The EU Bioeconomy Strategy, updated in 2018, in its Action Plan pledges an EU-wide, internationally coherent monitoring system to track economic, environmental and social progress towards a sustainable bioeconomy. This paper presents the approach taken by the European Commission's (EC) Joint Research Centre (JRC) to develop such a system. To accomplish this, we capitalise on (1) the experiences of existing indicator frameworks; (2) stakeholder knowledge and expectations; and (3) national experiences and expertise. This approach is taken to ensure coherence with other bioeconomy-related European monitoring frameworks, the usefulness for decision-making and consistency with national and international initiatives to monitor the bioeconomy. We develop a conceptual framework, based on the definition of a sustainable bioeconomy as stated in the Strategy, for a holistic analysis of the trends in the bioeconomy sectors, following the three pillars of sustainability (economy, society and environment). From this conceptual framework, we derive an implementation framework that aims to highlight the synergies and trade-offs across the five objectives of the Bioeconomy Strategy in a coherent way. The EU Bioeconomy Monitoring System will be publicly available on the web platform of the EC Knowledge Centre for Bioeconomy.

Monitoring employment in the European wood-based bioeconomy requires reliable, consistent, and comparable statistics across subsectors and over time. Statistics concerning employment in wood-based industries—the main component of the forest-based bioeconomy—must be processed carefully to cope with differences in definitions and estimation methods. In addition, specific methods must be applied to estimate wood-based employment in sectors including also non-wood activities. In this study, we first delineate the boundaries of the wood-based bioeconomy, and then create a harmonised time series on employment for the identified sectors. Finally, we estimate the share of wood-based employment along the value chain in all sectors using wood. According to the results, forestry and extended wood-based value chains employed 4.5 million people in the EU-28 in 2018. Employment in wood-based value chains decreased between 2008 and 2013 in the aftermaths of the financial crisis. Continuously decreasing employment—most apparent in the manufacture of solid wood products and pulp and paper—results from increasing productivity and a decreasing demand for graphic paper. Further, most of the wood-based employment in the EU takes place in downstream parts of value chains, although the weight of the primary sector is still high in some Eastern European countries.

Non-Wood Forest Products (NWFPs) provide social and cultural services related to e.g., the tradition and social role of collecting berries, mushrooms and herbs. These services can be ranked among intangible outputs as a part of the recreational function of forests. However, their social value is only partially captured in non-forest activities. We used a Choice Experiment to explore individuals’ preferences towards NWFPs and associated services in Italy, Sweden, and Czechia. We estimated the individual marginal willingness to pay for the supply and maintenance of NWFPs. In addition, we analysed the determinants of people’s choices using the framework of the Moral Foundations Theory (MFT). The results show that people collect NWFPs mostly for self-consumption and recreation, rather than for livelihood or to sell them on the market. Despite this, they are willing to pay for sustainable forest management practices that favour NWFPs supply, as well as for forest conservation. Additionally, Care and Fairness traits in the MFT determine people’s willingness to pay for NWFPs. The results from this study highlight the value of the social component of non-wood forests products and the expenses related to picking. This is a first step towards a value chain analysis of the NWFPs.

Forest ecosystems provide numerous services that contribute to the wellbeing of societies. However, the lack of knowledge about the benefits of non-wood forest ecosystem services, such as non-wood forest products (NWFPs), hinders efficient forest policy decision-making processes. This study proposes a new extension of the Social Accounting Matrices (SAMs) to capture both the private and the social component of NWFPs. By means of a literature review, we show how extended SAMs can be a suitable approach to explain the causal relationship between the supply of forest ecosystem services, forest-based value chains, and the European bioeconomy. The literature analysis shows that the number of research studies calibrating or using SAMs has been increasing over the last decades. Recent extensions of the SAMs made it possible to evaluate the relationship between human wellbeing and the environment. Moreover, we found applications to the forest sector (limited to timber) and to the supply of some non-wood ecosystem services. We believe the extended SAMs will support decision-makers to design forest strategies that properly account for the benefits NWFPs provide to both the economy and the society.