6 Conclusion
6.2 Future research
Effects that transition towards circular bioeconomy have on climate change are evidential but debatable. Transitions’ contributions to address grand challenges as the climate change has been addressed in the previous research. Circular bioeconomy’s potential to tackle climate change is a research area of the central importance in the future as the contributions are yet to be explicitly addressed (Bugge et al., 2016). On that note, Golembiewski et al. (2015) suggest that establishment of standardized measures to track the implementation of the bioeconomy should be focused on to achieve development and tangibility. This study focused on Northern Finland and Northern Sweden as well as the Arctic perspective in these regions, but the position of circular bioeconomy could be different in the coastal regions of Norway or Greenland, where the marine sector plays a key role.
Nordic region has therefore much potential to produce scientific knowledge on transitions in different regions that face various challenges.
As mentioned previously, policy research is an interesting and relevant perspective to explore the sustainability transitions. Comprehensive support and commitment from national, regional, and local levels are needed to support the transition towards circular bioeconomy. Political aspects are relevant in the field of sustainability transitions despite the low appearance of political perspectives in this
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study. Environmental policies and support for sustainability transitions require political actions and are thus based on political decisions. Similarly, the future research could elaborate on sustainability transitions beyond environmental and climate aspects, considering more in detail social and economic transition. The research could engage with digitalization and technical innovation as a part of sustainability transitions. Comparative approach could be extended to compare the drivers’ impacts on social, economic and environmental aspects of the transition.
Since Arctic region is characterized by unique features both environmentally and economically, the geography of transitions is essentially involved to gain more scientific understanding of why sustainability transitions occur similarly or differently within various areas in the Arctic region and across the borders of different countries. Similarly, more geographically focused sustainability transitions research is needed on classifying the key factors that contribute towards the transitions on certain regions. This study hence confirms that research on geographical aspects in sustainability transitions could be expanded. In this context, the comparative approach benefits from comparing urban and rural areas. Completing this research was important approach to contribute finding solutions to the perpetual challenges that the climate change has generated.
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