Relational attributes in social ecological systems fostering the transition towards a bio‐based economy: insights and operative indications

The bioeconomy concept makes explicit the close connection between humanity and nature. The notion refers to the multiple ways of environmental‐friendly production based on biological processes, which realisation requires cross‐sectoral and interdisciplinary research and the involvement of different types of actors interacting with the ecological systems across scales and societal domains. The interplay among society and nature is theorized in the Social‐Ecological Systems (SES) approach which underlines that every social process is an embedded part of nature. In this framework, collaboration, conceptualize as a participative approach aimed to involve stakeholders to identify priorities in management actions, constitutes an essential tool to empower communities by identifying novel solutions and strategies to solve environmental issues through collective learning. Powered by external and self‐evaluation processes, collaboration allows people to increase the effectiveness of their actions and to adjust them to emerging needs, by learning from previous successes and failures. Nevertheless, at present knowledge on how collaboration can enhance the good governance of SES and the transition towards a bioeconomy is still limited, with the risk that it could be conceptualized as a panacea solution. Furthermore, the close connection among humanity and environment requires a greater awareness on relations arising among actors (i.e. State, market, community, and research organizations) involved in environmental governance. Moving from scientific literature on projects and programs evaluation, this study aims to analyse how relations and interactions among actors involved in SES management have been conceptualized and evaluated. The final aim is to identify different typologies of relational attributes among them by providing policy indications for the environmental governance. The literature review, based on the analysis of 68 articles selected through queries on SCOPUS database, shows that the effective management of SES requires the involvement of all types of actors having different responsibilities and duties associated to their stakeholder group. At present evaluations reported in scientific articles mostly focus on public authorities’ role, with a minor attention on other actors’ contribution. A relation is made at least by two different entities, this requires not to focalize only to one side, but also to the others, in this case, community, market actors and research organizations. In particular there is the need to clarify direct relationships between research organizations and community, which are analysed by very few papers. In addition, there is the need to measure quantitatively stakeholders involvement on environmental collective actions through a network approach in order to identify who has a central role on sustainability transition and to what extent actors belonging to the four categories play a relevant role on it.