From Theory to Practice: The Circular Bioeconomy in Action

EDITOR'S NOTE: This article was derived from a larger digital forum examining the forest-based bioeconomy with a focus on the Global South, held 19 March 2021. The Nature at the Heart of a Global Circular Bioeconomy forum was organized by the European Forest Institute (EFI), the recently-merged Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) and World Agroforestry (ICRAF) and the Finnish Innovation Fund Sitra, in collaboration with the Global Landscapes Forum (GLF) and the Sustainable Markets Initiative Circular Bioeconomy Alliance (SMI CBA). The complete event can be accessed at https://www.cifor.org/event/nature-at-the-heart-of-a-global-circular-bioeconomy.

MARY NJENGA: Welcome to our session on From Theory to Practice, the Circular Bioeconomy in Action. In this session, we are looking forward to very practical experiences from different parts of the world. We have a very good team of panelists and these include Vincente, who is an architect, Rocio in energy and climate change research, Niklas in forest-based circular bioeconomy businesses, and Izabella involved in forestry. The way we will conduct this session is that I will pose two questions to every panelist and then they will talk to those questions based on their experiences.

I will start with Vicente: Millions of people are moving from rural to urban areas and the energy and housing needs will be massive. What kinds of wood-based solutions do you see as most promising? And what suggestions do you have for scaling up the sustainable use of wood and creating more sustainable cities?

VINCENTE GUALLART: Many times we say that by 2050 around 70% of the population will live in urban areas. But if we look at the numbers, we will see that in the next 30 years, we will need to organize around 1 billion people. This means we need to build a city of around 4 million people every month for the next thirty years. So, this is a huge process of urbanization and what is important to understand is that if we do this using the same approach we did during the 20th century, we will destroy the planet. We are in the process of destroying the planet, but in the next thirty years we will accelerate the process with how we are doing urbanization.

From that point of view, I think that there are some parts of the world—especially America and Europe—where cities are already built and we need to do a lot of retro-fitting. But there are many places like in Africa, some places in Asia, and Latin America, where many new areas need to be urbanized. The first step is that we should learn from the mistakes of the past, we should learn from the mistakes of what we did in the twentieth century.

Many times ecology was used as an argument to make a balance with the process of destruction we have done in developing the fuel and oil economy. But right now we have run out of time, and we must develop new forms of economy that are directly ecological. In some places in Africa and in India, for example, you have an incredible knowledge about how to manage forests. The important thing is to try to avoid making another twentieth century in Africa, where resources were destroyed in the name of trying to save it later.

This is something we are working on with the European Forest Institute: to develop new principles for bio-cities. Every fifty years we change the model of how we make cities. We did it one hundred years ago with the modern city and the Bauhaus, a school that was created in Europe. And we had another big change in the seventies, fifty years ago. Now, after this global pandemic and with the global warming problem, we need to reinvent how we make cities and not use nature as a way to soften the process as we do when we build with concrete. We should go directly to reinventing the way we make cities. The principle for bio-cities is that bio-cities are the cities that follow the principles of natural systems in order to promote life. So, it's not that we use trees, or we plant trees near the buildings, it's that we follow the rules of nature, the rules of the forest, to re-imagine how we should make cities. If forests absorb CO₂, why do we make cities that emit CO₂? If, in the forests, animals are not moving too much to look for food, why are we living in cities where we are all day moving, trying to go from working areas to our living areas? I would say the cities are the solution, but we need a new generation of cities.

Regarding the second question on sustainable management of wood, I think that this must be done by the community. The process of making cities should emerge from the community; that is why we are developing projects also in Africa to develop plans to manage wood. For example, cross-laminated timber is a fundamental part of wood development. But we should avoid taking wood from Africa and sending it to China and then create a panel somewhere in Europe that is sent back to Africa. You already have the raw material in Africa. These new cities would work the same as in Indonesia, a country with a lot of timber. We need to develop a model where every city includes the facilities to build itself, where people are learning how to manage the forest and produce energy and food in a circular economy. This is a very strong revolution but on the other hand is something very realistic.

What is unrealistic is destroying forests and still making our buildings with concrete. This doesn't make sense in any way. We have to empower communities to create the economy and employ local people in Asia, Africa and Latin America.

NJENGA: That's a good perspective on sustainable cities from an ecological standpoint—let's build using nature.

Rocio, you are in research. Tell us, what do you see as the biggest challenge in the circular bioeconomy transition when it comes to energy, demand, and related themes? The second question, what is different about the East African bioeconomy strategy compared to ones from the global north?

