Report: Legislative amendments to boost the bieconomy

The growth of a sustainable bioeconomy can be significantly promoted by amending the national legislation. Many sectors of the bioeconomy can be reinforced simply by changing certain administrative practices. This is the conclusion of the report “Promoting the bioeconomy through regulation” published today. The report was prepared by a broadly-based research consortium headed by Linnunmaa Ltd, a company specialised in environmental legislation.

The report proposes a total of 20 measures to promote the bioeconomy. The proposed solutions focus on five themes concerning promoting the utilisation of residual materials, procedures in fertiliser legislation and use of ashes as forest fertiliser, unreasonable burden under the act on certain relationships between neighbours as the grounds in environmental permit procedures, coordination of actions by the authorities and the so-called one-stop shop approach, and nature-based health and wellbeing services.  

The themes were selected based on an inquiry conducted at the beginning of the project work among the relevant operators and authorities. 

- In the replies the authorities and operators often named the same things as obstacles to a sustainable bioeconomy. There is a common will to promote the bioeconomy. A great deal can be achieved by just fine-tuning regulation and practices, says Eeva Punta, Managing Director at Linnunmaa Ltd, who headed the project.

Efficient utilisation of residual materials is a key issue in many bioeconomy projects. As proposed in the report, this could be further promoted by fine-tuning the current practices in applying the definition of waste and by supporting the refining of residual materials into products as a special demonstration project. 

For the operators in the sector the obstacles to the bioeconomy included too rigid fertiliser legislation and the difficulties in foreseeing how the act on certain relationship between neighbours is being applied with regard to environmental permits required for small-scale bioeconomy projects. The scattered nature of the activities by various authorities was considered a problem especially for new and small-scale bioeconomy projects. 

One of the priority themes was nature-based health and wellbeing services. For the report several proposals were made on how to promote the recreational use of nature and nature-based social and health services.

 - The report was concerned with the key objectives of the current government programme. It is important that the results will now be utilised in the ongoing and future legislative projects at various ministries, says Riitta Rönn, Director of Legislative Affairs at the Ministry of the Environment

The project was part of the implementation of the Government Plan for Analysis, Assessment and Research 2014. The purpose of the project was to find ways to promote the development of a sustainable bioeconomy without compromising environmental and human health. Besides Linnunmaa Ltd, the Faculties of Law of the University of Eastern Finland and University of Lapland, Natural Resources Institute Finland and Finnish Environmental Institute contributed to the project. 

Inquiries: Riitta Rönn, Director of Legislative Affairs, tel. +358 295 250 255, [email protected], Ministry of the Environment

Merja Saarnilehto, Ministerial Adviser, tel. +295 250 259, [email protected], Ministry of the Environment

Eeva Punta, Managing Director, tel. 0400 298 465, [email protected]

English translation of the press release published on 29 January 2016