Aug 2026· Journal of Circular Economy· Vol 4· 0 citations· 31 references
Abstract
Despite growing policy interest, global circularity is declining — falling to just 6.9% in 2025. This paper argues that a key reason is the absence of a concrete vision of what a circular economy would look like as a physical place. To provide that vision, the argument traces a line across three bodies of work. Bauwens et al.’s (2020) scenarios of bottom-up sufficiency and peer-to-peer circularity offer the greatest potential for community empowerment. When pursued through a systematic application of circular economy principles to food, water, energy, and housing, these scenarios converge on a settlement model: the Circular Economy Village (CEV). Instantiating bottom-up sufficiency, the CEV is a walkable, mixed-use precinct in which resources circulate locally as a self-reinforcing system — eliminating waste, regenerating nature, and providing food, water, energy, and housing through integrated, community-governed infrastructure. Embodying peer-to-peer circularity, a network of CEVs can scale to constitute a global circular economy consistent with Herman Daly’s steady-state economy and the economy in equilibrium anticipated by the Limits to Growth Report (1972). The paper introduces a three-dimensional model of circularity — temporal, spatial, and relational — and proposes that a circular future can look like a network of Circular Economy Villages.
This paper provides anecdotes and examples on a wide range of topics related to sustainability, circular economy, local governance, and community development in Nepal, and illustrates the disconnect between global concepts like the circular economy and the ground realities of rural Nepal. It discusses the origins of the circular economy concept, its benefits, and the challenges likely to be faced while transitioning from a linear model of production and consumption to one that is cyclical. The role of local governments in adopting new practices like waste management and the potential pitfalls of introducing modern solutions without considering traditional practices and local contexts have been analyzed within the complexities surrounding the circular economy, especially in relation to practicality in implementation in rural areas. Being based on secondary literatures, and the author’s own observation-based reflection, the article also discusses how imported ideas and practices, if not aligned with local traditions and resources, can lead to unintended consequences and challenges. The critique of initiatives that prioritize superficial modernization over addressing core issues like sustainable waste management or preserving traditional farming practices has also been discussed.
U. Pyakurel· Aadim Journal of Multidiscip...· 0 citations
Transitioning toward a circular and regenerative economy requires more than technological innovation; it demands a shift in the underlying systems that shape how value, knowledge, and legitimacy are defined [Meadows D, Randers J, Meadows D, The limits to growth: the 30-year update, Routledge (2012); Raworth K, Doughnut economics: seven ways to think like a 21st-century economist, Chelsea Green Publishing (2017)]. While the circular economy (CE) is widely promoted as a pathway to sustainability, its implementation across industrial sectors remains uneven and frequently limited to efficiency-driven, technical interventions [Voulvoulis N et al., Glob. Environ. Change 75:102544 (2022)]. This paper examines the systemic conditions that constrain the adoption of circular economy principles through a case study of the craft distilling industry in regional Victoria, Australia. Guided by Sposito’s (2021) Rational–Holistic Model of Planning and Decision-Making, the study applies a multimethodological systems approach, integrating thematic analysis, boundary critique, and soft systems tools (PQR and CATWOE). This enables an exploration of how system structures - particularly those relating to motivation, control, knowledge, and legitimacy - shape what is considered feasible and acceptable in practice. The findings reveal that barriers to circular economy implementation are not solely technical or economic but are embedded within broader institutional and cultural frameworks. Regulatory fragmentation, compliance-driven definitions of legitimacy, and economically dominant worldviews constrain the uptake of more regenerative practices. By contrasting existing (“is mode”) and alternative (“ought mode”) system configurations, the study highlights the importance of reconfiguring underlying assumptions about system purpose and governance. The paper contributes methodologically by demonstrating how systems thinking combined with thematic analysis can reveal structural constraints, and conceptually by positioning CE as a pathway dependent on a broader shift toward a sustainability-oriented worldview.
