Our current economic systems are transgressing planetary boundaries globally and yet societal needs are not sufficiently and equally fulfilled. Fostering the bioeconomy as an economy based on renewable resources can be a transformation towards a sustainable future, to fulfill societal needs within planetary boundaries. However, sustainability is not intrinsic to the bioeconomy and consequently advanced and comprehensive monitoring systems on a national scale are needed. In the systemic modeling and monitoring of the German bioeconomy (SYMOBIO) a comprehensive national monitoring framework in the context of global dynamics was developed, and a first pilot report of monitoring results was published and presented to the public in June 2020. Stakeholder participation plays a role in informing monitoring from the beginning. Consequently, in this study we aim at evaluating the pilot report and monitoring as well as the general perception of the bioeconomy by an open survey. We collected approximately 100 responses, mainly from the stakeholder group "science". Most stakeholders are moderately satisfied with the monitoring and reporting. However, social aspects of the bioeconomy like hunger, poverty and inequalities are considered to be underrepresented, and the socio-economic perspective is viewed as too narrow. Future monitoring efforts should be oriented more on international agreed frameworks like the SDGs and be comparable to other monitoring systems and levels. Regarding general perceptions of the bioeconomy, a majority of stakeholders have a vision of a socio-ecological transformation, in contrast to German and European strategies which are seen as business-as-usual capitalism using additional renewable resources. Even though most stakeholders see the current development of bioeconomy critically, they consider the future development as open and encourage a sustainable bioeconomy that creates sustainable consumption and production patterns, global responsibility and compliance with planetary boundaries, as well as economic and ecological justice and participation shaping the overall economy. Our analysis underpins previous perspectives from stakeholder workshops and is embedded in increasingly polarizing societal mentalities of transformations.

Current economic and social systems transgress several ecological planetary boundaries by far but without sufficiently fulfilling human needs and this in a globally unequal way, posing enormous challenges to political strategies and economic structures. To tackle these challenges, under a bioeconomy, a variety of industrial metabolisms, strategies and visions on substituting fossil resources by renewables and hereto associated societal transformations is formulated. Social, ecological and economic (holistic) sustainability, however, is not an intrinsic character of bioeconomy but rather a possible potential which has to be assessed. Life Cycle Assessments and Life Cycle Sustainability Assessments provide promising frameworks and methods for such holistic sustainability assessments, but face major challenges in regard to underlying sustainability concepts and implementation. First, we discuss and analyze the status quo of Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment especially in regard to underlying sustainability and economic concept and identify their strengths, weaknesses and research gaps. Secondly, we characterize the current bioeconomy discourse and propose a transdisciplinary, holistic and integrated framework for Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment. Based on this discussion and the proposed framework, holistic and integrated Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment can provide a transdisciplinary understanding and specific information on the absolute and relative holistic sustainability of provisioning systems to allow efficient and effective governance.

The German government has recently initiated funding schemes that incentivize strategies for wood-based bioeconomy regions. Regional wood and chemical industries have been encouraged to act symbiotically, that is, share pilot plant facilities, couple processes where feasible, and cascade woody feedstock throughout their process networks. However, during the planning stages of these bioeconomy regions, options need to be assessed for sustainably integrating processes and energy integration between the various industries that produce bio-based polymers and engineered wood products. The aim of this paper is to identify the environmental sustainability of industrial symbiosis for producing high-value-added, bio-based products in the wood-based bioeconomy region of Central Germany. An analysis was conducted of three possible future scenarios with varying degrees of symbiosis in the bioeconomy network. A life cycle assessment (LCA) approach was used to compare these three scenarios to a traditional fossil-based production system. Eleven environmental impact categories were considered. The results show that, in most cases, the bioeconomy network outperformed the fossil-based production system, mitigating environmental impacts by 25% to 130%.