In cooperation with the European Society for Rural Sociology (ESRS) Baltic Studies Centre organizes a ESRS2022 congress online satellite event “Rethinking circularity: an interdisciplinary and cross-sectoral perspective on circular practices in bioeconomy” on June 21-22, 2022.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the XXIX ESRS Congress, originally scheduled in June 2021 and later postponed to 2022 has been cancelled. The ESRS instead proposed to organize “satellite events” to gather small groups of people in face-to-face meetings in different regions of the ESRS community The ESRS 2022 Satellite Events will unfold with a series of common online events between the 20th and the 24th of June 2022.
Rethinking circularity: an interdisciplinary and cross-sectoral perspective on circular practices in bioeconomy
An increase in the public interest in sustainable use of resources has raised attention towards various circularity-based arrangements. Instead of focusing on the “take-make-waste” model, the circular approach looks for ways to reduce waste by treating production and consumption by-products as a resource. As explained by the European Parliament – circularity presupposes production and consumption that involves sharing, leasing, reusing, repairing, refurbishing and recycling. In more practical terms, these verbs describing circular economy can be translated into the following three guiding principles – to develop systems that design out waste and pollution; to maintain products and materials in the system and in use; to facilitate the regeneration of natural systems.
Agriculture, forestry and aquaculture are among the sectors with the most pronounced impact on the climate crisis, loss of biodiversity and other environmental challenges as well as being the sectors that are affected the most by these ecological shifts. A detailed assessment of how these sectors could become more resource-efficient is required. There is evidence of several good practices effectively reducing resource loss by closing the resource loops either within or between these sectors – some notable examples include reuse of water from fish breeding tanks for greenhouse irrigation, bioprocessing of agro-byproducts to animal feed, growing mushrooms in agro- or silvo- byproducts, etc.
This ESRS congress satellite event aims to broaden the pool of exemplary practices and deepen our understanding of the challenges and opportunities underlying the circular use of bioresources. To do this, the miniconference aims to collect evidence on real-life examples and to facilitate a cross- disciplinary discussion regarding methodological and theoretical aspects of studying and conceptualising circular use of bioresources that could help ensure optimal use of these resources in the future.
This satellite event addresses the following questions:
- what are examples of good practices and business models of circular use of bioresources within and between agriculture, forestry and aquaculture;
- what are the relations between traditional and novel practices of circularity in the use of bioresources;
- what theoretical perspectives can help explain existing practices and generate new insights regarding circular use of bioresources;
- to what extent can the general principles of circular economy be applied when studying the relations between agriculture, forestry and aquaculture and the flow of bioresources between these sectors;
- what regulatory frameworks are used to govern circular use of bioresources across Europe;
- what new insights regarding circular use of bioresources can be generated by cross- disciplinary studies;
- what methodological instruments are best suited and what instruments we lack to study circular use of bioresources.
Format: The satellite event will be held online on June 21-22. The satellite event will follow the traditional conference format – each speaker will be given 15 minutes for a presentation, followed by a short Q&A session. After the presentations, a joint round-table debate of all presenters will be held to discuss the cross-sectoral use of bioresources and good practices of circular resource use in agriculture, forestry and aquaculture.
Applying: People interested to participate are expected to submit an abstract of their presentations before March 25. The abstract should include the title of the paper, authors and authors’ affiliations, 1st author’s contacts, keywords (3-5) and a summary of the presentation (max. 300 words). Please, send your abstracts to the following address: info@bscresearch.lv.
Participation at the miniconference is free of charge. However, we invite you to consider becoming a member of ESRS. For membership renewal or new members, more information and instructions are available on the Wiley website via this link. Main advantages of becoming an ESRS member: ESRS membership will give you a discount at the next ESRS conference. It will also give you access to activities organised by ESRS, such as the ESRS Study groups and PhD schools. Membership fees allow the Society to organize these events.
Important dates:
March 25, 2022 – submission of abstracts;
April 8, 2022 – results of the abstract selection shared;
April 30, 2022 – registration for speakers
