Green economy process modelling

The green economy, bioeconomy and circular economy have become mainstream topics in academia and policy making as key sustainability avenues (D'Amato et al. 2017) and as some of the key themes and most important tools for policymaking (Lithido & Righnini 2013). There is a need for effective and versatile methods and tools (e.g. indicators) to collect data to help the move towards a Finnish bioeconomy strategy (2014), and to achieve a green Economy and more sustainable future. Accord-ing to the Finnish Bioeconomy Strategy (2014) especially rural development is seen as one of the most important drivers of the bioeconomy because of the increasing demand for biomass produced mainly in rural areas and relating to the development of those rural areas. However, the amount, quality and scalability of indicators for measuring the green economy is still new, and narrow, focus-ing mainly on a local level. In the previous "Sustainable and Decentralised Operating Model for Green Economy" project, a formulation of preliminary green economy operational models, indicators and road maps for Saija and Hämeenkylä rural villages in Lapland were carried out (Timonen et al. 2017). In this project the work was continued, creating a model for a new type of bioeconomy. This was done by complement-ing the green economy model and biogas production model with new mechanisms (including the food sector and new types of energy) and in finding multi market and business opportunities. An important part of this modelling was to further develop the energy and food sector indicators started in the previous project and complement these with a tourism system and finally integrate these into a more comprehensive symbiosis. The purpose of modelling the green economy in this study is to promote the bioeconomy of the case areas, among others, through the sustainable exploitation of ecosystem services. A decentralised, sustainable and competitive approach to the transition to a green economy is based on network thinking and the sustainable use of natural resources now and in the future. In this project, sector specific analyses (that were also started in the previous project) were tak-en further to create a form of symbiosis modelling. Bioeconomics cannot be based solely on sector-specific economic analysis (food, energy or tourism), but must cross borders into different sectors of demand and entrepreneurship, combined with the different demands of the bioeconomy. Multi market symbiosis and businesses modelling will lead to bioeconomy-based business mod-els, by developing them together with the actors and supplementing them with indicators of the green economy, providing a perspective on overall sustainability. Business models are the key project measures of current government programmes (e.g. for nutrient recycling, employment and entre-preneurship, profitable food production, circular economy, short chains and distribution channels, new business models). Green economy indicators are presented as local level indicators based on a regional scale for Lapland. The aim these indicators is to measure and verify the green economy transition process in the area and therefore these indicators are eventually meant to be utilised for the whole period of the green economy transition process (e.g. from the present time to the target state). For energy and food indicators, the data collection and assessment was already done in the previous project. In this project we developed these indicators further by reflecting them in meeting the green economy framework with three green economy paradigms (resource efficiency, ecosystem resilience and social equity). In addition, as the green economy is a sustainability concept, all of these paradigms will have ecological, economic and social consequences. For the preliminary development work on tour-ism indicators, many of the actual indicator calculations were not done or were not yet possible due to the lack of local data, the immaterial nature of the services, subjective perception and also multi-ple different nature based tourism concepts and interpretations. Achieving “sustainable tourism” is a continuous process and it requires constant monitoring of impacts, introducing the necessary pre-ventive and/or corrective measures whenever necessary. In addition to system level indicators, we present the socio-demographic indicators presenting the overall area level baseline for human and demographic potential and these are to be reflected in the changes in system-level indicators though there might be some correlations to be found between green growth on the system level and area level. The preliminary work for developing symbiosis indicators was challenging for measuring syner-gies between energy and food systems, as well as tourism and the ecosystem boundaries, and in this project a preliminary proposal for these measuring indicators was done. The first step achieved during this development work was to develop indicators measuring the ecological material, energy and service flows between the sectors involved. Presenting the ideas and operating models for the use of new forms of energy and transferring this knowledge to the village community was a challenging task. Major changes in technology alone require that the community receives new information from a trusted source, in addition to acquiring this knowledge, reorganising numerous processes, and creating new products or services as Lund (2014) testified in his own Choice Awareness theory. In our current study it was notable that the villagers' concerns about the future of the village and the survival of the village have motivated them to join meetings and discussions. The possible transition from fossil-based energy to self-produced bioenergy has also opened business opportunities for the villagers. Sustainability has been the driving theme for village meetings and planning new products, services and businesses. The aim has been to reduce the village's capital outflow. The first step is to establish a bioenergy plant and start producing bioenergy from local raw materials and to satisfy the internal need for energy. Energy self-sufficiency is the first major contributor to the changing future image of the village. In the next step, raw materials and products from these areas will be further processed with their own energy. Bio energy production is also a key point when building a sustainable symbiosis for various actors both in tourism and farming in rural areas. We thank the villagers of Hämeenkylä, Saija and Tanhua for their patience and participation in the project.

2018