On the afternoon of 17 June 2017, a complex of wildfires swept through the municipalities surrounding Pedrógão Grande in central Portugal. Sixty-six people died. Over 45,000 hectares of land were destroyed. It remains the worst wildfire disaster in Portugal’s history and a defining moment for how the country thinks about forest management, fuel loads, and the rural landscapes that surround its communities. When Prabalta Rijal began her PhD at the University of Aveiro Department of Economics, Management, Industrial Engineering and Tourism in 2022, the legacy of that disaster shaped the questions she set out to answer.
Rijal’s research sits at the intersection of industrial management, supply chain economics, and rural development. Her work focuses on a deceptively simple proposition: that the organic material left over from farming and forestry operations, currently treated as waste with little to no monetary value, can be transformed into a feedstock for a circular bioeconomy — while simultaneously reducing the fuel loads that make wildfires so devastating. Originally a journalist, she has brought that instinct for real-world impact into academic research, consistently asking not just what the science shows, but what it means for the people who manage Europe’s forests and farmland.
From Waste to Wildfire Defence
The fire problem is immense. The Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that wildfires scorch 340 to 370 million hectares annually, with extreme events projected to increase by 50% by 2100 if current fuel loads remain. Meanwhile, the U.S. alone leaves roughly 93 million dry tonnes of logging residues on forest floors each year — material that often becomes flammable tinder after commercial harvesting.
Rijal’s April 2025 systematic literature review, published in Agroforestry Systems — a Q1-ranked international journal — provides one of the most comprehensive analyses to date of the forces shaping this sector. Covering studies from 2000 to 2024 and drawing on 35 peer-reviewed documents, the review identifies 21 distinct drivers and 22 barriers to residual agroforestry biomass valorization, categorized through two theoretical frameworks: Institutional Theory and Autopoiesis Theory.
The findings paint a nuanced picture. On the driver side, favorable government policies and the availability of financial support mechanisms emerged as the most frequently cited catalysts, appearing across the majority of the reviewed studies. Environmental motivations — including reduced dependence on fossil fuels and the potential for carbon emission reduction — also ranked highly, alongside the potential for rural economic development and job creation. Technological drivers, such as advances in pyrolysis and gasification, featured as enablers of more efficient conversion of residues into value-added products.
On the barrier side, high production costs dominated the findings, cited in 29 of the 35 studies reviewed. Unavailability of appropriate technology, complex legislative frameworks, limited stakeholder knowledge, and unreliable feedstock supply also featured prominently. The review makes clear that overcoming these barriers requires coordinated action across policy, finance, and community engagement — not technological fixes alone.
Mapping a Circular Supply Chain
Understanding barriers in theory is one thing; seeing them in practice is another. In a 2023 study published in the International Journal of Industrial Engineering and Management, Rijal explores her findings from two exploratory case studies of Portuguese logging companies to map the full material, financial, and informational flows of the residual forestry biomass supply chain.
The results were revealing. Both companies showed similar patterns in how biomass moved from forest owners through to energy producers, but diverged sharply on economics. The smaller operation, working within a single municipality, kept transport costs manageable. The larger firm, sourcing from suppliers scattered across the country, faced significantly higher logistics expenses — highlighting a structural vulnerability that undermines the economic viability of valorization at scale.
Perhaps more striking was what the study revealed about power dynamics. Forest owners and farmers, often lacking knowledge of the market value of their wood residues, were found to have minimal bargaining power when negotiating with logging companies. With no reference pricing mechanism in the market, private companies could effectively set their own terms — a situation Rijal identifies as economically harmful and a significant obstacle to sustainable valorization. Addressing it, she argues, requires not just better logistics, but new institutional structures that protect the interests of rural landowners.
Towards Sustainable Business Models
Running through all of Rijal’s research is a consistent concern: that the economic benefits of biomass valorization must reach the people who actually manage the land. A 2023 Springer book chapter, proposing a conceptual framework for agroforestry residual biomass sustainable business models, identified the key factors that determine whether valorization efforts succeed or fail for rural stakeholders. The framework highlights that converting low-value residues into high-value feedstock — for industries ranging from bioenergy to bioplastics, construction materials, and health and wellness products — requires not just technology, but the right institutional conditions and business structures to make it viable.
Her most recent work, published in 2025, takes this further with a cross-case analysis of cooperative business models drawn from 13 international case studies. The research finds that cooperatives rarely adopt full vertical integration of their supply chains, relying instead on horizontal and partial vertical integration to build efficiency. Factors including diversification, strategic partnerships, and alignment with sustainability goals were found to be critical to the financial viability and resilience of these models. The study offers practical guidance for policymakers and industry leaders on how to structure the transition to a biobased economy in ways that are both durable and community-centred.
Policy Windows and Global Relevance
Rijal’s work comes at a pivotal moment. The European Union’s revised Renewable Energy Directive now targets 42.5% renewable energy by 2030, and Brussels is developing sourcing guidelines that favour cascade uses of biomass — prioritising material applications over simple energy combustion. Residual branches and harvest off-cuts are well positioned within this framework, already excluded from the primary timber market and therefore available for valorization without competing with existing commercial uses.
The raw supply potential is substantial. A 2022 Joint Research Centre brief estimated the EU’s technically sustainable supply of agricultural residues at 104 million tonnes annually, without even accounting for forestry off-cuts. Yet only around 8% of European agroforestry residues are currently used to create high-value feedstock. Closing that gap is precisely what Rijal’s research is designed to enable.
She is nonetheless cautious about overstating what any single intervention can achieve. Her work consistently emphasizes that biomass valorization is not a silver bullet. It requires coordinated action across policy, logistics, finance, and community engagement to deliver lasting change. “You can’t reverse 30 years of land neglect through biomass harvesting alone — we need mosaic landscapes, grazing, and firebreaks too,” she notes. Yet she remains clear about the moral stakes: “When unmanaged residues fuel megafires that cost lives and carbon, using them becomes more than an industrial option. It’s a social responsibility.”
Developing Practical Business Models
Rijal’s next phase focuses on translating research into practice. She is developing business models tailored to the unique challenges faced by farmers and landowners in countries like Portugal — designed to make biomass valorization economically viable for those on the ground.
As climate models project hotter, drier summers across Iberia, the urgency is unmistakable. “Residual biomass is either fuel or capital,” she concludes. “Our job as researchers is to make the capital path easier — and impossible to ignore.”
