Campania is a region with strong bioeconomy potential, but also with deep environmental, social, and economic challenges. These include land contamination linked to the legacy of eco-mafia activities, the underuse of important biomass streams such as buffalo manure, organic municipal waste, and tanning industry residues, and limited public awareness of circular bioeconomy practices. At the same time, the region also faces structural inequalities and weak integration between social actors and bioeconomy operators. Within this context, the RIBES Multi-actor Transformative Forum in Campania provides a structured space to connect diverse stakeholders around concrete, regionally relevant value chains.
Since the beginning of the project, the Campania MTF has built on strong regional networks and gradually evolved into a more focused and socially rooted platform. It brings together social cooperatives, organisations working on legality and territorial regeneration, industry actors, public authorities, and academia to explore how circular bioeconomy development can also support social inclusion and regional renewal. Below, the Campania MTF shares reflections on its journey so far, the most important discussions and lessons learned, and the difference it is beginning to make in the region.
1. In your view, what are the main bioeconomy-related challenges or needs in your region that the MTF is helping to address?
The Campania region faces a combination of environmental, social, and economic challenges that the MTF is helping to address. These include the legacy of eco-mafia activities and land contamination, particularly in the so-called “Land of Fires”, the underutilisation of significant biomass streams such as buffalo manure, organic municipal waste, and tanning industry residues, weak integration between social actors and bioeconomy operators, and limited public awareness about circular bioeconomy practices. The MTF provides a structured space to connect diverse stakeholders, from social cooperatives to industry and academia, around concrete, regionally relevant value chains.
2. Why is the work of the MTF important in your regional context?
Campania is a region with strong bioeconomy potential but significant structural inequalities and a history of organised crime affecting land use and waste management. The MTF is important because it brings together actors who would not typically sit at the same table, including social enterprises working on confiscated lands, industrial clusters, municipalities, and universities, and creates a shared platform for dialogue, knowledge exchange, and coordinated action. It helps translate the circular bioeconomy agenda into locally grounded initiatives that also address social and territorial vulnerabilities.
3. How does your MTF contribute to RIBES’ wider ambition of supporting inclusive and sustainable bio-based entrepreneurship?
The Campania MTF contributes to RIBES’ ambition by explicitly embedding social inclusion within its action plan. From the outset, the MTF was designed to go beyond technical and economic dimensions, engaging social cooperatives, organisations combating organised crime, and civil society actors. Through the validation of value chains and the involvement of actors such as Terra Felix and Agrorinasce, the MTF demonstrates how bio-based entrepreneurship can simultaneously generate environmental value, economic opportunity, and social regeneration.
4. How has your MTF developed since the beginning of the project?
The Campania MTF was built from the start on a strong regional foundation. Rather than starting from scratch, SPRING drew on networks already active in the region through other initiatives, including the SPRING cluster itself and the BIOLOC and BioINSouth projects, to identify and engage an initial group of relevant stakeholders. This gave the MTF an immediate grounding in the regional context and an existing culture of collaboration to build on.
From there, the MTF progressively expanded to include civil society actors, including social cooperatives and organisations working at the intersection of bioeconomy and territorial regeneration, reflecting the stronger social focus of the RIBES project. Over time, the MTF evolved from a broad awareness-raising space into a more structured and focused body, culminating in the selection and validation of three priority value chains: biogas from buffalo manure, biomethane and compost from organic municipal waste, and the valorisation of tanning industry residues.
The MTF is still growing. Additional actors across the region are currently being mapped so that all three value chains are comprehensively represented, ensuring that the forum reflects the full complexity of each chain and the diverse communities it can benefit.
5. Which stakeholder groups have been involved, and why has their participation been important?
The MTF covers a broad quadruple helix, including social cooperatives and civil society, organisations fighting organised crime and promoting legality, research and academia, industry and technology providers, and public authorities. Their participation is important because each brings a distinct perspective. Social enterprises contribute local knowledge and community trust, industry actors provide technical insight and market understanding, universities add research capacity, and public bodies ensure policy relevance and institutional support.
6. Have you seen any changes in stakeholder awareness, dialogue, or willingness to collaborate through the MTF process so far?
While tangible outcomes are still emerging, RIBES has already strengthened relationships among local stakeholders and clarified shared priorities. Participants are increasingly aligned around the selected value chains, and the MTF has helped identify who the key actors are across social, academic, public, and economic sectors. The project is creating a structured platform where dialogue and knowledge-sharing are becoming more regular.
7. What have been the most important discussions, insights, or turning points within your MTF so far?
A key turning point was the collaborative selection of the three value chains. SPRING presented a preliminary shortlist, and MTF members contributed their local knowledge, experience, and territorial insight to identify which ones held the greatest potential for the region, not only in technical or economic terms, but also in terms of social and environmental benefits for local communities. The process was participatory. The valorisation of tanning industry waste, for instance, was proposed directly by an MTF member, reflecting the kind of grounded, locally rooted input that makes the forum valuable.
