Incentive mechanisms of carbon farming contracts: A systematic mapping study.

Despite increasing interest, a lack of comprehensive knowledge regarding the efficient design and implementation of carbon farming schemes remains. These schemes must efficiently achieve higher carbon sequestration, incentivize farmers, and increase farmers' participation in global carbon markets. Our study systematically reviews, describes, and maps available evidence related to carbon farming contracts to assess different incentive mechanisms for carbon farming.

Bioeconomy and Circular Economy: Implications for Economic Evaluation in the Post-COVID Era.

The objective of this paper is to review selected insights about the current economic research on the Bioeconomy and circular economy, with a particular focus for the role of primary sector, and to derive implications for organisation, evaluation and valuation practice in the context of the post-COVID era. A framework for the analysis of optimal level of circularity and related economic and evaluation concepts is developed for this purpose. We highlight how higher focus on circularity will increase the complexity of market relationships, contributing to flexibility, but also to uncertainty.

Building long-term vision for rural areas through multi-actor platforms: a preliminary study in the Emilia-Romagna region.

Developing long-term visions through participatory approaches can be very useful to explore different possible scenarios and pathways to reach desirable futures. This brief report describes a participatory process carried out in the Emilia-Romagna region (Italy) to develop a long-term vision for rural areas by 2040. This approach consisted of: (i) interviews and a focus group carried out with a multi-actor platform (MAP) composed of experts from science-society-policy sectors, and (ii) an on-line questionnaire addressing a larger number of rural stakeholders of the region.

The role of biotechnology in the transition from plastics to bioplastics: an opportunity to reconnect global growth with sustainability.

Building new value chains, through the valorization of biomass components for the development of innovative bio-based products (BBPs) aimed at specific market sectors, will accelerate the transition from traditional production technologies to the concept of biorefineries. Recent studies aimed at mapping the most relevant innovations undergoing in the field of BBPs (Fabbri et al. 2019, Final Report of the Task 3 BIOSPRI Tender Study on Support to R&I Policy in the Area of Bio-based Products and Services, delivered to the European Commission (DG RTD)), clearly showed the dominant position played by the plastics sector, in which new materials and innovative technical solutions based on renewable resources, concretely contribute to the achievement of relevant global sustainability goals.

New advances in the integrated management of food processing by-products in Europe: sustainable exploitation of fruit and cereal processing by-products with the production of new food products (NAMASTE EU).

By-products generated every year by the European fruit and cereal processing industry currently exceed several million tons. They are disposed of mainly through landfills and thus are largely unexploited sources of several valuable biobased compounds potentially profitable in the formulation of novel food products. The opportunity to design novel strategies to turn them into added value products and food ingredients via novel and sustainable processes is the main target of recently EC-funded FP7 project NAMASTE-EU.

Implementing the water framework directive: contract design and the cost of measures to reduce nitrogen pollution from agriculture.

The performance of different policy design strategies is a key issue in evaluating programmes for water quality improvement under the Water Framework Directive (60/2000). This issue is emphasised by information asymmetries between regulator and agents. Using an economic model under asymmetric information, the aim of this paper is to compare the cost-effectiveness of selected methods of designing payments to farmers in order to reduce nitrogen pollution in agriculture.