Bioeconomics approach to sustainable economic development and Turkey

After the Industrial Revolution, the needs due to global population growth and therefore the increase in production, combined with the understanding of economic development that envisages constantly earning more, have resulted in problems such as environmental destruction, decrease in natural resources, climate change and food security. As a solution to these problems, the concept of sustainable development, which integrates the environment and economy, ensures sustainable natural resource management, respects the rights of both present and future generations, and aims for a continuous development, has been developed. In order for sustainable development to be implemented in real life, there are four basic cornerstones: blue economy, green economy, circular economy and bioeconomy. Bioeconomy is the production of renewable biological resources and the transformation of waste generated by these resources into value-added products such as food, feed, biobased products and bioenergy. If current policies continue, it will be inevitable for the population to increase and the need for food, water and fossil fuels to increase accordingly. At this point, bioeconomy has offered smart and sustainable solutions to one of the most important problems: consumption of natural resources beyond their regenerative capacity. This study was prepared to draw attention to bioeconomy, which is one of the sustainable economic development approaches, and to determine the current situation of bioeconomy in our country by revealing the policies and practices for bioeconomy in our country. Additionally, a SWOT analysis was conducted in terms of Turkey's bioeconomy. As a result of the study prepared using qualitative research methods, it was determined that there is no bioeconomy policy in our country yet, it is in the preparation process, and the studies on bioeconomy are focused on sectors.