Bioeconomy and Regional Sustainability: Potential of Life Cycle Assessment for Food Production

Abstract

Assurance of sustainability is a crucial feature for the development and comparison of regions. Currently, there is no universal sustainability assessment methodology for the integrated assessment of regional development and the possibilities of future improvement. The main objective of this thesis was to conceptualize and methodologically develop Regional Sustainability Assessment Methodology (RSAM), which would reflect the relative state of regional development through the analysis of multiple resources use by regional communities. Developed RSAM is based on adapted Input-Output Table Analysis (IOTA) applied to the natural, social and economic capital assessment at regional levels integrated through real prices monetization. Adapted indices of resource flows indicated the efficiency of internal resources use and dependency on external resources. The application of RSAM was tested for static and dynamic qualities of regional development for the regions of agri-food cluster (the Oldenburger Münsterland, Lower Saxony, Germany) in comparison to the region with different socioeconomic and environmental parameters (Hochsauerlandkreis, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany). High dependency of agri-food cluster regions on external resource flows and resulting higher inner cycling rates of economic resources involved in production demonstrated the active role of food production chains in the agri-food cluster regions compared to the control region. However, such beneficial economic state was limited and strongly dependent on external biotic resources with low inner cycling rates (than in the control region), which could result in deep shocking effects in the future. The analysis estimated that agri-food cluster was at the mature stage of development with stable development (resource use) without considerable changes in the period of five consecutive years (2008-2012).