Theoretical Definition:
Bioeconomics is the discipline originating from the synthesis of biology and economics. It is an attempt to bridge, through the concept of holism and interdisciplinary methodology, the empirical culture of biology and the literary culture of economics and thus finish with what C.P. Snow has called " the two cultures.”
Bioeconomics is a paradigmatic shift in the development of the economy-environment disciplines such as natural resource economics, environmental economics and ecological economics.
The paradigm shift is really an endeavour to make the invisible visible: in the case of bioeconomics the aim is to make visible all the weaknesses of the socioeconomic activity based on the neoclassical theory and the competitive capitalist ideology.
Practical Definition:
Bioeconomics is the science determining the socioeconomic activity threshold for which a biological system can be effectively and efficiently utilised without destroying the conditions for its regeneration and therefore its sustainability. In other words Bioeconomics advocates an integrated system: example:
Shrimps live in mangroves and eat algae. Also, grow there flowering plants of various types whose flowers are the source of nourishment for honey bees : destroying the mangroves is equivalent to destroying a bioeconomic system, that is destroying an integrated system.
Also Bioeconomics is in favour of creating communities of producers, agriculturist and cooperatives that could participate in integrated activities of production and distribution.
The bioeconomic activity has as its model the economic activity of nature; that is nature’s economy and promotes imitating and mimicking the biological processes that function to perfection in nature. In reality bioeconomic examples abound in nature; such biological processes as evolution, coevolution and cooperation; natural selection, conservation; regeneration and recycling and many others are all bioeconomic;
that is, although they might have originally developed only as biological but through time they have attained economic purpose and importance too .
In short, Bioeconomics is not institutional economics based on conformity, rules and regulations forming the essence of the market . Bioeconomics is about change and innovation based on revolutionary ideas in a dynamic and globalised world: New Institutional Economics. In other words Bioeconomics in addition to being the science of supply, demand and prices is also the science of accounting for the biological, economic, social, environmental and ethical realities of resource depletion, wealth inequality, social inequity, environmental contamination and ethical misconduct.