Circular futures: What Will They Look Like?

Thomas Bauwens*, Marko Hekkert, Julian Kirchherr

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleAcademicpeer-review

184 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

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 × 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 so-called mission-oriented innovation policies. They may also provide a sound basis for quantitatively modelling the impacts of a circular economy.

Original languageEnglish
Article number106703
JournalEcological Economics
Volume175
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Sept 2020
Externally publishedYes

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
This research was funded by the Dutch Research Council NWO (project number: 438.17.904 ). We also thank the participants of the focus group session as well as the Ecological Economics editorial team and three anonymous reviewers for their careful reading of our manuscript and their many insightful comments and suggestions.

Funding Information:
This research was funded by the Dutch Research Council NWO (project number: 438.17.904). We also thank the participants of the focus group session as well as the Ecological Economics editorial team and three anonymous reviewers for their careful reading of our manuscript and their many insightful comments and suggestions. The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 The Authors

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