Analysis of the relations between circular economy and sustainable development goals

ABSTRACT

Since the United Nations approved the eight Millennium Development Goals in 2000 and, 15 years later, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the highest political institutions in the world have not stopped worrying about achieving the sustainability of the planet. Also in 2015, the European Commission prepared the European Union Action Plan for the Circular Economy, seeking a transition towards a less linear economy, in which products, materials, and resources are kept in the system for as long as possible and in which the generation of waste is minimized.

Since then, the European Union has continued issuing reports and communications to accelerate this process in search of a circular economy, making continuous references to the fact that, through circular economy initiatives, the SDGs would be fulfilled. In this context, the objectives of this paper are 1) to determine, through exploratory factor analysis and correlation analysis, whether there is a statistically significant relationship between circular economy initiatives undertaken in the EU and compliance with the SDGs; 2) to check, through a cluster analysis, if there are homogeneous groups of countries worldwide in terms of compliance with the SDGs; and 3) using this same technique, to check whether the countries that make up the EU achieve similar results in terms of compliance with the SDGs.     

From Management to Mediation: Local Forestry Management and the Forestry Crisis in Post-Socialist Russia

The local branches of the Russian Forestry Service, the leskhozy, were known for their efficiency and management skills in the Soviet era and were one of the very few community-based Soviet-type institutions to survive the transition. This article examines the role of the leskhozy in the new market economy. Our analysis is based on data from interviews with informants attached to the forestry sector in the Murmansk area. In some cases their knowledge of the leskhozy stretches back to the emergence of the system in 1947. Our principal finding is that the struggle to survive as a federal body in the current legal and economic climate is forcing the leskhozy to relegate sustainable forestry management, presumably their primary raison dêtre, to the lower portions of their list of priorities. Several consequences result. There is a heightened incidence of illegal logging, and corruption informs the allocation of forest areas to private interests. Stumpage prices have plummeted as timber from subsidized commercial cutting (ostensibly sanitary cutting or thinning) has flooded the markets. The root cause of these tribulations lies with the market-based harvesting permit system. Its introduction in the 1990s did little to eliminate the self-seeking practices of the old Soviet forestry management hierarchies. In the free market, local forestry managers can turn their dual responsibilities to their own advantage inasmuch as they control the allocation of harvesting permits while at the same time controlling logging practices.     

“A Kiss Here and a Kiss There”: Conflict and Collaboration in Environmental Partnerships

Multistakeholder collaboration in the environmental realm has been increasing steadily over the past decade. This trend is responding to several stimuli, including dissatisfaction with current regulatory regimes, a liberal economic climate emphasizing global competitiveness and short-term returns, and the growing roles of the business and nongovernmental organization sectors in the environmental policy arena. This paper grows out of ethnographic research conducted between 1994 and 1998 with four environmental partnerships in Europe and the United States. The research found all of these partnerships to be marked by practices of conflict minimization and diffusion. Drawing upon illustrative data from one of these case studies, a European Union level initiative aimed at enabling sustainable development in Europe, the paper asks why this was the case, especially given the diverse political and economic interests at stake and the history of contentious relations between the sectors in other venues. Employing a theoretical perspective highlighting the sociohistoric factors involved in these processes, the paper suggests that this proclivity toward nonconfrontational behavior stems in part from two sources: a prominent cultural model that conceptualizes the partnership process as fundamentally nonconflictual in nature, and the promotion of the discourse of ecological modernization over other competing discourses. The paper explores some of the implications of this finding and concludes that environmental partnerships characterized by such nonconfrontational practices risk inadvertently encouraging the delegitimization of conflictual approaches to environmental action and engendering a retreat from radical thinking and innovative environmental solutions.     

Environmental assessment in countries in transition: evolution in a changing context

Over the last fifteen years, Environmental Assessment systems of transitional societies of Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia have undergone dramatic change from appraisals integrated into centrally planned economies to formal procedures aimed to ensure interdisciplinary analysis of environmental impacts and linked to publicly accountable decision-making. In most Central European nations, EA systems have been radically reformed to approximate the procedures used in developed countries, particularly in the European Union. In contrast, EA in most of the former Soviet republics has been reformed more gradually and is still based on the so-called State Environmental Review procedure inherited from the USSR and substantially different from 'Western' EA. About one-third of the transitional countries (in the Balkans, the Caucasus and Central Asia) have, so far, failed to establish functioning EA systems. Throughout the region, there has been a gap between EA legislation and practice, especially concerning interdisciplinary analysis of environmental impacts, public participation, and utilisation of EA findings in decision-making. A key driving force in the reform of EA systems has been the change in their societal context, the so-called 'process of transition'. Three main policy agendas--environmental protection, reforms of decision-making, and conforming to international requirements--along with the institutional context of EA regulations and practice have influenced both the change of EA systems over time and the regional variations in the patterns of their evolution. This study suggests that an effective reform of an EA system should be context-sensitive, or be 'in gear' with the political and economic transition. Future EA research should consider their changing societal contexts and focused on practical effects of applying EA procedures.     

