Journal
ECOLOGICAL ECONOMICS
Volume 175, Issue -, Pages -Publisher
ELSEVIER
DOI: 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2020.106703
Keywords
Foresight; Sustainability transitions; Scenario planning; Circular business models; Environmental governance; Circular innovations
Funding
- Dutch Research Council NWO [438.17.904]
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The circular economy is argued to hold great promise for achieving sustainability. Yet, there is a dearth of research about what a circular future may look like. To address this gap, this paper proposes different plausible scenarios for a circular future, using a 2 x 2 scenario matrix method developed through a thought experiment and a focus group. Key drivers of change in this matrix are the nature of technologies deployed - high-tech or low-tech innovations - and the configuration of the governance regime - centralized or decentralized. From this, our paper builds four scenario narratives for the future of a circular economy: planned circularity, bottom-up sufficiency, circular modernism, and peer-to-peer circularity. It delineates the core characteristics and the upsides and downsides of each scenario. It shows that a circular economy can be organized in very contrasting ways. By generating insights about alternative circular futures, these scenarios may provide a clearer directionality to policy-makers and businesses, helping them both anticipate and understand the consequences of a paradigm shift towards a circular economy and shape policies and strategies, especially in the context of socalled mission-oriented innovation policies. They may also provide a sound basis for quantitatively modelling the impacts of a circular economy.
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