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In this poster, the authors present how biomass can broaden our conception of nature to ensure a sustainable future. It is a collaborative and inter-disciplinary work that criticises the modern concept of resource and recognises the interdependence within ecosystems and their limits. Biomass reanchors our needs in their materiality and reminds us that interactions on ecosystems cannot be seen solely through the prism of services and production. Non-humans are not just a decoration to be used for human consumption but are an ally for sustainable prosperity thus they should be treated as such – and biomass is a good place to start. The authors argue that there is an urgent need to redefine our sensibility to the non-humans, the ethics of our interactions and of our own needs which goes hand in hand with a necessary arbitration and debate on the useful and the superfluous final services for humans.

Sustainable agriculture leads today to important questions about the diversification of agricultural production and sources of income for farmers, the use of rural and arable land for food and non-food crops, the contribution of agriculture to climate change fighting and the supply of renewable energy. Bioenergy from agriculture is at the heart of these concerns, integrating sustainable development key components: environment and climate change, energy economics and energy supply, agriculture, rural and social development. The lack of primary and reliable data on bioenergy externalities from agriculture and the lack of decision-making tools are important non-technological barriers to the development of bioenergy from agriculture on a large scale, and, consequently, to the achievement of the national and regional objectives of sustainable development with respect to greenhouse gas mitigation, secure and diversified energy supply, rural development and employment and the future of agriculture. Furthermore, the recent worldwide controversies about transport biofuels, food shortages and increasing prices have demonstrated the urgent need for sustainability criteria applied to biofuels and bioenergy. Within this current sustainable development framework, a project entitled TEXBIAG integrating experts from 4 research institutions is financed by the Belgian Science Policy. The final objective of this project is to lead to an actual and significant contribution of bioenergy from agriculture to the mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions, to a secure and diversified energy supply and to farmers' incomes and rural development. To reach this final objective, the project develops three specific tools: (1) a database of primary quantitative data related to environmental and socio-economic impacts of bioenergy from agriculture integrating biomass logistics; (2) a mathematical model monetizing bioenergy externalities from agriculture; and (3) a prediction tool assessing the impacts of political decisions made in the framework ofthe development of bioenergy from agriculture on different economic sectors (energy, agriculture, industry, and environment). An integrated interface tool will be programmed where access to and update of the three tools will be prepared. The project methodology will be conducted for a given number of scenarios with sensitivity analysis wherever possible. The three main target groups that will benefit from the project are: the government officials and policy makers in the field of agriculture, energy and environment in Belgium and its two main regions, the small, medium and large energy companies and the agricultural sector

Weather and climate extremes such its droughts and floods have far reaching impacts in Kenya. They have had implications on a variety of sectors including, agriculture, water resources, health, energy and disaster management among others. Lake Victoria and its catchment support millions of people and any impact onl its ability to support the livelihood of the communities in this region is of major concern. Thus, the main objective of this study was to assess the potential future climatic changes in the Nzoia catchment in the Lake Victoria basin and how they might affect streamflow The Soil and Water Assessment Tool was used to investigate the impact of climatic change on streamflow of the study area. The model was set up using readily available spatial and temporal data and calibrated against measured daily streamflow. Climate change. scenarios were obtained from general circulation models Results obtained showed increased amounts of annual rainfall for all the scenarios but with variations on a monthly basis. All - but 1 - global circulation models (GCMS) showed consistency in the monthly rainfall amounts. The analysis revealed important rainfall-runoff linear relationships for certain months that could be extrapolated to estimate amounts of streamflow under various scenarios of change in rainfall. Streamflow response was not sensitive to changes in temperature. If all other variables e.g. land cover, population growth etc, were held constant. a significant increase in streamflow may be expected in the coming decades as a consequence of increased rainfall amounts.

