On 6th of February our partner Steinbeis Europa Zentrum organized a workshop focused on the development and monitoring of bioeconomy strategies in urban and rural areas in their headquarters in Stuttgart. Representatives from different countries, regions and areas came together to discuss the development process and status of their respective bioeconomy strategies and exchange about their implementation/monitoring.
Key Highlights:
- Presentation of the ROBIN project and its toolbox including the Policy Monitoring System (PMS)
- Presentation of two further interesting tools and methodologies: the CCRI self-assessment tool by Jannis Lambert and the UrbanBioökonomieLab-Methodik by Marius Mohr
- Fruitful exchange on the commonalities, challenges and regional specificities in devising a bioeconomy strategy as well as the difficulties and success factors for their effective implementation and monitoring
10 key take-aways from this event:
- A successful strategy is underpinned by the participation of all key stakeholders, a sense of ownership as well as a clear leadership and mandate
- Find like-minded people and form a coalition of the committed
- Importance of networking and personal contacts to build trust
- Bioeconomy strategies should be both customer- and needs-oriented
- Good collaboration with the administration can be a key success factor
- Although the range of possible indicators is huge, data is not always available and/or consistent for a specific region/area
- Need to select a set of indicators backed by data to be able to assess and showcase the concrete change and impact induced by the strategy and its related activities
- Economic indicators and factors should be more emphasized
- There are many relevant tools out there: a platform compiling all existing tools that support regional actors involved in the development, implementation and monitoring of bioeconomy strategies would be very useful
- The first round of Circular Cities and Regions Initiative (CCRI) pilots proved a success, and a second round is expected this year
