Sergio Sastre Sanz | ENT environment & managment
Circular economy (CE) indicators are at the core of CE research and practice. CE indicators have conceptual value as far as they delimitate the matters and issues concerning “what is circular economy” itself. Furthermore, CE indicators are the tool to help design and monitor the implementation of CE policies.
Besides the implicit values and accompanying worldview behind the term CE (Giampietro and Funtowicz, 2020), creating indicators in this framework just continue a long tradition on measuring the biophysical dimension of the economy (Helander et al., 2019; De Pascale et al., 2021). It is not a coincidence that most of the core indicators of the CE come from material flows accounts.
In this sense, the elaboration of CE indicators should build upon past fruitful discussions about integrated environmental-economic indicators and their interpretation, aggregation, etc. It is generally agreed that phenomena at the interface of ecological and economic systems are complex in nature. And that complex system should be analytically approached from a multiscale perspective (Moraga et al., 2019).Therefore, CE indicators should be addressed at different scales.
At the EU scale, the monitoring framework on the circular economy[1] has evolved from its creation in 2015 and first display in 2018 and it now seems consolidated. It consists of 5 thematic sections with a total of 22 statistical operations/indicators, some of which have additional sub-indicators.
The EU monitoring framework includes data at the national scale for some of the indicators, and Member States themselves have implemented their own monitoring frameworks, including the EU indicators adapting them when necessary and expanding them where relevant. Some examples can be found in Spain[2], France[3], and the Netherlands[4].
However, when it comes to the regional level there is a gap regarding indicators on circular economy (Avdiushchenko and Zajaç, 2019; Bianchi, Cordella and Menger, 2023). This fact is striking since several core competences regarding CE matters rely on the regional level.
This gap makes sense. The core of CE indicators (e.g. domestic material consumption, consumption footprint, material footprint, resource productivity) come from material flow accounts and these accounts are barely developed at the regional level (Sastre, 2021).
Recently some EU regions have overcome these barriers and have developed CE monitoring frameworks supported by regional material flow accounts. The case of Spain demonstrated that it is possible to build up harmonized regional material flow accounts (Carpintero et al., 2015; Sastre, Carpintero and Lomas, 2017). Nowadays, these accounts are available for the 17 Spanish regions although the time series are now old (1996-2010). Departing from this research, at least three regional official statics offices have incorporated material flow accounts into their regular statistical operations. This is the case for Catalonia[5], the Basque Country[6] and Balearic Islands[7]. Of these, both Catalonia[8] and the Basque Country[9] have developed CE indicator frameworks including material flow account indicators to monitor their regional CE policies.
Other countries have also shown interest in improving their biophysical accounts to support CE monitoring and policy design. For example, Italy[10] or the region of Flanders already have their regional material flow accounts[11] for the monitoring of the CE. And it is also happening beyond the EU, as it is the case for Scotland (Pratt, Lenaghan and Mitchard, 2016), or China (Wang et al., 2019).
Regional material flow accounts and regional CE indicators are key to the implementation of successful EU-wide CE strategies. Similar to the efforts carried out around 2000, an attempt to harmonize regional material flow accounts in the EU would contribute to a sounder base for decision making. By calculating and publishing these accounts and including them in their regional CE monitoring frameworks, some EU regions have already anticipated its usefulness and feasibility.
References
Avdiushchenko, A. and Zajaç, P. (2019) ‘Circular economy indicators as a supporting tool for european regional development policies’, Sustainability (Switzerland), 11(11), pp. 1–22. Available at: https://doi.org/10.3390/su11113025.
Bianchi, M., Cordella, M. and Menger, P. (2023) ‘Regional monitoring frameworks for the circular economy: implications from a territorial perspective’, European Planning Studies, 31(1), pp. 36–54. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/09654313.2022.2057185.
Carpintero, Ó. et al. (2015) El Metabolismo Económico Regional Español. Edited by O. Carpintero. Madrid: FUHEM.
Giampietro, M. and Funtowicz, S.O. (2020) ‘From elite folk science to the policy legend of the circular economy’, Environmental Science and Policy, 109(April), pp. 64–72. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsci.2020.04.012.
Helander, H. et al. (2019) ‘How to monitor environmental pressures of a circular economy: An assessment of indicators’, Journal of Industrial Ecology, 23(5), pp. 1278–1291. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1111/jiec.12924.
Moraga, G. et al. (2019) ‘Circular economy indicators: What do they measure?’, Resources, Conservation and Recycling, 146(January), pp. 452–461. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.resconrec.2019.03.045.
De Pascale, A. et al. (2021) ‘A systematic review for measuring circular economy: The 61 indicators’, Journal of Cleaner Production, 281. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2020.124942.
Pratt, K., Lenaghan, M. and Mitchard, E.T.A. (2016) ‘Material flows accounting for Scotland shows the merits of a circular economy and the folly of territorial carbon reporting’, Carbon Balance and Management, 11(1), pp. 1–15. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1186/s13021-016-0063-8.
Sastre, S. (2021) Resources extraction, trade and waste management: a regional approach to the Spanish socioeconomic metabolism. Phd Thesis. Institut de Ciència i Tecnologia Ambeintals. Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.
Sastre, S., Carpintero, O. and Lomas, P.L. (2017) ‘Material Flow Accounting and environmental pressures: exploring the role of trade at the regional level in Spain’, In progress [Preprint].
Wang, H. et al. (2019) ‘Regional material flow accounts for China: Examining China’s natural resource use at the provincial and national level’, Journal of Industrial Ecology, 23(6), pp. 1425–1438.
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[1] https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/circular-economy
[2] https://www.ine.es/infografias/medioambiente/economia_circular.htm
[3] https://www.statistiques.developpement-durable.gouv.fr/media/4636/download?inline
[4] https://www.pbl.nl/uploads/default/downloads/2021-pbl-icer2021_english_summary-4228_0.pdf
[5] https://www.idescat.cat/pub/?id=cfm&lang=en
[6] https://en.eustat.eus/estadisticas/tema_286/opt_1/temas.html
[7] https://ibestat.es/estadistica/economia/cuentas-economicas/cuenta-de-flujos-de-materiales/
[8] https://mediambient.gencat.cat/web/.content/home/ambits_dactuacio/empresa_i_produccio_sostenible/economia_verda/Obs-economia/bruixola_EC/on_estem/Catalunya-Circular-Informe-de-seguiment-240411.pdf
[9] https://www.ihobe.eus/economia-circular
[10] http://dati.istat.it/Index.aspx?QueryId=55761&lang=en
[11] https://circulareconomy.europa.eu/platform/en/measuring-circular-economy/macro-economic-material-flow-indicators-flanders-2002-2018