Co-producing a Vision and Approach for the Transition towards a Circular Economy: Perspectives from Government Partners

Since the mid-20th century, people have changed ecosystems at a speed and scale incomparable to any other developments during the existence of the human species. Ecosystem change is primarily driven by the increasing demand... [ view full abstract ]

Since the mid-20^th century, people have changed ecosystems at a speed and scale incomparable to any other developments during the existence of the human species. Ecosystem change is primarily driven by the increasing demand for food, water, timber, fibre and fuel i.e. growing resource use. On top of that, the supporting infrastructure for these resource flows and the discharge of waste and pollutants drives further environmental changes. While the growing resource economy has generally increased welfare over time, important negative impacts have emerged which could impede the long-term well-being of people as well as the resilience of the biophysical environment. Moreover, we are increasingly faced with growing resource scarcity. Hence we argue that a transition towards a circular economy that contributes to a resilient environment and human well-being is necessary. Such radical transition in our society will require changes from a wide array of actors, such as government, industry and the general public. We argue that academia has a moral obligation to play an active role in facilitating the transition process. The Resource Recovery from Waste programme (RRfW) developed an extensive engagement strategy based on principles of participatory governance, a form of collaborative governance. With the participation process, RRfW aims to create a shared vision and approach to realise more sustainable waste and resource management in the UK. Through engagement of key actors in the co-production of research focus, methods, results and dissemination of outcomes, we strive to create a sense of ownership and commitment to use research results, in support of tangible changes in management of wastes and resources as well as contributing to a mentality change. In our presentation we will focus on the engagement of government partners. We present our approach to identify and engage key actors, share the co-produced results on key themes for sustainable waste and resource management as well as policy and regulatory approaches, and reflect on our experiences in the facilitation of social learning between academia and government in the transition towards a sustainable and increasingly circular economy.

Keywords: Waste and Resource Management, Collaborative governance, Participation processes, Co-creation, Social learning.