Kristin Lemura, R. Faggian· Systemic Practice and Action...· 0 citations
The just circular economy (JCE) has emerged as a structuring normative horizon in sustainability transitions, but its analytical value remains limited by two structural gaps: the absence of a constitutive definition integrating all justice dimensions identified in the literature, and the absence of a typology capable of distinguishing genuinely integrative configurations from partial or strategic uses of the concept. Drawing on a Weberian ideal-type theorisation approach, this article advances three interrelated contributions. It proposes a constitutive and normative definition of the JCE structured around five interdependent justice dimensions derived from three theoretical pillars: multidimensional environmental justice, intergenerational equity, and circularity justice. Four dimensions, namely distributive, procedural, and recognitive justice alongside intergenerational equity, rest on a consolidated theoretical corpus; the fifth, circularity justice, is formalised as an emerging construct that renders visible the injustices internal to circular value chains that existing tripartite frameworks cannot detect, notably the transfer of costs, risks, or injustices from one actor, one territory, or one generation to another. It further develops a configurational typology of five archetypal JCE forms, specifically the redistributive, procedural, recognitive, sustainable, and integrative forms. It finally formalises circularity justice as a fifth analytical dimension, initiating a research programme centred on the construction of intra-chain justice indicators capable of measuring the just circularity gap within global value chains. Taken together, these contributions provide an operational diagnostic framework enabling the distinction between a substantive JCE and a façade JCE, and open a structured empirical agenda for future research.
From local action to global inspiration: how communities around the world are shaping a circular future through collective, relational, and regenerative entrepreneurial practices. Building on the first edition of Circular Communities (2022), this second edition explores culturally diverse and community-led approaches to circular resource stewardship. These examples demonstrate how communities generate ecological, cultural, social, aesthetic and financial value by collectively closing resource loops.
In their new book, urban designer Els Leclercq, architect Mo Smit and regenerative entrepreneurship expert Fátima Delgado Medina expand on the Circular Value Flower: a value-based, relational model developed to analyse, communicate and design circular practices. This enables a holistic environmental approach by linking communities with the (urban) landscape and wider eco-system through resource stewardship.
Written for communities, spatial designers, policymakers, researchers, and practitioners, this book offers insights and instruments with which to design, collaborate, and act - supporting global circular practices and allowing these to flourish, connect, and grow into valuable networks.
Els M. Leclercq, Mo Smit, Fátima Delgado Medina· 0 citations
The circular economy (CE) is widely viewed as a key global lever for sustainable resource use. However, CE conceptualizations have focused mostly on high resource use in the Global North, largely neglecting the drivers, solutions and enablers of circularity in the socio-economic contexts of the Global South. Here, based on a systematic review of 183 peer-reviewed articles, we assess how CE manifests in the Global South. We find circular solutions to be considerably more bottom-up, centring around community-level and often informal practices rather than the top-down, policy and industrially driven activities that dominate the Global North-informed CE literature. CE motivations similarly differ, being primarily rooted in socio-economic needs and cultural practices rather than environmental concerns. Finally, CE enablers are often based on socially and technically adaptive approaches rather than technological innovation. These differences reveal that inclusive circular pathways for sustainable development depend strongly on context, suggesting the need for more flexible and empirically grounded CE concepts.
Lucas Straub, P. Trotter, E. Onsongo et al.· Nature Sustainability· 1 citation
Drawing on critical geography's recent engagement with negativity, this article intervenes in dominant relational approaches to infrastructure by examining the (im)possibility of redress under mega‐infrastructure development through a case study of the Lamu Port–South Sudan–Ethiopia Transport (LAPSSET) Corridor in coastal Kenya. Based on six months of ethnographic research conducted between 2019 and 2023 with displaced fishermen, civil society activists and state representatives, it traces how demands for redress are articulated, negotiated and continually deferred across legal, bureaucratic and everyday terrains of governance. Focusing on four interlinked configurations—law, representational legibility, compensation governance and everyday precarity—the article shows how redress, as a struggle over recognition, livelihood repair and futurity, is simultaneously pursued yet structurally foreclosed by the scalar, social and political‐institutional conditions reproduced by mega‐infrastructure. It argues that, under conditions of ongoing dispossession, relations generate recognition, claims and forms of accountability that are persistently enacted but rarely resolved, thereby revealing the limits of relational thinking that, even when attentive to disconnection and unevenness, presumes relations are analytically stable and politically generative. The article names this patterned failure a ‘void’: not an absence of politics or relation, but a structural and lived condition in which efforts towards repair persist precisely through their own foreclosure.
Gediminas Lesutis· Transactions (Institute of B...· 0 citations