ROCIO A. DIAZ-CHAVEZ: I think, first, regarding the challenges in energy, is really to understand the differences in bioenergy. We heard from previous sessions about the differences between forests in temperate areas and forests in tropical areas. So, how we utilize these resources, particularly for bioenergy, is going to be different depending on the location. But we also have to remember that there is a biomass trade that has increased in recent years. The International Energy Agency has a task force dedicated to that, which also has shifted into evaluating the sustainability of this biomass trade.

We know that there is trade for pellets, for example, from the United States to Europe for energy generation. But, this is different in the context of sub Saharan Africa. We have heard already several explanations about the importance of fuel wood and the importance of charcoal production and how this may affect some areas and forests. But there are advantages to having natural forests where people can rely on other types of benefits and products.

In terms of the challenges for energy, it comes down to how this bioenergy can be related to the use of residues and how they can be used in a different way for agro-industries, including forest residues and agricultural residues but also other methods like cogeneration. We know that in the case of Uganda, the use of sugarcane bagasse for cogeneration of energy is in use. South Africa is also doing this, as is Brazil. In Asia, palm oil can be used to produce liquid biofuels.

Regarding the difference between the bioeconomy in the Global North compared to the Global South, the answer is a bit tricky. For the circular bioeconomy, the circularity should be implicit. Bioeconomy strategies from Europe, United States, and Canada have focused on how to reduce the use of fossil fuels, not just for energy but also for products. They are looking at ways to substitute many of the products produced by the fossil fuel industry.

In the case of the Global South, many regions have already started to look at the possibilities. We have been collaborating with BioInnovate Africa and the Stockholm Environment Institute in developing the first East Africa bioeconomy strategy. We had the first event last year and focused on four thematic areas: food, agriculture and forestry; health; bioproducts; and energy. How these different countries in East Africa are going to adopt these methods for their national strategies is one of the most important aspects for the region.

To emphasize this point, bioeconomy has different meanings depending on which region you are in. In particular, for sub Saharan Africa, we can focus on improved supply chains; this does not necessarily need to have high logistics or high investment. That can be done at a later stage. But, there is a vast number of resources in sub Saharan Africa that can be utilized in different ways or improved for sustainable value change but also for the creation of a proper bio-trade market in the region.

NJENGA: Thank you so much Rocio. Now I want to go to Niklas. What are the most promising wood-based innovations you are seeing today? And what else would you like to see? Where are the related bottlenecks when talking about bringing forest-based innovations to the market?

NIKLAS VON WEYMARN: To identify the most promising innovation, I think you need to take into account that we have the three pillars of sustainability. When you talk about the most promising innovation, it has to have a nice balance between all three pillars, not only looking at the economics. But having said that, in the short term, I would claim that the conventional businesses are still quite interesting and have a lot of potential for the future. One example of a conventional business is packaging. It is developing very fast, and this pandemic has really accelerated that. I think we will see great innovations in wood-based packaging, which is a conventional product, in the future.

A second example of a conventional business relates to what Vincente was already talking about: building with wood. And when I say building with wood, that is of course a mix of different raw materials but increasing the amount of wood-based solutions. Having innovations in this field is important.

Longer term, I would say that I typically put forward two areas. The first is replacing plastics. Obviously, we cannot replace all fossil-based plastics, but we can have great innovations with wood in that space. There are more or less two ways of entering this market: either you directly make from a wood-based material a plastic-like product, or you make a chemical [from wood] that is later processed into a plastic-like product.

The second area that I think is promising relates partly to the first one, and that's textile fibers. The market for textile fibers is huge, and there is a lot of room for growing the share of wood-based textile fibers. There is also huge demand for more sustainable raw materials.

In terms of finance-related bottlenecks, if I only think about the long term and focus on business ideas where you are manufacturing a physical product (obviously we also have these digital tools and services), you typically go from lab, to pilot, to demo and then you have a first commercial factory. This is quite expensive because you need a lot of financing to cover these different plants. The demo plant especially can be a very expensive unit, and often not profitable. So, you need to cover the capital expenditure related to that, and it's not so easy to find financing for that kind of activity. That is really a bottleneck for why we are not bringing forest-based innovations faster to the market. It should also be pointed out that if we are focusing on bulk products, then the customers that you are trying to get, they tend to keep a low profile as long as there is only one supplier of that product. So, if you really protect your idea with patents, it will not really develop fast because the customers expect and want, for many reasons, that there are many suppliers for the same product.

NJENGA: Thank you so much for your perspective and discussing these bottlenecks. Izabella, a circular bioeconomy is premised on achieving climate change mitigation goals. What does the Amazon experience tell us? And what are some examples you've seen of successful circular bioeconomy approaches at the sub-national level? Why do they work?

