More countries are prioritising geoeconomics in their national bioeconomy strategies, according to a new policy report.
Geoeconomics is how economics affects the power states have in relation to other states.
According to the 2026 Global Bioeconomy Report, bioeconomy policies since 2024 emphasise trade, diplomacy, and strategic autonomy as strategic objectives while de-emphasisising sustainability and decarbonisation.
A strong bioeconomy is increasingly seen as an advantage in a world where trade conflict, war, and other tensions are mounting.
We deep dive into the report’s findings.
Geoeconomy at the centre
National bioeconomy plans are a big step in a country’s biobased development – a signal that the state is committed to building the sector.
Often, bioeconomy plans lay out how governments will foster biobased capacity, when. This gives industry more certainty on what kinds of technologies and projects federal agencies are likely to support long-term.
States build bioeconomies for diverse reasons. A bigger bioeconomy can mean growth, global competitiveness, and sustainability. Through the 2010s, these were the major reasons cited by bioeconomy strategies around the world.
Growth and sustainability remain the most popular reasons cited for building domestic bio-industries.
Since 2024, however, a new factor has been on the rise in biobased policy documents: geoeconomics.
Trade, diplomacy, strategic autonomy on the rise
According to a new report funded by the German Ministry of Agriculture, the last two years have seen more national bioeconomy strategies cite trade, diplomacy and strategic autonomy as priorities driving biobased policy.
This insight is based on a content analysis of 12 national bioeconomy plans released after 2024, including those from Brazil, Croatia, Ecuador, Ethiopia, Kenya, Namibia, Russia and Uruguay.
The report found that post-2024 plans that rate trade as a high priority objective for the bioeconomy rose 31 percent compared to biobased strategies published before 2024.
Further, national bioeconomy strategies that ranked bioeconomy diplomacy as a high-priority objective rose 9 percentage points compared to those published before 2024. Bioeconomy diplomacy refers to the use of bio-industrial buildout and research programmes to forge international alliances.
The share of plans that emphasised strategic autonomy also rose 9 percent. This refers to a country’s capacity to act upon independent decisions without coercion from other states.
The shift towards geoeconomic ambitions reflects a rapidly changing world. Trade wars and protectionism are becoming much more common than in previous decades. In response, states are doing all they can to secure long-term access to resources and revenue in an altered global environment.
Zooming out globally, two regions consistently rank geoeconomic factors highly in their bioeconomy plans. This is the Asia-Pacific and the Middle East, where strategic autonomy is rated high in 71% of strategies – higher than anywhere else in the world.
What is geoeconomics?
Put simply, geoeconomics concerns how a state’s economic position – its position in global supply chains, its GDP, its revenue sources – influences its weaknesses and strengths relative to other countries.
While this might seem abstract, geoeconomics concerns some of the most important practical questions faced by any state government.
Geoeconomics prompts states to ask how secure its supply of strategic resources really are. Under sanctions or even during a war, would it be able to procure enough food, steel, and industrial materials?
Even during peacetime, geoeconomics still matters. A state can consider how much dependence it has on another country for imported materials. How much leverage does the exporter exert because of this dependence?
Two kinds of strength: competitiveness versus resilience
A strong bioeconomy can offer a state two kinds of geoeconomic advantages: competitiveness and resilience.
First off is competitiveness – biobased industries can generate revenue for a state, especially through trade. For example, Brazil’s strong biofuels exports could add up to $82 billion to the country’s GDP, according to one estimate.
Competitiveness remains among the top priorities in bioeconomy policy plans around the world. Yet according to the report, we are seeing more states start to prioritise another dimension of geoeconomics: resilience.
Resilience is how a state can use its resources to withstand shocks. The emphasis on the actual possession of critical resources, which have strategic rather than monetary value.
As an example, a region might have a biochemicals industry that is less competitive than another region on global markets. However, this uncompetitive biochemical industry offers an advantage in a war scenario where the state can no longer import its needs.
Having critical resources domestically results in more strategic autonomy – meaning a state can make decisions independently of other nations, as it does not rely on others for important resources.
When a country has secure access to critical resources, it makes it much harder for other countries to influence their decisions using the threat of export sanctions or other coercive measures.
