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Decoupling the fulfillment of societal needs from an ever-increasing production of goods together with decoupling this sufficient production from negative environmental, social and economic impacts, is and will be the major challenge of our economic systems to avoid an even deeper socio-ecological crisis. The ascending bioeconomy practices have to be assessed with regard to their potential to provide a good life for all within planetary boundaries Addressing this, life cycle sustainability assessment (LCSA) is necessary to integrate social, environmental and economic sustainability assessments. However, LCSAs are still in their infancy and a series of practical problems can be traced back to a lack of sound sustainability concepts and applied political economy/ecology. We reflect on social, ecological and economic sustainability, our societal relations to nature and a necessary societal-ecological transformation in order to structure a systemic framework for holistic and integrated LCSA (HILCSA). This framework allows an implementation in openLCA, conducting the inventory and impact assessment with harmonized databases and more coherent results compared to previous approaches. For further development we identify questions of political economy/ecology as significant. The idea of a bioeconomy as well as systemic assessments is a question of the perception of ends and means of a societal transformation.

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Betrachtet man die Bioökonomie aus einer Systemperspektive, so lassen sich die Zusammenhänge zwischen den Ressourcen und den Herstellungs- und Fertigungssektoren sowie deren Verbindung mit der Gesellschaft modellieren und verstehen. Ein besonderer Fall ist die Analyse von Städten, da sie die kleinste Systemeinheit darstellen, an der all diese Komponenten beteiligt sind. Ziel dieses Beitrags ist es, die Definition eines urbanen Bioökonomie-Stoffwechsels zu erörtern, der dazu beitragen kann, die Stoffströme innerhalb der Stadtgrenzen in Verbindung mit den biobasierten Ressourcen der Stadtregion adäquat zu managen und so eine resilientere Stadt zu schaffen.

Our current economic systems are transgressing planetary boundaries globally and yet societal needs are not sufficiently and equally fulfilled. Fostering the bioeconomy as an economy based on renewable resources can be a transformation towards a sustainable future, to fulfill societal needs within planetary boundaries. However, sustainability is not intrinsic to the bioeconomy and consequently advanced and comprehensive monitoring systems on a national scale are needed. In the systemic modeling and monitoring of the German bioeconomy (SYMOBIO) a comprehensive national monitoring framework in the context of global dynamics was developed, and a first pilot report of monitoring results was published and presented to the public in June 2020. Stakeholder participation plays a role in informing monitoring from the beginning. Consequently, in this study we aim at evaluating the pilot report and monitoring as well as the general perception of the bioeconomy by an open survey. We collected approximately 100 responses, mainly from the stakeholder group "science". Most stakeholders are moderately satisfied with the monitoring and reporting. However, social aspects of the bioeconomy like hunger, poverty and inequalities are considered to be underrepresented, and the socio-economic perspective is viewed as too narrow. Future monitoring efforts should be oriented more on international agreed frameworks like the SDGs and be comparable to other monitoring systems and levels. Regarding general perceptions of the bioeconomy, a majority of stakeholders have a vision of a socio-ecological transformation, in contrast to German and European strategies which are seen as business-as-usual capitalism using additional renewable resources. Even though most stakeholders see the current development of bioeconomy critically, they consider the future development as open and encourage a sustainable bioeconomy that creates sustainable consumption and production patterns, global responsibility and c

The "MCDA for sustainability assessment – insights to Helmholtz Association activities" Working Paper aims to compile and reflect previous and on-going work within the Helmholtz Association related to MCDA, in particular, to present use cases and key methodological aspects. It has a focus on but is not limited to energy technologies and systems and is mainly based on the presentations held at the online workshop “Multi criteria decision analysis for sustainability assessment of energy technologies and systems”. The workshop was organized within the activities of the Helmholtz program ESD Topic 1 "Energy System Transformation" and took place on November 22nd, 2021.