In a recently published paper in ‘Environmental Research Letters’, Martin Bruckner, Victor Maus and Stefan Giljum from the Institute for Ecological Economics together with international colleagues investigated the import dependency of Europe’s expanding bioeconomy.

The EU plays a major role as a processing and consuming region of cropland-based non-food products while at the same time relying heavily on imports. Two thirds of the cropland required to satisfy the EU’s non-food biomass consumption are located in other world regions, giving rise to potential impacts on distant ecosystems.

The paper can be accessed here and a summary of the key findings is available as a FINEPRINT Brief.

The study received wide-spread attention in Austria’s media, including in the science section of ORF Online, Der Standard, and the Wiener Zeitung, and also in German Science Platforms like Nature.de.