Regional bioeconomies promote sustainable, regional economies under the auspices of EU green growth policies. Combining prospects of rural rejuvenation, sustainability and innovation, they are employed to address climate change, societal challenges, and often benefit from substantial public funds. Yet, despite public finance's key role for bio-based transitions and (regional) bioeconomies, it has received little academic attention. Framed by conceptualisations on greening finance and (sustainable) policy narratives, this paper evaluates the public finance processes of three spatially variegated regional bioeconomy developments in Europe (Finland, Sweden, Spain). It provides empirical accounts from the case study sites and contrasts their public finance narratives with sustainable bioeconomy policy trajectories employed in EU policy promotion and benchmarking. This critical questioning of the current representations of regional bioeconomies in public finance narratives portrays a problematic mismatch between the dominant selective economic features and wider EU policy aims, particularly in relation to sustainability. Accompanied by the neglect of decisive local features in these benchmarking narratives, they promote a sustainably and spatially unreflective path forward for bioeconomy policy learning and development.

Bioeconomy is a new political and economic buzzword that frames many proposed pathways to sustainable regional development in Europe, particularly in rural, biomass rich areas. Dissected by research into various strands, visions, shades of “green” and presented by bioeconomy stakeholders through regional examples and self-promoting bio-clusters, the socio-spatial processes of regional assemblages are often ignored in these accounts. Based on a prominent Finnish example, this case study employs the concept of bioassemblage to display the socio-spatial positionalities of regional bioeconomy development in the places of materialisation. Furthermore, it ties the spatial (re-)production of bioassemblages to their role as bioeconomy policy translation loops and consequently provides insights into the processes of bioeconomy policy mobility, translation and mutation. Examining the positionalities in a bioassemblage presents a complex and frequently shifting local environment accompanied by unequal power topologies and means of territorialisation. Shallow policy narratives create problematic mismatches between the “best-practices” employed by policy makers and regional bioeconomy materialisation in the places themselves. While the study makes no assumption on the sustained future of bioeconomy development, it shows that current processes enable the externalisation of risks at industrial sites, restrict wider participation and discredit the important role of institutional actors in development.

Algae-based biomass occupies a prominent role in policy narratives for a more sustainable future situated between Blue Growth Strategies and European (Blue) bioeconomy development. Especially in Norway, the developing seaweed farming sector is portrayed as a novel bioresource sector entailing an array of benefits to remediate global as local environmental and socio-economic challenges. Accredited with massive growth potentials and framed by large-scale industrialist rhetoric with a future in conquering ocean spaces through technological fixes, the sector’s development faces multiple challenges. Additionally, the assumptive growth-centred policy narratives employed leave little room for small-scale, locally embedded alternatives called upon by many experts on sustainable and socially just blue resource governance. The paper addresses this issue by conceptualizing Norwegian seaweed farming as an assembling process with a focus on (policy) narratives as a means for governmental spatial interventions. Based on qualitative data with a focus on active Norwegian seaweed farmers’ perspectives for the sector’s current practices and future developments, the paper assesses the relations and contradictions between the optimistic key policy narratives, current sector developments, and the entrepreneur positionalities that shape the reproduction processes of this Norwegian seaweed assemblage. The paper shows that strong beliefs in extensive growth and technological solutions to tackle the fluid materialities of seaweed production are widespread among entrepreneurs. Paired with policy strategies and a development environment rooted in similar narratives, this creates a current development approach that reduces challenges to technological and administrative domains and neglects the (local) socio-economic and sustainability potential vested in alternative, small-scale approaches.

We study placemaking in Äänekoski, a small Finnish industrial town, by analyzing how the local government utilizes a recent large-scale bioeconomy investment in its attempts to reinvent the town, and how components of place conform to the image building ‘script’. We deploy an assemblage concept and study local place as a combination of material and expressive properties, forces of (de-)territorialization, acts of (de-/re-)coding and relations of exteriority. Äänekoski was known as a shrinking mill town before Metsä Group Corporation decided to build a bio-production complex there in 2014. We analyze how the local government attempts to recode the town with the help of bioeconomy-based place branding, town planning and extensive material investments in the townscape. Despite support from the national ‘bioconomy hype’ and political narratives, several material, expressive and deterritorializing elements (e.g. declining population, unemployment, environmental debates) work against this growth-oriented recoding. The results allow us to draw critical conclusions on small and industrial town image building.

The blue bioeconomy is gaining momentum in EU policy debate and various national government strategies as a pathway towards a more sustainable society. Linked to the circularity of economic processes, it combines the promise of (regional) economic development with a sustainable, bio-based transition focused on increased and novel utilisation of aquatic resources. Nonetheless, portrayed as a holistic approach, the political visions of blue bioeconomy reside predominantly in marine environments with little integration of freshwater perspectives or alternative development paths. Rooted in concepts of policy mobility, assembling processes and the positionalities of involved entities, this paper displays two regionally embedded blue bioeconomy developments – Norwegian coastal seaweed farming and Finnish lake fisheries – and their spatially diverse reconnections with national and international policy narratives. By framing a freshwater and a coastal marine case, and their spatial reconnections with an overarching yet diversely translated policy realm, the paper taps into the multiple ontologies of water in blue bioeconomy governance and presents initial empirical and methodological steps towards a relational understanding of its governance processes. Based on four key topical reconnections, the article points to a variety of challenging mismatches between policy narratives, local development processes and potentials. It also suggests conceptual and methodological implications of this approach for further research into “blue” resource governance.