Environmental impact, novel foods, and urban well-being : EU bioeconomy monitoring system indicator update

The conceptual framework of the EU Bioeconomy Monitoring System (BMS) was designed to assess the EU's progress towards a circular and sustainable bioeconomy. Indicators were selected to cover the various parts of the framework but gaps in the knowledge or data still exist. This document describes the progress made in filling gaps in the indicators that had been identified as being important to understand the progress of the EU Bioeconomy. In 2023, the gaps of environmental impacts of bioeconomy, novel foods and urban well-being were identified. In this report we describe the background and rationale of including these indicators, and describe the approaches to derive indicators from different data sources. To monitor the environmental impacts of bioeconomy, we take a Life Cycle Assessment approach, which includes both the consumption and environmental impact intensity of a representative basket of bio-based products. We find that a dashboard of environmental impacts may be preferred to a single indicator for this particular approach. Novel foods should also be included in the representative basket of products, but beyond that, we describe how consumer uptake is also an important factor to consider when monitoring bioeconomy. In a final section, we discuss the relevance of the well-being in urban areas, using urban green spaces as a proxy. Despite the identified gaps and defining potential indicators to be considered in the EU Bioeconomy Monitoring System, no indicator has been considered suitable to be included in the BMS yet. The limitations outweigh a meaningful metric. The limitations are detailed in the following sections more closely.