The environmental NGO “denkhausbremen” invited international experts from civil society, public administration, arts and academia to a beautiful congress center from 23 to 25 September 2024 in the Uckermark Lakes Nature Park, north of Berlin.

At the shore of the lake Großer Lychensee, the 30 participants discussed current bioeconomy policies in the EU, Germany, Sweden, Finland and Estonia and critically engaged with aspects of global justice, sustainability and participation in current bioeconomy-related policies. The discussions covered many aspects, especially the role of the forest sector as a core sector of the bioeconomy and the so-called “biomass gap” that illustrates the shortage of available biomass for bioeconomy investments and programs in the future proofed to be controversial points.

Jana Holz presented the study “BioMentalities” that flumen carried out in 2021/2022 and gave insight into the core conflict lines that were identified regarding diverse mentalities and social-ecological transformation. The report “The new socio-ecological class conflict. Conflicting mentalities and interests in the dispute over transformation” by Dennis Eversberg, Martin Fritz, Linda von Faber, and Matthias Schmelzer, that the presentation is based upon and that summarises the main results of the study can now also be found in English for download: https://www.flumen.uni-jena.de/en/publications/#reviews-and-scientific-reports.

Lilian Pungas (formerly PhD researcher at flumen) presented her case study of invisible bioeconomy in Food Self Provisioning (FSP) practices in Eastern Estonia.