Circular Economy from an SDG Perspective: A Multi-Stakeholder Process for Developing Policy Options

Description

The concept of Circular Economy (CE) is viewed to be a promising approach to help reduce global sustainability pressures. The United Nations (UN) ‘2030 Agenda for Sustaina-ble Development’, with its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), explicitly includes CE targets within SDG 12 (‘Responsible Consumption and Pro-duction’). In this regard, we conduct a longitudinal case study about a multi-stakeholder pro-cess for developing CE policies for the Austrian Federal Government from an SDG perspective (the UniNEtZ project). The UniNEtZ project is a unique policy devel-opment process in Austria which actually involves about 400 scientists from 16 universities and 3 research institutions over various disciplines. The aim is to pro-vide the Austrian government by 2021 with a catalogue of integrable and con-sistent policy actions (“Option report”) to reach the 17 SDGs. Our analysis draws on the theory of change (ToC) which refers to defining linear cause-and-effect chains from initiative implementation to societal impact. The qualitative data is obtained from various sources like literature reviews, semi-structured expert interviews, eth-nographic informal interviews with stakeholders, and participatory observation of industry and scientific events or stakeholder workshops. Data collection is done over 3 years, starting from January 2019 until the end of 2021. The findings cover a) a process framework clarifying how different stakeholders from academia, industry, research funding agencies and government collaborate, b) how knowledge is created and transferred within this multi-stakeholder process, and c) what outputs, outcomes, and impacts can be realized at the national level in the context of developing CE policies using an SDG framework.

Period	19 Nov 2020
Event title	Recy & DepoTech 2020
Event type	Conference
Location	AustriaShow on map