Incentivizing a Circular Bioeconomy While Mitigating Unintended Consequences: Implications for Policy

Madhu Khanna, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

Current agri-food production systems generate waste at every stage of the production and consumption process which imposes large environmental costs. Transforming the current take-make-waste linear economic system, to a circular bioeconomy that reduces, recycles, recovers, regenerates and uses wastes and other biological resource to transition from fossil to biobased fuels and products is being hailed as critical for sustainably meeting growing demands for food and fuel. Implementation of this strategy requires going beyond a techno-centric focus and adopting an economic value-based lens to balance the desire for circularity with its costs, benefits, and muti-dimensional environmental and distributional effects on society and avoid unintended consequences. This talk will provide a perspective on the mechanisms that sustain the existing linear economy, pathways to transition to a circular bioeconomy and policy choices in a market economy