Is bioeconomic potential shared? An assessment of policy expectations at the regional level in Colombia

ABSTRACT As other technological promises, bioeconomy has raised expectations as a burgeoning field for the economy. Policy work in Colombia claims that such current focus on ‘bio’ should be profited by the country given its regional mega-diverse potential. Yet, the question remains to what extent such arrangements are shared regionally, in a country exhibiting variegated multi-cultural drivers and differentiated bio-potential. This paper tackles this question, assessing national policy documents and regional oil and mining royalties investment in the period 2012–2019. Conceptually, we build on the notions of integration and convergence to read regional funding and niche development as evidence of multi-level expectations. We combine content analysis, descriptive analysis and social network analysis to assess expectations at the macro, meso and micro levels. Results show that there is not a consistent regional translation of the discourse on bioeconomy, showing dispersed views about how to render bioeconomy real. Higher education institutions and regional governments play a central role in keeping the network together; however, the lead has been taken by regional governments.