Time is one of the constitutive dimensions in life and basic for societal relations to nature. From a social-ecological perspective this work focuses on the complex, contextualized and thus manifold temporalities of human, society and nature. Against the background of existing contributions in the field of time research it names and concretizes social-ecological understandings of time, basing on the concept of “timescapes“ by Barbara Adam. Thus it features an alternative to an understanding of time as clock-time, which is criticized by Adam. Particularly in the field of biotechnology the disjuncture between society and nature becomes blurred. Therefore I take a closer look on this area which requires political decisions and strategies: In how far are social and ecological times considered in the German National
Research Strategy BioEconomy 2030? Which understandings of times are reflected in this document of the current innovation policy in Germany? This paper shows that an understanding of time as clock-time dominates recent political strategies and policies, even though in some concrete statements hints of social-ecological understandings of time become
evident.