People, nature, and sustainability: A critical analysis of bioeconomy and natural capital

Abstract

The last century has been characterised by rising socio-economic measures of wellbeing against a backdrop of biodiversity loss and environmental degradation. This trend threatens the positive contributions nature makes to people and jeopardises the environmental conditions that have nurtured human civilisation for millennia. Two emergent concepts have been popularised to articulate the impacts and dependencies between people and nature and attached to contemporary environmental sustainability discourse. These concepts are bioeconomy and natural capital. In this thesis, I consider these concepts from a multidimensional perspective spanning conceptual integration, science-policy transitions, spatial modelling of people-nature interactions, and societal representation and use. I argue that bioeconomy and natural capital share a similar disciplinary background and timeline but have yet to realise potential synergies for positive environmental outcomes (Chapter 2). The thesis goes on to show the science-policy transition of natural capital and ecosystem services in Ireland (Chapter 3), and the application of spatial modelling using data from social media to map cultural ecosystem service flows that can aid environmental decision-making (Chapter 4). Chapter 5 considers bioeconomy's ability to connect disparate groups by using social media as an informal public forum of discourse and information flow. Together this work shows that the concepts of bioeconomy and natural capital can contribute to progressing towards environmental sustainability to some extent. This is promising given their embeddedness within environmental research, policy, and practice. Finally, in Chapter 6 I summarise future directions for research and practice that consider enablers and barriers for achieving potential positive environmental change. These findings can inform future use of bioeconomy and natural capital to maximise their environmental contributions. Given the scale and urgency of environmental degradation, the results of this thesis are important to aid the preservation of nature's contributions to people, both today, and for future generations.