Epsilon Archive for Student Projects

Abstract

Several policies and strategies for mitigating climate changes and for enhancing our way of handling
natural resources have been developed during the last decade, where the EU Bioeconomy Strategy
could be seen as one example. Research and innovation (R&I) is repeatedly used within
policymaking as a tool for enabling transition into a more sustainable society and the EU
Bioeconomy Strategy is no exemption. Scholars have earlier argued that R&I has turned into an
uncontested concept and therefore used within policy to gain support and to bridge political
disagreements. Analysing the EU Bioeconomy Strategy is important since EU policies are likely to
influence other policies within the field. This thesis therefore aims to critically analyse how R&I is
framed and considered in the EU Bioeconomy Strategy, what models and approaches the strategy
promotes for enabling R&I-based solutions, as well as how the positive connotation of R&I in
policymaking may have emerged. To do so, a critical discourse analysis in combination with a
theoretical framework consisting of ecological modernization theory and the pro-innovation bias
have been used. The results show that aspects such as difficulties to adapt to innovations, uneven
distribution of innovations, positive effects from withdrawal of innovations and investments in
already existing innovations are left out in the EU Bioeconomy Strategy. The analysis further shows
that cross-sectoral cooperation and decentralized models are seen as essential for enabling R&Ibased
solutions and that the ecological modernization theory could be used as an explanation for
why R&I has a significant role in the EU Bioeconomy Strategy. Considering that relatively few
studies have examined the role of R&I in EU bioeconomy policies from a critical point of view, the
importance of this thesis lays in the opportunity to provide insights on how future policies could be
developed to adopt a more comprehensive attitude towards R&I.