrolle positiv mit der Intention, Schutzma ss nahmen umzusetzen, zusammenh & auml;ngen. Zus & auml;tzlich erwarteten wir einen & auml;hnlichen Zusammenhang f & uuml;r die emotionale Komponente der Sorge. Wir haben Strukturgleichungsmodelle f & uuml;r unterschiedliche Schutzma ss nahmen erstellt und dabei zwischen kleinen und gro ss en Weidetieren unterschieden. Au ss erdem haben wir den Einfluss von F & ouml;rderma ss nahmen untersucht. Die Antworten von 353 Weidetierhaltenden zeigen, dass die Intention, Schutzma ss nahmen umzusetzen, genau wie ihre Einflussgr & ouml;ss en von der Art der Ma ss nahme abhingen. Zudem waren sie bei Haltenden kleiner Weidetiere h & auml;ufig st & auml;rker ausgepr & auml;gt. Generell berichteten die Weidetierhaltenden von gro ss en Schwierigkeiten, Schutzma ss nahmen umzusetzen. Die subjektive Norm wies den st & auml;rksten Zusammenhang mit der Intention der Weidetierhaltenden auf. Das deutet darauf hin, dass das soziale Umfeld die Umsetzung von Schutzma ss nahmen erleichtern oder hemmen kann. Die Absicht, wolfsabweisende Z & auml;une zu errichten, unterschied sich zwischen Zonen mit unterschiedlicher Verf & uuml;gbarkeit von F & ouml;rdermitteln und Kompensationszahlungen. Finanzielle Unterst & uuml;tzung kann demnach eine effektive Motivation zur Umsetzung von Schutzma ss nahmen f & uuml;r Weidetiere sein. Politische Bedeutung. Unsere Auswertungen unterstreichen die Bedeutung subjektiver Normen f & uuml;r die Absichten von Menschen im Kontext von Herdenschutzma ss nahmen. Daher k & ouml;nnten Beispiele f & uuml;r erfolgreichen Herdenschutz, die Weidetierhaltenden M & ouml;glichkeiten zum Lernen untereinander bieten, zur Verbreitung von Schutzma ss nahmen beitragen. Praktische Hilfe k & ouml;nnte entscheidend sein, um die von den Weidetierhaltenden wahrgenommene Verhaltenskontrolle beim Herdenschutz zu verbessern. Subventionen haben das Potenzial, die Anwendung von Herdenschutzma ss nahmen zu f & ouml;rdern. Zus & auml;tzlich erscheint es wirksam, Entsch & auml;digungen im Fall eines Angriffs durch Beutegreifer an das Vorhandensein eines Grundschutzes f & uuml;r die Weidetiere zu kn & uuml;pfen. Stellt eine Ma ss nahme eine zu gro ss e, nichtfinanzielle Herausforderung dar, weil sie arbeitsaufw & auml;ndig oder nicht mit dem Alltag der Weidetierhalter vereinbar ist, reichen Subventionen vermutlich nicht aus, um die Umsetzung zu f & ouml;rdern.Read the free for this article on the Journal blog.

Making agri-food systems in Europe more sustainable often requires systemic change. Transformative rather than incremental change is difficult if agri-food systems are locked into unsustainable practices by a range of institutional, cultural, social and financial factors that create mutually reinforcing barriers to change. Institutionalised public policies tend to further stabilise the established system through multiple feedback effects, bolstering unsustainable path dependencies. Co-design has been discussed as an innovative approach to developing operational options in agri-food systems. However, co-design methods have rarely been applied to develop policy options. This paper presents the experiences with a policy co-design process for the envisioned sustainability transformation of conventional pork production in Brandenburg, Germany. Combining an agri-food system perspective with the policy co-design literature, we developed (1) a process template for a participatory policy co-design process to overcome barriers and lock-ins along the three levels of policy mixes: objectives, instruments and calibration; and (2) a conceptual framework for the systematic analysis of this process and its output. The successful implementation of the policy co-creation process in the case study constitutes a proof of concept. An unexpected limitation was that full specification of instrument calibrations was not realistic. In policy processes, this is typically part of hard negotiation processes. The systematic analysis of the participatory development of policy options along the three levels of policy mixes confirms and refines the possible role of co-design approaches for public policies in the transformation of agri-food systems.