Biofuels can offer an alternative to fossil fuels in the context climate change and fossil reserves depletion. Plant biomass consists mainly of structural (cell wall) polysaccharides, but contains also reserve polysaccharides (starch, polyfructans) and soluble carbohydrates, that can be converted by micro-organisms. So agricultural residues and herbaceous biomasses offer the opportunity to be converted to second-generation bio-ethanol. In this study, we examined the composition of Lolium perenne, Lolium hybridum, Lolium multiforum, to check their suitability for a dedicated ethanol conversion process. We investigated different varieties (early, intermediate, and late precocity degree; diploid and tetraploïd), different development stages (elongation, heading, flowering), harvest time in the day, and tedding on carbohydrate availability. All harvested samples were either dried at 70°C for biomass composition analysis or frozen for fermentation assays. Soluble carbohydrates were extracted from the dried biomass samples by water at 70°C. Fructose, Glucose, Sucrose and oligofructans to a degree of polymerisation DP11 were analysed by HPLC-ELSD with a Carbohydrate Prevail column. Biomass main components were determined by NIR spectroscopy with special focus on structural polysaccharides cellulose and hemicelluloses. Frozen biomass samples were used to examine the feasibility of a simple ethanol fermentation process directly from crude, not sterilized grasses with the commonly used yeast Saccharomyces cerevisae. Grass was fermented with S. cerevisiae for 40 h at 40°C. Ethanol and volatile fatty acids were analysed by GC-FID. Results show that S. cerevisae can produce ethanol directly from the green biomass but the endogenous microbial flora is responsible for the production of lactic acid and other volatile fatty acids (mainly acetate and butyrate).The soluble carbohydrate conversion yields to ethanol will be presented.

Simultaneous with the growing demand for sustainable food, statistics in all EU member states report consumption patterns that are characterized by too much fat, overdoses of sugar and a lack of fruits and vegetables. The streams of literature that investigate the factors influencing sustainable food consumption and healthy food consumption are largely separated. However, the question whether there is a positive relationship between consumer behaviour towards sustainable food and consumer behaviour towards healthy food remains largely unanswered. The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between the consumption of different types of sustainable food on the one hand, and healthy food patterns on the other. The study is based on a sample of 2595 respondents in Belgium. The research shows a significant relationship between a healthy diet and sustainable food choices. Analyses applied to identify gender- or age-specific tendencies demonstrate that the association is particularly pronounced for consumers between 26 and 40 years old. For younger consumers (<26 years) and older consumers (>65 years), the relationship between sustainable food behavior and the choice for healthy food is weak. These findings can be extremely useful in the communication and promotion of different types of sustainable food.

The overall objective of the H2020 Phy2Climate project is to build the bridge between the phytoremediation of contaminated sites with the production of clean drop-in biofuels. As the project aims for the production of high-quality drop-in biofuels like marine fuels (ISO 8217), gasoline (EN 228) and diesel (EN 590), a biorefinery concept is employed with the thermo-catalytic process (TCR®) at its centre. The produced biofuels will present no Land Use Change risks, thus, the phytoremediation will decontaminate lands from a vast variety of pollutants and make the restored lands available for agriculture, while improving the overall sustainability, legal framework, and economics of the process. In this way, Phy2Climate aims at significantly contributing to the Mission Innovation Challenge for sustainable biofuel production and to almost all UN Sustainable Development Goals, as well as to the EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030, that is part of the European Green Deal, and to the new EU Soil Strategy for 2030 adopted in 2021. On the one hand, it is unquestionable that there is a growing demand for land, which increases tensions among the different groups of users. Land is a finite resource, and the main competitors are Feed, Food & Fuel. From the available worldwide arable land, about 71% is dedicated to animal feed, about 18% to food and only about 4% to biofuels (another 7% is for material use of crops). The multiple uttered food vs fuel debate is, actually, a food vs feed debate. However, the increasing demand for biofuels and biobased products also contributes to this tension, but in a much smaller dimension. The increasing land demand for energy crops leads to direct and indirect Land Use Change (iLUC), causing deforestation, soil erosion, loss of biodiversity and vital water resources. On the other hand, there is a significant area of land which is contaminated and, therefore, unusable for any purpose. Even worse, the investigation, registration as “contaminated site”, as well as the remediation and management of such areas are very cost-intensive, adding even more fuel to the fire. Proceedings of the 30th European Biomass Conference and Exhibition, 9-12 May 2022, Online, pp. 170-177