IZABELLA MôNICA VIEIRA TEIXEIRA: In Brazil, we have had some setbacks related to the Amazon, mainly deforestation, but it's also important to point out steps we are taking today to not only combat deforestation but also consider a future that takes into account sustainable management, forest protection and Brazil development. Amazonia represents more than 6% of Brazil's national territory, or more than 5 million square kilometers. More than 25 million people live there, and 80% of these people live in cities. It is a huge challenge to address urban areas in Amazonia. We cannot forget that more than 20% of the planet's water is in the Amazonia, and it has the lowest rates of human development index in Brazil.

We need to tackle two different situations: the carbon from illegal deforestation and the carbon from economic activity that you need to promote transition to low-carbon economies. For this, we need to bring society together. Brazil has contributed impressive research recently and is fully engaged against deforestation and also in finding innovative ways to protect Amazonia. All sorts of tech and climate change innovations are involved, but you always need to have inclusive national strategies for mitigation and documentation in Brazil's climate change agenda because of social inequalities in Amazonia.

So what's happening today in Brazil? Deforestation was rampant during my term as environmental minister in Brazil. We need to tackle this. Unfortunately, the federal government today has not necessarily succeeded with the strategies they have been talking about, and the rate of deforestation in Amazonia is increasing. The governors and mayors in civil society are looking for innovative political regiments and society and private sector engagement to bring solutions not only to tackle deforestation but to go into the future considering how we can manage and protect the forest and promote sustainable development in the Amazonian region.

I would like to highlight here two or three successes. We have a private sector and a financial sector, and also a new initiative to bring everyone together. They are looking to understand better and finance from private funds innovative ways to develop based on a source diversities model. We named this Bioeconomy 4.0, which envisions industry based on innovation and conservation. We are looking to put into practice not only small projects with well-defined, well-structured building blocks to promote regional development based on green economies in Amazonia.

You see a really good example from Natura [a large Brazilian personal care brand], and the momentum it has in an important industry in Brazil. Natura has entered a new cycle of development based on net zero deforestation by 2025 and net zero emissions in carbon by 2030. This strategy is coming with a really high-level ambition not to only address the bio-cosmetic strategy, but also to understand better how the company can promote GDP based on the forest economy and the social progress index for territories in Amazonia. Natura operates in different territories in Amazonia, and they are looking for ways to be more efficient with natural resource management and value supply changes.

Another example in Amazonia is a success story of the SAF Dendê project, in the state of Para. We know that we need to avoid the negative impacts of monoculture related to palm oil, so you have agriforest systems now with innovation systems based on the bioeconomy and mitigating climate change emissions. It is a really huge project with good outcomes, showing that you can bring productivity, biodiversity, soil fertility, carbon stocks and also small producers together. The project shows that the use of agriforest systems for the production of pulp meets, in the case of Dendê, the needs of small holders, contributes to the conservation of natural resources, and promotes the sustainable development for the human population.

It has been a learning process but what we have today are forest systems with really good outcomes that address social inequality and sustainability.

NJENGA: Thank you for showing the importance of having national players, government, and community and society involved. Would any other panelists like to comment?

DIAZ-CHAVEZ: I want to comment on the last point made by Izabella. Landscape governance is starting to change how we see the bioeconomy around the world. I think it is not new as such, but I think it is the way it is starting to be applied now for the bioeconomy that is important.

Also, adding to the point Niklas made about bioenergy, we are starting to see companies in sub Saharan Africa working on biobased packaging not necessarily from lignocellulosic materials, as is done with those who have the resources, but from starch. So, how we utilize supply chains in the global south without really high technological level or high logistics, is a good way to mobilize the bioeconomy without removing it from the three pillars plus governance. This is the formula that those who work in sustainability assessment are utilizing.

NJENGA: I will now take our first video question, from a startup entrepreneur in the bioremediation and waste asset space. Her question is, how do we translate these linear notions of growth and scaling up in a circular bioeconomy? Are we able to scale not just in terms of quantities and volumes but also in terms of biodiversity?

TEIXEIRA: As I mentioned before, we are not really doing small projects anymore; the need is for really robust actions and permanent solutions. For this we need political and economic support and also innovation. These must work together to bring people together. We have really good experience in Brazil with nature-based solutions and communities, but this is not enough to extract a robust solution for economic development. So, when discussing this, we are discussing new economies. New economies are coming to change our way of life, the way we produce, and the way we consume. We need to bring this into the core of the debate for national strategy for development.

