WEF PACE organises an International Workshop on Targets for a Circular Economy in the Hague
In the preparation for The Annual World Economic Forum meeting in January 2020, PBL Netherlands together with Utrecht University, and in consultation with PACE; the Platform for Accelerating the Circular Economy have organised a workshop on targets for a circular economy.
Ladeja Godina Košir who represented both Circular Change and ECESP joined a host of participants, including Stientje van Veldhoven, Minister for the Environment and Housing of the Netherlands and representatives of OECD, EU Commission, Circle Economy, WRI, KPMG, WBCSD, EEA, Phillips, Ellen MacArthur Foundation and others.
The challenge of the workshop was to learn from discussion that already took place in the EU and its Members States on how to formulate a national policy targets and lead indicators for resource use or resource productivity that directly contributes to reducing environmental impacts and increasing security of supply.
Ladeja emphasized that that while we can already measure material flows quite well, social indicators should be included too. Mindset shift, new narrative, better use of available data and radical collaboration on global level is what can lead to achieving credible targets and indicators for reaching SDGs.
TAKEAWAYS
The main take away messages from the workshop, attended by 30+ leading actors in CE targets and indicators from public, private and civil society in Europe (source: PACE, PBL Netherlands, 2020):
The group agrees that CE metrics need cooperation of different sectors (public, private, civil society), as well as different countries and continents. The cooperation is necessary to ensure that CE transition answers to common global goals such as the SDGs. Coherence between countries is crucial to multi-national companies because of their global value chains.
CE is not the end goal by itself, but a crucial means to address societal challenges such as climate change and biodiversity. We need a portfolio of indicators to measure CE, including both indicators which measure progress towards circularity and indicators which measure environmental and socio-economic impacts of the transition. (see graphic below)
A lot of work on indicators is already ongoing, for example by the European Commission, OECD, WBCSD, EMF and Circle Economy. It was noted that current focus still weighs largely on material flows and recycling (so called “waste+”). There are clear gaps in indicators to measure the “inner circular loops” (e.g. repair and refurbish), to cover the consumption footprints, and to evaluate the socio-economic impacts.
It is proposed to set up a cooperating structure to explore where we can align or harmonize. PACE invites the leaders from public, private and civil society to engage and support the creation of a structured cooperation. Key anchor events in 2020 include European Environmental Agency’s meeting on public CE indicators (May, Bellagio), WCEF (September, Toronto), UN Biodiversity Conference (October, Kunming) and COP26 (November, Glasgow).
