Forests in Southern Europe are known as one of the most vulnerable ecosystems to the risk of forest fires and to the severe impacts of climate change (drought, diseases, rainfalls, etc.). However, these forests provide multiple goods and services that can increase their value by the implementation of the circular bioeconomy concept.

Moving to a circular bioeconomy is part of the necessary response to address the important global challenges identified by UN Sustainable Development Goals and Paris Climate Agreement. Designing products that can be disassembled and reused, and at the same time abolishing residues, is the base of a circular economy. Moreover, the bioeconomy is the perfect way to substitute fossil-based, non-renewable and non-biodegradable materials, by renewable and biodegradable ones, which might eventually give new functions to biological origin products, something unreachable only by circularity. Both concepts merit to be combined: circular economy and bioeconomy (Antikainen et al. 2017, Hetemäki et al. 2017¹).

The technological approach to a biobased economy, in general the model prevalent in Central and Northern Europe, focusses on the growth of domestic supply of timber (wood mobilization), and on its correct and sustainable use in the value chain (cascading approach) through the development of advanced technologies for industrial processing. The emphasis of this approach is on the production of raw forest products together with agriculture, fisheries and food supplies. R&D is the engine of the growth, while simultaneously environmental and biodiversity considerations are taken into account.

An approach with transversal dimension is more prevalent in Southern. Forests are managed to a larger degree on a logic of integration with agriculture, cultural, recreational tourism and environmental services. In this approach, production and processing technologies operate on a limited scale and are usually labour-intensive. The diversification of forest products (timber, local biomass, non-wood forest products) becomes a critical issue, as well as all the social innovations that can further arise, such as the creation of platforms that integrate economic operators and producers. In this context, the focus is on developing key social elements of the production, supply and distribution systems, such as land tenure organisation, provision of supporting services in rural communities, job creation and social inclusiveness.

Nevertheless, in Southern Europe an approach aimed at transforming raw materials within the processing industries by applying advanced technologies is also possible. For example, this could be the case of the cork sector, an important stakeholder in activating the European bioeconomy based on an exclusive south-western European product. Cork is a highly versatile raw material that can be used in more than 350 ways in a variety of industries. It is a natural, totally biodegradable and recyclable material. The forests of Quercus suber covers near of 20,000 Km2 in the EU, and 65% of its world-wide distribution is mainly in Spain, Portugal, France and Italy, which are highly vulnerable countries to climate change. On the other hand, sawn wood and engineered wood products are quantitatiely the most relevant bioproducts in the field of construction. Cross-laminated timber (CLT) is called to have a starring role in the future because it makes possible the construction of multi-storey buildings, the most common kind of residential housing in southern Europe. CLT may become the solution to provide higher diversification and added value to sawn wood timber in the region while promoting truly bioconstruction.