Foto: Laura Pashkevich – Fotolia.com
BLOOM – Boosting Awareness of Bioeconomy
BLOOM stands for "Boosting European Citizen's Knowledge and Awareness of Bioeconomy", thus promoting the knowledge and awareness of European civil society for bioeconomy. The focus of the project is to bring European citizens closer to the concept of a bioeconomy and to show what is currently happening in the economy concerning this.
Bioeconomy is the conscious generation and use of biological resources in the economy to provide products, processes and services in all economic sectors. Decisive for this is knowing the cycles of nature. However, acting bioeconomy conscious does not solely mean to use these cycles for processes for example in the energy, paper, textile, chemical, pharmaceutical or food industry. The goal is rather to sustain and protect these circles for the future in the sense of environment and resource protection.
Strengthening the community
Establishing a bioeconomy, therefore, is a rethinking process, which eventually will lead to a “greener” economy that brings along various possibilities for research and innovation processes. It is BLOOM's focus to discuss these opportunities critically with civil society and involve decision-makers in the process. The project aims to bring together European citizens, civil society, bioeconomy innovation networks, local research centers, business and industry stakeholders and various levels of government to explore bio economic innovation processes in open and informed dialogues.
To achieve this goal, five centers known as hubs will be set up in five different countries. In workshops and other participation formats, these hubs should facilitate dialogues that generate new knowledge and contribute to the further development of the bio economic segment. In this way they reduce existing barriers to the further development of bio economic practices, processes and products at the regional and the EU level. A strengthened "bioeconomy community" with a shared understanding of the concept can provide reliable insights into the practice, balance benefits and impacts, and integrate them into social learning and education offerings.
New public engagement formats
The role of the WILA Bonn will be to design participation formats, communication strategies and activities that are individually tailored to the needs of all stakeholders in order to create an open and innovative dialogue. Partners in BLOOM are twelve institutions from eight countries (Austria, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Finland, Spain, Poland and Sweden). Coordinator of the project is the Center for Social Innovation in Vienna.
BLOOM is funded by the European Commission in the research framework program Horizon 2020 (Project ID H2020-773983).
Contact
Norbert Steinhaus(02 28) 201 61-22
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.Kristin Simon
(02 28) 201 61-28
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