In August 2024, the Nature Restoration Regulation came into force in the European Union (EU). This landmark legislation on ecosystem restoration may significantly improve the state of European's biodiversity and could profoundly contribute to implementing the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. To realize this potential, the EU Member States need to underpin the objectives of the Nature Restoration Regulation with effective measures. Here, we highlight five factors for the success of national nature restoration policies: increased acceptance of nature restoration and landscape change; agreed quantitative and qualified national restoration targets; improved coordination of nature restoration with other land uses; supportive organizational and legal framework conditions; and increased attractiveness of nature restoration to land users and land owners. Drawing on recommendations developed for the German context by three national policy advisory bodies, we suggest that these factors also hold relevance for advancing nature restoration policies in other EU Member States.

Agricultural policies in OECD countries, which had treated farming as an exceptional sector that needs and deserves extensive state support, have been partially transformed by liberal and multi-functionalist influences since the mid-1980s. The ensuing post-exceptionalist policy arrangements entail significant tensions between old and new ideas, institutions, instruments, and interests. Related changes in relationships between the state and farmers, however, have rarely been analysed. To address this gap, this paper examines state-farmer relations in the implementation of direct payments in the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) post-2022, using Germany and the policy instrument that absorbs 75% of the CAP budget as a case. Based on the political sociology approach to policy instruments, we develop a framework to reconstruct the problematizations, subject constitution and modes of coordination underlying policy instruments along three levels of observation: instruments as institutions, techniques and micro-devices. An analysis of policy documents, legislative texts and policy artefacts finds that the differentiation of several direct payment components implies contradictory problematizations at instrument level: farm income, payment distribution, and remuneration of public goods. The techniques and micro-devices used to implement direct payments problematize eligibility and compliance with behavioural requirements. Hence, farmers are effectively constituted as dependent, only conditionally deserving beneficiaries and potential deviants. The non-hierarchical modes of coordination implied in transfer payments are overlaid by hierarchical modes involved in the setting of categorical and behavioural conditions and compliance controls. Analysing state-farmer relations therefore supplements earlier explanations for tensions created between non-aligned dimensions of agricultural post-exceptionalism.

The concept of food democracy has been developed to articulate norms and ideals of democracy as a counterpressure to 'food control' from concentrated and transnational corporate power in the agri-food system. Yet to date, a comprehensive overview is missing to identify the various elements and dimensions of food democracy conceptualizations and to reflect on what exactly is democratic about food democracy. To address this gap, a systematic literature review was conducted to assess consensus, common and outlying dimensions of food democracy conceptualizations and the epistemological synergies and struggles around different understandings of democracy in the research field. Analysis uncovers more than 20 different food democracy dimensions, the most common of which (deliberation, knowledge democracy, food choice, civic co-planning, rights protection) diverge along two predominant schools of thought, epistemological positions and strategies for change: first, food democracy as a process of open and inclusive public deliberation in participatory settings; second, food democracy as the protection of individual rights, liberties and private (consumer) freedom. Through the lens of varied democracy perspectives, we discuss implications for further development of food democracy in research, policy and agri-food systems interventions.

Download This Paper Open PDF in Browser Add Paper to My Library Share: Permalink Using these links will ensure access to this page indefinitely Copy URL Copy DOI

Bioeconomy policies aim at fostering economic growth while solving the sustainability challenges of the fossil-based economy. However, these policies do little to discuss the resilience challenges of bioeconomies and the bio-based production systems on which they rest. Specifically, the environmental stresses that are likely to threaten the delivery of the bioeconomy's desired functions are barely addressed. This paper aims to understand why the salience of environmental resilience challenges is low in bioeconomy strategies. We conduct an exploratory comparative analysis of the policy design processes of six countries - Malaysia, South Africa, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Italy and Germany - building on expert interviews and a conceptual approach that emphasizes the importance of the policy design space. Our findings suggest that key factors in explaining the low salience of environmental resilience challenges are the predominantly economic motivation among leading authorities and the under-representation of environmental actors across policy design spaces.

