If our society continues in its current patterns of production and consumption, we will soon face a twin environmental crisis of resource scarcity and waste overload. Positioning waste and resource management in the context of ecosystem stewardship, we relate our increasing demand for resources and production of wastes to the crossing of planetary boundaries and failure to meet human rights. We argue that a transition towards a circular economy that contributes to a resilient environment and human well-being is necessary.
While the urgency of a transition towards more sustainable waste and resource management is well-recognised throughout society, progress has been limited and requires strongly increased engagement from actors throughout society. We argue that academia has a moral obligation to play a more active role in facilitating engagement.
We will present the engagement strategy developed and applied by the Resource Recovery from Waste programme (RRfW), running from 2014 until 2018. RRfW is an environmental research partnership with more than 170 academic, governmental and industry members, developing knowledge and tools to reduce pressure on natural resources and create value from wastes. The overriding purpose of RRfW is to support a mentality change in waste and resource management, moving away from end-of-pipe approaches and one-sided thinking about wastes from an economic and/or technological perspective and, instead, towards whole-system thinking about resources throughout their life-cycles including extraction, the cascading of products, materials and components through our economy, and eventually the associated impacts of resource recovery from wastes.
According to the principles of participation process management, the envisioned mentality change and, importantly, uptake of knowledge and tools to make tangible progress in the transition towards sustainable waste and resource management, requires high levels of engagement of key actors in a social learning process. Hence RRfW initiated a participatory approach to facilitate learning through the mutual engagement of academics and government- and industry partners. We present RRfW’s approach to identifying key actors active in waste and resource management, applying social network- and stakeholder analyses, and strategies to increase participation, from informing up to consulting and co-producing our research focus, methods, results and dissemination activities. In this way we strive to create a sense of ownership in our government and industry partners; supporting the uptake of research results, a legacy of continued dissemination of RRfW outcomes after programme completion, and ultimately the much needed change in mentality regarding, and management of, wastes and resources for a sustainable future.
Keywords: Waste and resource management; Planetary boundaries; Human rights; Participation processes; Social learning
1c Role of academia (advocacy and education in sustainable development science)