The Bhopal gas tragedy—A perspective

We, the then Mayor and Chief of Police of Bhopal, were the two people on whom the responsibility of handling the world's worst industrial disaster fell unceremoniously on the cold night of December 2–3, 1984 when 41 tons of MIC gas was released from the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal. With the company initially in denial mode about the release and then calling it a ‘tear-gas’ type and providing no information on antidote, and with the limited means of evacuation, handling of medical emergency affecting hundreds of thousand, identification and disposal of the thousands of dead, it was probably the most challenging task faced by a duo in peace time. The local people, the medical community, the railway staff, the NGOs, were all very helpful. We narrate the happening and the handling of the consequences and the spot decisions that had to be made with the hope that no such accident happens anywhere.     

Environmental policy expansion in the EU: the intriguing case of bioinvasion regulation

ABSTRACT

While bioinvasion was an issue of low political salience in Europe, a new regulation addressing it was adopted in 2014 with strong support. This article analyzes the making of the regulation as an intriguing case of policy expansion amid economic crisis. Based on theoretical literature on drivers of EU policy integration and policy dismantling, alternative plausible explanations are explored. Our main finding is that development of economic policy consensus among member states on trade-environment nexus was crucial for progress towards regulatory action. Policy consensus has been driven by a confluence of three domestic factors: trade liberalization, market disintegration, and changing ideas about the desirability of EU-level law, with the European Commission as policy entrepreneur. Low political salience has also had an important effect. It has increased the influence of transnational conservation alliances, which have played a significant catalytic role in building consensus by shifting consciousness to economic reward of policy action vs inaction, and bringing international models for legislative reform to the EU jurisdiction.     

Strategic Environmental Assessment of the Effects of European Union's Regional Development Plans in Doñana National Park (Spain)

The European Union's Structural Funds are implemented by means of Regional Development Plans (RDP), whose regionally scoped environmental assessment is required. We highlight the deficiencies faced by this approach when subregional areas with high conservation natural values are involved and illustrate it with the case of the RDP of Andalusia region on Doñana National Park area (Spain). Commissioned by the World Wildlife Fund, a Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) of the Andalusian RDP was carried out focusing on Doñana and its area of influence. This is a complex space where some of the most environmentally valuable features in the continent coexist with a surrounding intense and multi-sector economic activity, threatening its conservation. In the absence of an established sustainability framework in the Region, a “trickle-down” SEA approach evidenced the need to produce a set of environmental, economic and social guidelines for sustainable management of land, against which the RDP objectives were tested for coherence. An “incremental” SEA approach was also tested, which involved the identification of 79 measures and actions stemming from the RDP provisions and other concurrent planning documents reviewed and the qualitative assessment of their individual and cumulative potential impacts on Doñana environments. In the light of the results, a set of complementary mitigating measures was proposed for inclusion in tiered stages of the planning process. Measures to avoid, reduce, remedy and monitor the major types of impact were proposed, including provisions for public participation. SEA emerges as an instrument for non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to carry out independent assessment of public development initiatives.     

Land take and food security: assessment of land take on the agricultural production in Europe

Soil is a multifunctional, non-renewable natural resource for Europe as clearly expressed in the European Union (EU) Thematic Strategy for Soil Protection (COM (2006)231). Soil carries out multiple functions, including the support of food production. Urban development and its associated land take poses a major threat to soil and could have significant effects on agricultural production. This paper aims to evaluate the potential productivity losses in European agriculture due to land-take processes between 1990 and 2006. Agricultural land take was calculated using CORINE Land Cover maps of 1990, 2000 and 2006. For 21 of the 27 EU member states, agricultural land take was computed to be 752,973 ha for 1990–2000 and 436,095 ha for 2000–2006, representing 70.8% and 53.5%, respectively, of the total EU land take for these periods. The impact of this land take on the production capabilities of the agricultural sector for the period 1990–2006 for 19 of the 21 states was estimated to be equivalent to a loss of more than six million tonnes of wheat. The paper demonstrates that Europe's intense urbanisation has a direct impact on its capability to produce food.     

Discourses on sustainable forest management and effects of Natura 2000: a case study of Catalonia,NE Spain

This study analyzed discourses influencing the meaning of Sustainable Forest Management in Catalonia (Spain) and the effects of the European Natura 2000 policy on these discourses. It focused on the Montseny area and on the Administration and Practitioner stakeholder groups. Based on literature review and interviews, we found six discourses influencing the meanings of Sustainable Forest Management. Two of these discourses underwent changes due to the effects of Natura 2000 implementation while the others did not, showing the substantial role played by local elements and actors in shaping the discursive framework of Sustainable Forest Management. Based on empirical findings, the study provided conclusions valid at European level: (1) implementing Natura 2000 does not mean revolutionizing local nature conservation systems, but rather adapting them to European requirements; (2) in order to increase local policy impact, the implementation of European environmental policies needs to be backed up by economic compensation of local actors.