Special Report: Transition to circular bioeconomy
Keijo Siitonen ProAgria – Rural Advisory Services, Lapland.
During the last decades, many rural areas have been driven to become consumers of major amounts of fossil energy. In Finland, a typical farm in a rural area in the 1950s and 1960s used to be built of a combination of an agro-forest property, normally a larger amount of forest area and a minor amount of agricultural field. Of the field areas, some were more suitable for arable and vegetable production, while others were more suitable for animal pasture. This combination made up a typical farm, which was quite self-sufficient and capable of circular practices. Gradually, the small farms were mechanised and all forms of energy use became fossil energy dependent. As a result, many villages surrounded by a major amount of biomass were driven into a situation in which over 40% of the financial income was used to buy energy for heating, for machinery and transport. When distances are long, amounts of traffic fuels grow continuously.
In the Natural Resources Institute Finland, in collaboration with ProAgria – Rural Advisory Services, we have been surveying how a sustainable circular bioeconomy could be rebuilt into these villages, and what the sources of innovation and vitality of the village communities could be. We have been building a model of this transformation and indicators for measuring the changes and level of success.
Rebuilding the circular bioeconomy
In the required transformation, the overall aim is rebuilding the circular bioeconomy. The first step of that is building up understanding of ecological, economic and social ecosystems at the local level, and integration of all the dimensions of the ecosystem by a mutual holistic view. This is not about going back to the history of the village, as the structure of the village population and the economy have meanwhile totally changed.
Normally, a village isn’t a farming community with a balanced age structure like it used to be, but a living community of people from various sectors of economic activity and, often, a high percentage of retired people – some of them very well off and active, some of them close to the age when they need help in their daily activities. Nature, landscape and a peaceful life are the incentives for people to stay in the village or to move.
Village inhabitants have to be involved in the transformation process. The first step within our process is to build a ‘mind map’ based on a village workshop. The purpose of this is to analyse key issues and argumentations among the villagers in order to identify internal contradictions of different levels and scales.
The role of the contradictions has to be made transparent before they can be discussed. Mutual understanding and acceptance of the non-linear development of the future is the next step of involvement. The Natural Step process is an example of mutual vision building (http://www.thenaturalstep.org/). A necessary precondition to moving to operationalisation of the vision is the building of trust and social capital.
The socio-technological regimes of the present stage have to be broken by innovative processes. The new immigrants who have moved to the village have a big role to play in that. However, redesigned regimes need support from a network of key stakeholders in the village, as well as wider crowdsourcing. This is necessary in approaching the final phase of piloting new innovative structures and processes. The time needed for this process varies, according to our experience, from fewer than two years to double or triple that.
The previous process has been piloted in three Lappish villages. In two of the villages the development process led to planned investments for totally transformed energy and food systems. As a result of this process, the two villages will move from a capital flight stage to a total self-sufficiency of energy and an improved level of self-sufficiency in terms of their food services. Additionally, these villages will become energy vendors for their external networks.
The success will be measured by indicators of ecosystem performance (secured renewability of resources), resource efficiency (land use and materials), level of carbon neutrality, natural capital, scale of overall self-sufficiency or self-sufficiency at main product levels, cost efficiency, human resource profile, human resource performance, and activity and level of participation and equity. These indicators have been communicated in specified form for the villages.
This would be a key transformation process in saving many rural villages in Finland and in many other biomass rich areas as well.
Professor Sirpa Kurppa
Bio-based Business and Industry, Recycling Economy Solutions
Natural Resources Institute Finland (Luke)
+358 29 532 6286
