Page 55 - Biofuels for a More Sustainable Future

Triple bottom line, sustainability and sustainability assessment, an overview 49

(iii) enabling consumers to make sustainable choices and to advance respon-
sible behavior individually and collectively; (iv) managing resources and
enabling a 21st century green revolution in the fields of agriculture, oceans
and coastal systems, energy and technology.
These objectives are nowadays reflected in the sustainable development
goals (SDGs) (UN, 2015), in which an ethical connotation is at the basis of
the goal 12, on responsible consumption and production.
Moreover, the EU sustainable development strategy (CEC, 2001, 2008,
2009) depicted the EU vision on sustainable development, highlighting key
topic to be mainstreamed within the EU policy context, with a clear focus
on sustainable production and consumption. Moreover, the SDGs are taken
as reference for the EU sustainability agenda (CEC, 2016).
At European level, the new Bioeconomy strategy is advocating a
transition to a sustainable bioeconomy, clearly stated from the title of the
main Communication “A sustainable Bioeconomy for Europe: Strengthen-
ing the connection between economy, society and the environment”
(CEC, 2018).
Natural resources provided by the Earth, both biotic and abiotic (i.e.,
raw materials, energy, water, air, land, and soil as well as biodiversity and
ecosystems) represent crucial economy and life-support elements for
human societies worldwide. Indeed, natural resources are a building block
in the supply chain, thus pushing the economic growth, and providing
global functions, as in climate regulation. In a globalized world where pop-
ulation is in continuous expansion and the demand for finite resources con-
tinues to rocket, the current production and consumption patterns in both
developed and developing countries are generating great concerns. Partic-
ular concerns are related to the potential repercussion on the environment
and climate. On such a background, a transition toward bio-based econ-
omy represents an opportunity to comprehensively address interconnected
societal challenges such as food security, natural resource scarcity, fossil
resource dependence, and climate change, while achieving sustainable eco-
nomic growth (CEC, 2012; Ronzon et al., 2017). However, not only
fossil-based products carry an environmental burden, but also bio-based
ones. Furthermore, the use of bio-based resources may raise issues such
as those on land competition for food production. Hence, to be effective,
bioeconomy products strategies should be founded on resource efficiency
and eco-innovation principles, as well as should be interconnected with
circular economy to ensure the least dissipative use of resources
(Corrado and Sala, 2018).