Careers in Sustainability Excellence

Implementing the EU vision of a Green Economy will cause rapid changes to the forest-based and bio-energy sectors. Growing bioenergy demands change land use and cause intensified resource utilisation in agriculture and forestry. Sustainable development targets in production and consumption of biomass and wood products have stimulated wider adoption of sustainability assessment methods in policy and company practices. The forest-based and bioenergy sectors have prominent roles to play in developing a sustainable knowledge based bio-economy due to their foundation on renewable resource use and their substantial climate change mitigation potential. The Careers in Sustainability Excellence (CASTLE) project will combine research and training on a suit of methods used for sustainability assessments in the forest-based and bioenergy sectors in Europe. The project will develop state-of-the art methods that can be applied to current sustainability challenges in the industry and regional policy making. The sustainability experts working in the sectors in the future need to be knowledgeable about direct sustainability impacts of operations (e.g. GHG-emissions, carbon footprint, and the resulting product footprints). But as new products may also induce indirect-land use changes especially in other world regions, the experts need to have a broad understanding of global market and land use effects. As communicators towards the customers, the future experts also need to transparently report on social corporate responsibility of companies. CASTLE will elaborate an overall training schedule on sustainability assessment methods to train the early stage researchers in a broad range of methods and skills that will offer them excellent competences for their future careers in the industry, consultancy business or policy making. 14 individual research studies will in addition develop specific methods and practices in more detail, mostly in cooperation with private sector actors.