ICABR Pre-Conference Workshop
Research and Education Needs of Multilateral Bioeconomy Initiatives
Monday, July 6th - Ravello Auditorium
Recent years have seen rapid acceleration of multilateral initiatives in the bioeconomy, such as the G20 Initiative on Bioeconomy, the International Bioeconomy Forum, FAO/UNFF-COLI Initiative on Sustainable Forest-Based Bioeconomy, the UNFCCC COP30 Bioeconomy Challenge and UNFCCC COP30 Building For Forests initiative. Accompanying this evolution is a growing and dynamic need for input and expertise from the collective of academic institutions engaged in bioeconomy research around the world.
As the world’s oldest international bioeconomy research organization, and on the occasion of its 30th Annual Conference, ICABR convenes high-level representatives of these major initiatives for an in-depth exploration with the ICABR community of these needs.
The results of the session will be published as recommendations for addressing research and education needs in the multilateral bioeconomy space and conveyed to the Global Bioeconomy Summit (Dublin, October 2025) and onwards into UNFCCC COP30 Action Agenda (Bioeconomy Challenge), 2027 proceedings of the G20 Initiative on Bioeconomy (UK Presidency), UNFCCC COP31 (Australia Presidency) and beyond.
Workshop Agenda (*: to be confirmed) (There is no cost to participate.)
Session Lead: Herrick Fox
Opening remarks: Stuart Smyth – 15 minutes
Plenary: What are the global initiatives, what are main bioeconomy problems they seek to address, and what needs do they identify for research and education from the global academic community towards solving these problems? – 90 minutes (Moderator: H. Fox)
- G20 Initiative on Bioeconomy: Ben Durham (South Africa DSTI), UK DEFRA delegate TBD
- International Bioeconomy Forum: Peter Wehrheim* (EC DG-RTD and GBS Program Co-Chair)
- FAO/UNFF-COLI: Illias Amnon (FAO/NFO), COLI delegate TBD (Austria Federal Ministry)
- COP30 Bioeconomy Challenge: Vicente Araujo (Brazil Foreign Ministry), Carina Pimenta (BC Secretariat), Marta Gomez San Juan (FAO OCB)
- COP30 Building For Forests: Thaís Linhares-Juvenal* (FAO)
- IICA: Hugo Chavarria*
Concurrent workshops: Framing the problems the global initiatives seek to address: organized by four biophysical resource domains, what are the research and education challenges relating to production (feedstocks), transformation (value chains) and allocation (risk/investment), and how these can be operationalized in the global initiatives – 90 minutes
- Forest (Martin Greimel, rapporteur)
- Agricultural (Julius Ecuru, rapporteur)
- Marine (Ruslana Palatnik, rapporteur)
- Microbial (Lotte Westerhof*, rapporteur)
Closing/synthesis – 45 minutes (Moderator: H. Fox)
- Mary Maxon, Christian Patermann, Justus Wesseler, David Zilberman with rapporteurs