An equally important insight was the recognition that some value chains, such as biogas production from buffalo manure, already exist in the region, but that their full potential remains untapped. The MTF provided the space to assess together where improvements are most needed and most impactful, always keeping in mind regional priorities, the geographical distribution of biomass, and the broader benefits these chains can generate for the territory and its communities.
8. Have any specific barriers or enabling factors emerged regarding social entrepreneurship, circular bioeconomy development, or regional value chain development?
Several barriers have emerged. One of the most significant is regulatory fragmentation. Current legislation often classifies by-products and residues, including agricultural waste, forest biomass, organic waste, and industrial effluents, as waste rather than as potential bio-based resources. This creates legal uncertainty for investors and operators seeking to develop circular value chains.
Another challenge is the lack of sector visibility. The absence of specific statistical codes for biorefineries and bio-based products makes it difficult to monitor the sector’s economic and environmental contribution, which in turn limits the ability of policymakers to design targeted support measures.
There is also weak integration of bio-based products into climate and industrial policy. A stronger formal recognition of these products within decarbonisation strategies is needed through incentives, bio-based content obligations, and dedicated support for sectors where such products can drive meaningful change in production models and end-of-life management.
In addition, biomass governance remains a challenge. Promoting the sustainable and cascading use of biomass, especially from local supply chains, requires avoiding competition with food production and ensuring environmental integrity. Geographic concentration of biomass and uneven stakeholder capacity across the region also limit the scalability of individual value chains.
At the same time, a number of enabling factors have emerged, including a strong pre-existing regional bioeconomy network, thanks to the SPRING cluster and other regional initiatives such as BIOLOC and BioINSouth, the willingness of social actors to engage in bioeconomy topics, and the clear complementarity between technical and social actors within the MTF.
9. What would you say are the most meaningful outcomes or lessons learned from your MTF up to this point?
The most important lesson learned from the Campania MTF is the fundamental value of bringing together actors from all four helices, academia, industry, civil society, and public authorities, around the same table. Only in this way is it possible to identify regional barriers and priorities in a comprehensive and grounded manner, and then collectively define how the bioeconomy can be positioned as a driver of regional innovation and competitiveness. No single actor or sector holds the full picture. It is precisely the combination of technical expertise, social experience, policy knowledge, and community perspective that enables the group to move from diagnosis to a shared strategy.
A concrete and significant outcome of this process has been the identification and validation of the most representative value chains for the region. Among these, the valorisation of the Organic Fraction of Municipal Solid Waste has emerged as a priority for future activities, given its regional relevance, the existing but improvable infrastructure, and its potential to generate both environmental and social benefits, including improved waste management practices, community engagement, and local economic value.
10. Has the MTF helped identify opportunities for better governance, stronger cooperation, or better informed decision-making in your region?
Yes. The MTF has highlighted the need for better coordination between agricultural producers, waste managers, municipalities, and processors along each value chain. It has also brought forward the importance of public engagement and education as a precondition for scaling bioeconomy solutions.
11. Have you seen any signs that the MTF is helping create momentum for more inclusive, socially driven, or locally relevant bio-based solutions?
The Campania MTF reflects a core conviction: that the bioeconomy generates not only environmental and economic benefits, but social ones too. This is visible in the composition and dynamics of the forum itself, where civil society actors are at the forefront of bio-based development, directly engaging local communities and creating value at territorial level. One telling example is the suggestion, raised spontaneously by participants during MTF discussions, to invest in re-skilling workers in bioeconomy sectors. This reflects a socially conscious approach to regional transformation, recognising that the transition must bring people along rather than leave them behind.
12. Is there one example, moment, or exchange that best illustrates the value of your MTF?
The story of Terra Felix is perhaps the clearest illustration. The cooperative cultivates thistle on lands confiscated from organised crime, collaborates with Novamont to produce feedstock for biodegradable bioplastics, and uses the remaining biomass for mushroom cultivation, creating a complete circular loop. This example, which emerged from the MTF network, shows how bioeconomy innovation can simultaneously restore polluted land, generate employment for disadvantaged groups, and produce commercially viable bio-based products. It captures the wider value the MTF is trying to scale.
13. If you had to explain in two or three sentences what difference your MTF is making in your region, what would you say?
The Campania MTF is creating a unique space where bioeconomy expertise meets social innovation, bringing together actors who are transforming environmental liabilities, from confiscated lands to industrial waste streams, into inclusive economic opportunities. It is building the foundations for more coordinated, regionally rooted bioeconomy development, grounded in local knowledge and community engagement. The MTF is helping to reframe the bioeconomy as a tool for social regeneration, not just industrial transformation.