Abstract:

Currently, sustainability is a hot topic, driven by environmental disasters caused by human activity that threaten life on the planet. Thus, the aim is to harmonize conflicts between economic, environmental, and social spheres, recovering the ancestral knowledge of traditional communities and developing clean and innovative technologies capable of mitigating the impacts of human actions, generating financial returns, and improving social well-being. In this context, bioeconomy is considered by numerous scientists, politicians, and managers as a means to achieve sustainability or a bioeconomic state, as it conceives the economy as dependent on nature; that is, the environment and the economy must be in balance in the same equation, which does not reduce economic activity to a mere mechanism nor nature to a source of raw materials. In this way, bioeconomy encompasses biotechnology and bioresources, with the development of clean technologies through renewable raw materials for the creation of new bio-based products, and bioecology, with the valuation of ecosystem services and environmental protection. However, for the bioeconomy to be widely incorporated into concrete actions, it needs broad social acceptance, since it will be people, especially young people of current and future generations, who will implement it. In this sense, the main objective of this study was to examine the understanding and level of knowledge of young higher education students in Brazil and Portugal about the term Bioeconomy, understanding their expectations and fears, as well as the factors that explain their attitudes towards the topic. A cross-sectional, analytical, and quantitative survey was conducted through the application of a questionnaire to higher education students in Brazil and Portugal. The data was processed using SPSS software version 28. The survey totaled 878 responses, with 74.9% of respondents being of Portuguese nationality and 25.1% Brazilian. It was found that Brazilian students are more familiar with the term Bioeconomy (53.2%) than Portuguese respondents (37.1%). Furthermore, Brazilians also have a higher level of knowledge, with 47.2% of students classified as having a very good or good level, while for the Portuguese, the total was 22.6%. Regarding sociodemographic data, in addition to the difference in nationalities, for the Brazilian group, an association was observed between place of residence and level of knowledge in Bioeconomy, with higher levels of knowledge among residents of urban areas. For the Portuguese, the difference was observed in the field of study, with a greater inclination towards Biological Sciences, Agricultural Sciences, and Engineering. Moreover, differences were observed between the motivations for supporting Bioeconomy, with economic motivations showing superiority over environmental ones, especially among Portuguese students. Thus, public-private initiatives in countries related to sustainable development and the bioeconomy directly influence students' knowledge and support for the bioeconomy, since Brazil makes significant investments in higher education, science, and technology linked to the bioeconomy, which can be evidenced by the higher level of knowledge among Brazilians within the scope of the study.

Keywords:

Bioeconomy, sustainability, perceptions, Portugal, Brazil.