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Bioeconomy is the production, utilization and conservation of biological resources, including related knowledge, science, technology, and innovation, to provide information, products, processes and services across all economic sectors aiming toward a sustainable economy’. Its cross-cutting nature offers a unique opportunity to comprehensively address interconnected societal challenges such as food and nutrition security, fossil-resource dependence, natural resource scarcity and climate change, while achieving sustainable economic development.

However, developing bioeconomy as such is not sustainable per se. The development of an economy that is based on biomass resources faces several trade-offs. It is crucial that bioeconomy development does not hamper but rather strengthens food security as a basic human need and right, while also helping to achieve several other Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Taking this into account, in January 2015, on the occasion of the Global Forum for Food and Agriculture summit in Berlin, 62 Ministers of Agriculture recommended that FAO coordinates international work on sustainable bioeconomy. To that end, the German Ministry for Food and Agriculture has provided support to FAO to develop Sustainable Bioeconomy Guidelines.

The project aims to develop sustainable bioeconomy guidelines to assist countries as well as producers and users of biomass and bioproducts in developing and implementing sustainable bioeconomy strategies, policies and programmes. https://www.fao.org/3/ca5145en/ca5145en.pdf