Consumers are overwhelmed with communications from companies and NGOs trying to increase their brand awareness and push the consumers to action. But, since consumers are continuously in contact with brands through advertising, they cannot be attentive to each one of them. Humour is a frequently used method by marketers to attract the attention of the consumers and to enact positive reactions. In this thesis, we have analysed whether NGOs, and more specifically the Rainforest Alliance, should use humour in its socially responsible advertisements and what the effects of it are. We circulated a questionnaire showing randomly a humorous or a non-humorous CSR advertisement from the Rainforest Alliance and gathered 115 valid responses in total. Our study revealed that the humorous CSR advertisement led to a better attitude towards the ad and a higher purchase intention of certified products from the Rainforest Alliance. Moreover, a credible ad enhances the attitude towards the ad and the brand even more and increases the intention to purchase products from the NGO. People who are less sceptical about advertisements have a better attitude towards the ad and the brand as well as a higher intention to purchase the products. Furthermore, a person highly interested in sustainability will have a less positive attitude towards the humorous ad compared to a person that is not interested in the matter. All in all, NGOs should use humour in CSR advertisements since it has a lot of beneficial effects and it draws the attention of the consumers. Humour will also enable the NGO to reach a broader public and increase its brand awareness. Master [120] en sciences de gestion, Université catholique de Louvain, 2015

The demand for an ecologically and socially more responsible production has increased dramatically. Traditionally, public authorities intervene by means of regulations and economic stimuli, but also private market parties integrate social and ecological concerns into their business objectives. As such they hope to create added value. Consequently, this can result into a win-win for both the private actor and the society. To operationalize these private initiatives in the farm sector, certification schemes with private standards and labels are used. These certification schemes can be considered as an example of Private Institutions of Sustainability, which are sets of rules voluntary followed by private market actors to reach a sustainability target. The doctoral thesis investigates whether these certification schemes and labels, as examples of Private Institutions of Sustainability, are a promising instrument to realize sustainable development. The introductory part focuses on why market actors are interested in these Private Institutions of Sustainability. A first descriptive analysis places PIoS between other sustainable development initiatives. According to different market actors PIoS are promising both from economic and ecological perspective. An important condition for the success of these schemes is consumer interest. By means of ‘choice preference’-modelling it is shown that there are strong consumer preferences for some sustainability claims. Moreover, different types of consumers perceive the same claims differently. A second important precondition for the success of these schemes is retail interest. In a qualitative analysis different retail strategies for sustainable production were identified. The second part of the thesis focuses on whether these private systems deliver what they promise, which is effectively contributing to ecological, economic and social sustainability. First the contribution of PIoS to ecological sustainability is investigated by means of a meta-analysis. The contribution is confirmed, although some question marks can be placed. To assess the economic performance of these systems the sustainable value method is further optimized. The analysis reveals that firms participating in PIoS create more added value by using ecological resources more efficiently. The social performance was investigated by means of a qualitative analysis of social equity within the value chain. PIoS are not automatically a guarantee for social equity within the value chain. In part three of the dissertation changes are modelled in the PIoS to further improve sustainability. By means of ‘choice preference’-modelling the cost experienced by market actors for ecological changes in the certification scheme is estimated. This enables us to estimate the private cost for further ecological sustainability. In a following step it is shown how the ‘choice preference’-methodology can be used to estimate the desired compensations for institutional changes within the certification scheme. This allows to reduce the information asymmetries during negotiations between participants in the value chain. Finally, a methodology is developed to assess the sustainable efficiency of firms and certification schemes when new sustainability targets are introduced. From the analysis it became clear that firms participating in certification schemes have a higher sustainable efficiency compared to firms who do not. The research shows that there is still room for further ecological and economic improvement by removing current inefficiencies in the systems. Given that these institutions are private, a trade off is made between private and social objectives. Although the role of public authorities has shifted from initiator to monitor, it is important that these give the necessary impulses for further improving PIoS’ sustainability. Finally, the contribution of PIoS to internal value chain social sustainability depends on whether specific rules have been incorporated that safeguard the equity between participants.

The earth’s climate has a history of alternating glacial and interglacial periods, which have recurrently forced major rearrangements in species assemblages. Today, however, scientists are worried because the predicted rate of climate change is faster than any of these past temperature changes, and anticipated to have dramatic consequences for the earth’s biodiversity. One way in which species may respond to the current global warming, is by shifting their range pole- or upwards. During such shifts, individuals encounter changing environmental conditions (like a shortened breeding season) and become assorted according to their dispersal capacities (best dispersers at the front). Range shifts thus entail strong selection pressures that may profoundly shape range front phenotypes. This PhD thesis studies the ecological and evolutionary processes related to range shifts, using the two-spotted spider mite (a herbivorous pest that recently expanded its European range northwards) as a model species.