Abstract To reduce greenhouse gas emissions and mitigate climate change, decision-makers around the world look for alternatives to fossil resources. Among these alternatives is biomass, such as wood pulp, macroalgae, and grasses. Although refined biomass can replace oil, plastics, and petrochemicals within many industries, increased use of biomass may cause land-use changes, biodiversity loss, and disruption of ecosystems. On our path towards a fossil-free society, we must therefore combine intensified biomass production with conservation of critical natural resources. As these resources are often abundant in rural and coastal regions, the resource strategies of these regions are important for the environmental sustainability of this transition. Constructing a game of resource exploitation and conservation in rural regions, this paper models various scenarios for sustainable development and identifies the conditions under which these scenarios are most likely to occur. Based on a game theoretic analysis, three hypotheses are formulated on the costs and benefits that motivate rural regions to manage their biomass resources sustainably. These hypotheses shed light on dynamics that much of the existing literature seems to overlook. Thus, this paper holds novel insights that may contribute to theory development on environmentally sustainable resource exploitation at the regional level.
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