A. Relevance and sustainability context
A.1 Policy relevance
The indicator shows how strongly citizens are actively and collectively involved in the bioeconomy. A higher participation means a broader distribution of bio-economy activities across regions and sectors. Active citizen involvement builds trust and reduces opposition to bio-economy projects.
A.2 Sustainability and / or comparative evaluation options
A useful benchmark would be the bioeconomy GDP share or total economic output from bioeconomy sectors. This puts the participation rate into context. If many citizens participate but contribute little economic value, that signals inefficiency or lack of support.
For cooperatives in Germany there is no aggregated database that links cooperatives to bioeconomy. This would be needed for a robust analysis.
B. Data availability
B.1 Stage of development
This indicator is still in the conceptual phase. It hasn't been tested or adopted into official monitoring frameworks yet.
B.2 Data sources
DGRV (Germany) and CECOP (EU)
B.3 Coverage over time and replicability
Information on cooperatives is collected and published by their respective umbrella organisations. However, there is no institution at a national level that collects this information and publishes it in a consolidated form. The data is therefore fragmented and published at different time periods (mostly annually).
B.4 Coverage across scales and sectors; compatibility
Data collection in Germany is fragmented, with most sectors gathering and publishing their own data at varying levels of detail, making a cross-sector perspective difficult to achieve. At the EU level, significant heterogeneity exists, primarily due to non-standardized data collection approaches across Member States. Although representative reports, such as those published by CECOP, have been released, they do not compensate for the data fragmentation.
C. Considerations for operationalization
C.1 Feasibility: Fit for monitoring
Feasibility is currently limited as the indicator is conceptually sound but operationally challenging. To address this, a national-level institution would need to systematically collect sector-specific data on cooperatives and publish it in a consolidated format. This data is then needed to be linked to bioeconomy (using NACE codes).
C.2 Institutions
In Germany, Destatis could serve as an appropriate institution to collect data on cooperatives and publish it in a consolidated format. Meanwhile, research institutes could focus on linking the data to the bioeconomy.
C.3 Future prospects
The key needs include standardized data collection at the sector level. So far, the indicator can be used to produce preliminary results.
C.4 Costs, considerations and reproducibility
It is difficult to estimate the costs at this stage, but as the majority of the data on cooperative membership is already being collected by DGRV and other umbrella organizations, the main task lies in harmonizing and linking these existing datasets.
C.5 Potential for automation
Automation could be feasible once a consolidated data base exists.
C.6 Presentation options and breakdown / sub-indicator needs
The indicator could be presented most effectively as a combination of trend analysis showing participation rates over time and sectoral breakdowns. Further, a comparison with the total economy (e.g., SME’s and large businesses) can be valuable.
C.7 Potential for scenario integration
The indicator has moderate but limited relevance for foresight activities. It could theoretically inform scenarios exploring inclusive versus concentrated bioeconomy growth or policies favoring small actors over large industry.
In practice, this indicator is more useful for ongoing policy monitoring than for scenario building.
C.8 Interlinkages and alignment with other monitoring activities
The indicator is not being reported in any monitoring systems yet. It would feed into Germany's National Bioeconomy Strategy monitoring and the Sustainability Strategy. Further it supports SDG (e.g., SDG 8).