COIN Open Day - EU Bioeconomy Monitoring System

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Date of event: Friday, May 8, 2020 - 09:30 to 12:30

Where: Online

Aim:

This workshop brings together the scientists from the Bioeconomy unit (JRC. D1) mandated to design and implement the EU Bioeconomy Monitoring System (pursuant to the action plan of COMM/2018/673), with scientists of the European Commission’s Competence Centre on Composite Indicators and Scoreboards (COIN) with a view to discuss together how to further improve the index and to ensure that it is developed using the highest standards in composite indicator methodology.

Description:

The 2018 EU Bioeconomy Strategy Action Plan foresees the development of an EU-wide system to monitor the progress towards a circular and sustainable bioeconomy, to be led by the JRC. The team in D.1 has developed a conceptual framework and populated it with a set of indicators (albeit incomplete), whose aim is to monitor the EU’s progress towards the five main objectives of the strategy. The goal of the composite indices will be to aggregate indicators in each objective to provide a single score for each objective. Some indicators are simple and measured, while others are more complex, for example the environmental footprint indicators. The framework reports several indicators which, analogous to the instruments of a symphony, are in themselves useful and meaningful, but whose value is enhanced once they are placed within an orchestra. Only when the indicators interplay jointly is the ensemble capable of estimating the progress of EU bioeconomy and its contribution towards the Sustainable Development Goals, highlighting related trade-offs and synergies.

Societal impact:

The composite indices will be the signature indicators for this EU Bioeconomy Monitoring System. They will therefore be the most visible tool in the system to our main target audience, EU policy officers. We will also publish the underlying indicators in order to provide stakeholders access to detailed information about the “sustainability” of the EU bioeconomy. Through the indices, users will be able to, for instance, compare the performance of various EU countries, and highlight potential trade-offs among the strategy objectives. Policymakers will use the indices to identify potential areas of intervention to steer the bioeconomy to a sustainable path. A sustainable bioeconomy is an essential step to achieve the sustainable development goals and a proper monitoring system can provide policymakers the necessary tool for timely and targeted interventions.