Environmental policy integration (EPI), that is, the incorporation of environmental concerns in non-environmental policy areas, has been widely adopted in public policies. However, EPI research has found much discrepancy between environmental objectives and actual implementation. This paper argues that analyzing EPI in the context of policy mixes with multiple objectives, multiple instruments and their calibrations helps to better understand unavoidable tensions and limitations. We develop a framework to assess EPI at these three levels of policy output, synthesizing the EPI and policy mix literatures. We further distinguish four analytical dimensions to assess calibrations: stringency, specificity, flexibility, and temporality. A case study of the national implementation of the European Union's Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) in Germany 2014-2022 is used to elaborate the conceptual argument. The CAP has saliently incorporated environmental objectives, while implementation, including the calibrations of most instruments within predetermined corridors, is left to member states. A systematic meta-review of 142 texts evaluating policy instruments and calibrations in the CAP 2014-2022, focusing on Germany, found that several CAP instruments link most farm income support to pro-environmental behavior. These instruments could potentially have high environmental effectiveness and efficiency. But actual policy calibrations delivered weak EPI due to low stringency and specificity, while high flexibility and temporal accommodation of farmers' needs might support EPI by increasing acceptance. Weak EPI resulted from instrument calibrations in the face of unavoidable trade-offs between competing objectives. Our results demonstrate that calibrations can significantly affect the strength of EPI adoption, and the priorities within policy mixes more generally.

The transition towards more just and sustainable food systems is a major challenge which requires persuasive policy narratives for motivation and coordination. However, research about how relevant European actor groups view crucial elements of food system transitions is scarce. The consultation on the European Commission's Farm-to-Fork Strategy provided an opportunity to analyze how elements of food system transitions are represented and connected in the policy narratives of European stakeholders. A deductive-inductive content analysis of 164 public responses, using an analytical framework based on the multi-level-perspective of food system transitions, found twelve distinct narratives, mostly focused on agricultural production. Ten of them showed clear connections to three established agricultural policy discourses: neomercantilism, multi-functionalism and market liberalism. While the narratives together provided a comprehensive account of transition drivers, challenges, opportunities and responses, individually they presented rather partial perspectives. For example, market-liberal narratives emphasized the role of value chain actors and “consumer choice”, whereas multifunctionalist narratives called for more regulation. Farmers' associations mainly deployed neomercantilist, NGOs multi-functional and industry representatives market-liberal narratives, revealing dissent on the importance and desirability of change. The findings indicate that shifting the discussion venue away from core agriculture policy arenas broadened entrenched discourses only marginally.

Multiple crises and challenges in the food sector are driving a rising need for innovative food production methods that could provide a growing urban population with high-quality, sustainable and healthy food while strengthening the resilience of food systems. Controlled-environment agriculture (CEA) in urban areas has been proposed as one possible pathway to address these demands. Despite its various potential benefits, CEA is still in a conceptual or experimental stage and there has been less research that focuses on the specificities of urban areas where it could be implemented. Using the Urban Food Production Innovation System (UFoPrInS) concept, this paper analyses the urban contexts and enabling and impeding factors for implementing CEA in three contrasting locations: London, Nairobi and Singapore. Based on document analysis and semi-structured expert interviews, our findings show that Singapore is a favourable location because public policies support the implementation of CEA to reduce food import dependency and enhance the resilience of food supply. In London, high food import dependency is increasingly seen as problematic, but the implementation of CEA has been hampered by other policy priorities. In Nairobi, where over half of the population lives in informal settlements without adequate food, water and sanitation, CEA is unlikely to make an economically efficient contribution to food security. We conclude that the implementation of CEA might be suitable in locations with ample capital and knowledge, stable political, social, and infrastructure conditions, and limited space, where value can be linked to hospitality and tourism, supported by positive pricing for resource savings.