Declaration 2018

The ultimate mission of the WCBEF event in Ruka was to establish a cohesive and well formulated roadmap to enable the bioeconomy to consolidate as a recognized, coordinated entity, ready for the future.

A number of major, defined targets were agreed upon at the forum:

• The bioeconomic community needs to develop a clear, visible, corporate identity. Stakeholders in the bioeconomy need to formulate new ways of cooperation within agreed frameworks which are local, regional and international with permanent openness, and with direct routes for communicating progress

• The role of the forests, and good sustainable forest management is of utmost importance in mitigating climate change and must be managed accordingly using transparent, shared best-practice methods from across the globe

• It is very important that all sectors engaged in the bioeconomy and circular economy are integrated and contribute evenly, including agriculture and its value chain, biological residues and the marine environment

• Industrial biotech is key to delivering solutions to UN Sustainable Development goals and innovating in the areas of chemicals, pharmaceuticals, food and feed, textiles and bioenergy are crucial going forward

• The bioeconomy as a concept has to become a norm in itself in everyday society and override fossil-based consumerism

Strategies agreed upon to achieve results

• The bioeconomic community needs more global platforms to share views and change views, to learn mutually about practices good and bad.

• To enable the bioeconomy and circular economies to flourish as entities, channel funding from structural funds and a common agricultural policy is vitally important.

• Ongoing work in R&D and innovation by both producers of bio products and suppliers of technology to bioeconomy stakeholders is essential for future success

• It has been proved under lab conditions that almost all oil-based products can also be derived from wood. Therefore, we need to go more rapidly from lab-scale to production scale to enable the replacements products to be available to the consumer

• The encouragement of legislation, regulation or taxation on fossil-fuel derived products should be a goal for bringing more and faster growth to the bioeconomy