Climate change, biodiversity laws, water, etc., these are not just environmental issues. These are critical development issues that we need to face in consideration of the local reality. We need to address local needs with global carbon efforts. We have to scale up and also identify tradeoffs. The questions are how we can look at the bio-agenda and understand what to change and how we can make it clear to people that they are part of the solution, not part of the problem. This is a really important political shift if you want to have a new reality. It needs to be made clear that we can act together. If not, we are going to have environmental exclusion again, and unfortunately you have today not only social inequality but environmental inequality for people that cannot access resources. We need a bottom-up approach. The solution in Germany will not be the solution in the Amazon region be sure.

NJENGA: The next question is for Vincente: What are the limitations of the existing building codes in many countries?

GUALLART: In many countries, there are limitations in the codes on building with timber. For example, Russia, the biggest producer of timber, doesn't allow such buildings to be higher than three floors. I would say that this is a cultural question. In China, regulations do not promote the use of timber. In many other places, like Europe and America, the regulations are more related with what you want to achieve and not which material you want to use. For example, regulations requiring 90 minutes of protection against fire can't be addressed using timber, but also not with concrete or steel either. Steel in fact is worse than timber in many cases. So, we should have some regulations that are independent from the material and then try to do architecture following those regulations.

I think there are some cultural elements related to these regulations. Architects would say that in the 19th century, we started to use steel as an important material. In the 20th century, we used concrete as the new material, and in the 21st century, the new material for construction will be industrialized timber because it is the only renewable material that we have in front of us.

NJENGA: How do you address cultural differences in the promotion of a circular bio economy?

DIAZ-CHAVEZ: I think that you have to consider bioresources' locality. How the resources are being used locally would be the first thing to address, not just in an indigenous form, or not just from traditional communities, but in general, how it is used? But that does not necessarily mean there cannot be a trade of bioproducts across the regions, it just has to be done in a sustainable form. Landscape governance is one way to do this. Standards can also be used. Some indicators are now being developed to ensure social and cultural aspects are also being considered. I think Izabella gave us some examples of that, and we can also see them in the different regions where we are working.

VON WEYMARN: I would like to add that forest certification standards are a very good tool, but you also need to keep in mind that the same rule in general doesn't work in all countries and regions. You do need to optimize for each region separately. Even within the European Union, I think we cannot have one rule for each country when we are so diverse.

NJENGA: We are getting a few questions on urbanization. How long do the buildings created with wood last and what are potential issues around calamities?

GUALLART: There are very old buildings in Russia, Japan, and China made with wood that more than 500-1,000 years old. I would say that timber is a very good material and industrialized timber, this new generation of timber, is created in panels. Cross-laminated timber is even better. From that point of view, wood is a good material that can last for decades and sometimes for hundreds of years.

Another important thing to note is that, in general, we mix wood with other materials. When wood is the main structural material, there are also many other materials around. Regarding resistance, you can design buildings with wood to resist earthquakes. Wood is a perfect material. At about 5 [in magnitude], it is better than steel. It is a cultural question to start to use timber in a new way. As Niklas would know, they have been working for many years developing these technologies and making construction using timber.

NJENGA: There is a question about natural forest products, like cosmetics. How can they contribute to the green economy to address the covid pandemic?

TEIXEIRA: We have had good experience with regenerative bio-cosmetics, and it's based on product chains that respect nature, animals and people. This means that the production keeps the forest alive and regenerating. This is a private sector approach, and they are looking also to defend human rights. So, when you protect the forest and prevent disruption in ecological cycles from deforestation, you avoid the emergence of other viruses. This is really an impressive approach where you can combine business interests and local residents; restore degraded areas; and achieve important bio-cosmetic strategies to come into the market not only at the national level, but also at the international level.

VON WEYMARN: I think we all know that the original medicines all came from plants and nature, so there is potential. They are used widely today, but of course most of the pharmaceutical industry is using something else. There is a new wave of biobased pharmaceuticals coming up at the moment. One small company is extracting components that can be used for medicinal purposes.

DIAZ-CHAVEZ: I'd add that, even in East Africa, we conducted some research to see the state of the pharmaceutical sector in sub Saharan Africa. And a lot of traditional medicine is still used. This is another way to move forward with the bioeconomy.

NJENGA: This has been a very interesting session and there are a few points I'd like to wrap up. One of the things that has come out of this conversation is that we need to learn from mistakes. Let us not make another 20th century. Let's use these lessons going forward. Second, when we are looking at bioenergy, let us also consider the related forest residues and generation issues, such as generating heat as well as power and using residues for bioenergy.

From a circular bioeconomy perspective, ideas that are patented take time to get actualized or developed. And as we look at sustainable cities up close, we need to look at issues of urbanization. In the future, a lot of people will be living in cities. The other point is that as we talk of circular bio economy, national governments, society, and the community need to be involved.