Around 700 participants from more than 70 countries met in Berlin from April 19 – 20, among them many high-ranking representatives from politics, science, civil society and the business sector. It was the second time that German Bioeconomy Council had organized the Global Bioeconomy Summit.

More than 100 speakers contributed to the event. They included ministers and government representatives from Asia, Africa, Europe, South and North America, international policy experts from the United Nations, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the European Commission, as well as high-level representatives from science and industry. In ten plenary sessions and 14 workshops, the participants discussed a wide range of societal, scientific, economic and political challenges to implementing the visions of the bioeconomy, which often differed widely among regions, in the context of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The Bioeconomy Science Center was a co-organizer of three workshops on biorefineries, bioeconomy education and "Measuring and monitoring the bioeconomy", respectively. Each workshop was attended by around 80 participants. Short impulse presentations given by representatives from different stakeholder areas were followed by parallel activities in small discussion groups, the results of which were ultimately collated.

The “Bioenergy and Biorefineries” workshop focused on the problem that current approaches to biorefineries show a much lower level of maturity in integrated processing and a limited portfolio of products when compared to fossil-based refineries. This set the framework for discussion of the key topics of feedstock provision, conversion technologies, sustainability and market perspective. In the “Education and Training” workshop, discussions focused on current deficiencies and new requirements in the curricula of capacities, the contribution of the public and private sector and the development of synergies.

Other GBS workshops dealt for example with Blue Bioeconomy, biodiversity, climate change, or bioeconomy of world regions. The results from all workshops will be presented soon on the GBS homepage (http://gbs2018.com).

At the end of the 2-day conference, the participants of the Global Bioeconomy Summit agreed that the bioeconomy has yet to be appropriately included in international fora on innovation, climate, biodiversity and sustainable development policy and therefore needs its own independent global forum. This was recommended by the 40 members of the Summit’s International Advisory Council in the final communiqué.