La strategia di bioeconomia: opportunità o rischio globale per le economie locali?

The challenge that the new European Bioeconomy Strategy poses to local economies is formidable and raises serious questions about the sustainability of local systems, from both a socioeconomic and an ecological point of view. In recent decades, the process of economic and monetary integration has generated a polarized Europe, contravening the original design of the European project, which envisaged, rather, prosperity, convergence and harmonization among member countries. Today, the core-periphery dynamics in Europe sees strong areas (such as Germany and Northern Europe) managing value chains and global production platforms, offering development opportunities to new peripheries (for example the Eastern European countries), and weak areas de-industrializing, losing human capital and depending on external financial flows (such as the Southern European countries). The European Strategy for the Bioeconomy is fitting into this divided and polarized Europe. Despite the rhetorical arguments that emphasize the pursuit of a new model of production and consumption taking care to limit waste (circular economy) and reducing environmental and ecological damage (green economy), the strategy promoted by the EUROPEAN COMMISSION seems to meet the production requirements of firms, which urgently need to replace fossil fuels with alternative energy sources (as well as seeking greater efficiency in production and new market opportunities). If the development of bio-based activities in Europe were to conform to the dynamics of the core-periphery model, then the EUROPEAN COMMISSION's Strategy for the Bioeconomy would represent a global shock for the local economies of peripheral countries, especially with regard to agriculture.