To the Nordic Council of Ministers, MR-FJLS (Council of Ministers for Fisheries, Aquaculture, Agriculture, Food and Forestry)
The Bioeconomy Programme – "Bioeconomy as a driver for economic growth and green transition in rural areas in the Nordic Region" was launched during a workshop in Copenhagen in March 2020. The initiative was one of the vision projects that the Nordic prime ministers decided on as the future direction for the work of the Nordic Council of Ministers.
The programme was outlined in more detail by a working group with a secretariat at the SNS/NKJ (Nordic Forest Research/ Joint Committee for Nordic Agricultural and Food Research) Secretariat and resulted in a program outline in the autumn of 2020. MR-SAM (Council of Ministers for Nordic Co-operation) allocated DKK 12 million, or around EUR 1.6-1.7 million, to the project that was added to EK-FJLS (Executive – Committee of Senior Officials for Fisheries, Aquaculture, Agriculture, Food and Forestry).
EK-FJLS (Executive) appointed a steering group with representatives from multiple policy areas. Due to the Secretariat to the Council of Ministers being unable to enter contracts in 2021, the Bioeconomy Programme ran from 2022 to 2025.
The Nordic bioeconomy includes agriculture, forestry, fisheries and aquaculture, sectors that are variably prominent in the Nordic countries. Together, a rough estimate of the annual turnover in these sectors is around or slightly over EUR 200 billion, or about 8-12% of the total Nordic economy.
It appears from the chapters in this report that the programme has explored opportunities for increased economic value creation linked to the sale of both products and services from actors in the bioeconomy.
The Bioeconomy Programme Steering Group has commissioned several assignments from various consulting firms, and the reports in these areas contain policy briefs written by the authors of the reports.
The steering group has chosen to produce its own summary report. In this report, we have limited ourselves to the recommendations that we believe are relevant for discussions and further follow-up between the Nordic ministers in MR-FJLS.