ECLAC considers that the bioeconomy is one of the engines of sustainable and inclusive growth. Among the contributions for the transformation of productive structures, the incorporation of modern knowledge in the field of biological sciences and related technologies, productive diversification, value generation and its ability to promote traditional knowledge stand out.
The importance of understanding the full contribution of the bioeconomy was highlighted in the 2020 Global Bioeconomy Summit report (IACGB, 2020). Pioneering work to provide a measurement of the weight of the bioeconomy has been developed by the Joint Research Center – ISPRA (JRC, 2020). In Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), ad hoc quantification exercises have been carried out in several countries, including Argentina (Wierny and others, 2015; Coremberg and others, 2019), Colombia (Alviar and others, 2021), and Uruguay (IICA, 2021). A first exercise to prepare a bioeconomy satellite account integrated into the National Accounts System was carried out in Costa Rica (Vargas and others, 2022), supported by ECLAC, collaborating with the Environmental Statistics Area, Macroeconomic Statistics Department of the Central Bank of Costa Rica, the official entity in charge of preparing national accounts in Costa Rica.
Taking the experience of Costa Rica as a reference, the project “Innovation in bioeconomy in activities of high added value for structural change and a transformative reactivation”, developed within the framework of the ECLAC-BMZ/giz Strategic Alliance, has developed a methodology for the construction of bioeconomy satellite accounts, based on the supply and use accounts (SUT). The event aims to discuss this methodology and present the preliminary results of its application in 12 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean.