Uruguay’s National Bioinputs Plan is a key example of this recent trend toward prioritising resilience. It aims to reduce dependence on imported agricultural inputs such as fertilisers for example.
EU and US bioeconomy policy in flux
The emphasis among policymakers on factors like trade, strategic autonomy, and diplomacy reflects shifting global realities.
Two of the biggest biobased players, the EU and US, have been changing policy to meet the demands of increased trade tensions and the rise of China.
Geoeconomics has shot through EU bioeconomy discussions since 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine. In the landmark 2024 Draghi report, the EU linked the reduction of strategic dependencies on other regions as a major ambition for the bioeconomy.
Despite the new emphasis on strategic autonomy in policy discussions, the EU and its member states are yet to explicitly prioritise geoeconomic considerations in actual policy documents.
Competitiveness and sustainability are still the most important factors for the EU and its member states in their strategies.
However, countries across the EU are set to prioritise geoeconomic aspects of bioeconomy planning over the coming years as they updatexf their policies.
The new EU framework adopted in 2025 already signals a shift in favour of geoeconomic considerations, framing bioeconomy strategy as a way of achieving strategic autonomy through resource security, as well as economic competitiveness in industry.
Over in the US, policy is already explicitly framing bioeconomy policy as a matter of national security and geopolitical competition with China.
The National Security Commission on Emerging Biotechnology presented 49 recommendations in April 2025, and in December 2025 Congress passed the BIOSECURE Act, which restricts federal contracts with biotechnology companies of concern.
Appeals to national security in US bioeconomy policy have become more focused and explicitly focused since the arrival of the Trump administration in 2024. The prior administration led by Joe Biden also framed biobased policies as tools of national and economic security. However, ambitions like a sustainable economy and growth have been de-emphasised in policy released under the Trump government.
Inclusiveness and rural development gains
Geoeconomics is not the only rising policy issue in recent bioeconomy plans.
The category of inclusiveness and equity saw the biggest jump between the pre-2024 and post-2024 bioeconomy plans, surging +45 percentage points in mentions from 5% to 50%.
Another big winner in the recent bioeconomy plans has been rural development (+16), as well as the conservation of natural resources and biodiversity (+13).
In particular, the region where inclusiveness and equity mentions are highest are the Americas. Brazil’s bioeconomy strategy, for example, is marked by a strong emphasis on regional government autonomy. The Amazonas region adopted its own State Bioeconomy Strategy in 2025 and a State Bioeconomy Plan in 2026, which links local production chains and traditional knowledge to social inclusion and forest conservation.
This surge in emphasis on equity, rural development, and conservation reflects how most of the newer strategies came out of developing countries, particularly in South America.
However, geoeconomic priorities are set to retain their momentum in biobased policy-making. EU member states are set to update their bioeconomy policies in coming years. As developed countries, they are more likely to prioritise strategic and geopolitical factors over domestic development and social inclusion.
This split between developing and developed countries on bioeconomy objectives is likely to deepen. Developing countries are more likely to prioritise domestic economic growth over geopolitical competition. When it comes to geoeconomic objectives, the stress is likely to be on resilience over competitiveness, where domestic resources are reserves for domestic priorities.
Among developed countries like EU member states, we are likely to see policies that build on both resilience and competitiveness. Biobased plans will be aimed at strengthening both strategic autonomy in the international arena as well as economic strength on global markets. We are less likely to see the emphasis on inclusion and rural development emerging in South American bioeconomy plans.
A rising force
Overall, the traditional reasons for setting up a biobased strategy remain in place: growth and competitiveness, as well as environmental concerns, remains top of the list when it comes to countries pursuing bioeconomy policy.
Yet there is a clear divide between national bioeconomy strategies published before and after 2024. In newer plans, policymakers ask how the bioeconomy could enhance the state’s position in the international order by bolstering things like trade and strategic autonomy.
The post-2024 bioeconomy plans have been notable for another aspect: sustainability was the least prioritised objective in these documents. This is a major departure from the first waves of bioeconomy policy, where environmental concerns and targets were the priority.
This has implications for industry and business. The shift to geoeconomic considerations in the bioeconomy means that solutions which offer benefits like resource security and supply chain resilience are more likely to attract public and private investment.
