Climate-resilient land use and logistics in the industrial bioeconomy

As the 1.5-degree target is increasingly slipping out of reach globally¹ and as heatwaves, droughts and extreme weather events are also affecting Germany with increasing intensity, land use and supply chains are facing profound changes. Changing growing conditions, increasing weather extremes and growing competition for land use are affecting the availability of biogenic raw materials and placing greater demands on resilient value chains and supply chains.

In this Learning Lounge, participants will gain insights into current developments in the bioeconomy from the perspective of land use and logistics. The focus is on the biomass flows within the German bioeconomy, the impact of land-use dynamics and competing land-use pressures on the availability of biogenic raw materials, and the resulting risks and dependencies for value chains. It will also examine how the climate crisis, global upheavals and growing uncertainties are affecting transport and supply systems, and which approaches can help to design resilient and sustainable supply and logistics networks for the bioeconomy.

Our experts:

Prof. Dr.-Ing. Rüdiger Schaldach is an adjunct professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Kassel. At the Kassel Institute for Sustainability (KIS), he heads the ‘Global and Regional Dynamics’ research group. His research focuses on the spatial modelling of land-use systems at various scales, as well as integrative analyses of the sustainable development of these systems. He is currently leading the BMFTR project SYMOBIO2Plus on the systemic monitoring of the bioeconomy in Germany.

Prof. Dr Peter Holm is a professor of supply chain management at Provadis University of Applied Sciences in Frankfurt am Main and a lecturer at the WU Executive Academy in Vienna. As Special Representative for Executive Board Projects at the Federal Association for Road Haulage, Logistics and Waste Management (BGL) e.V. and a member of the jury for, amongst others, the European Logistics Association (ELA) Award and the Eco Performance Award, he represents the strategic and transport policy interests of road freight transport at the interface between academia and practice.