Municipal circular economy indicators : Do they measure the cities' environmental ambitions?
Kopp, Mira (University of Jena)
Petit Boix, Anna (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Institut de Ciència i Tecnologia Ambientals)
Leipold, Sina (University of Jena)

Date:	2024
Abstract:	Circular economy (CE) is gaining traction in cities as an approach to reducing local and global environmental impacts. Yet, how effective are these strategies in terms of their environmental impacts? To find out, we took a deep dive into 30 CE policies from cities in high-income countries across Europe, the Americas, and Oceania. We assessed the relevance of their indicator sets with regards to their major environmental concerns. To do so, we conducted a qualitative analysis of policy documents published in eight languages, examining common environmental goals, concerns, and progress indicators of various cities. The review reveals a broad spectrum of municipal CE policies, from waste management to climate action. Key concerns include climate mitigation and securing local resource availability, but overall, very diverse environmental targets could be identified. Some of these targets aim at local impacts such as air quality and public health, while others envision global impacts such as biodiversity conservation and intergenerational justice. While greenhouse gas emissions of territorial scope are frequently monitored, the indicator sets mostly ignore that climate mitigation involves a footprint scope. Moreover, the sets mostly lack indicators to monitor other environmental pressures and impacts. To better monitor these, we provide a set of recommendations for research and policy to bridge the gap between environmental concerns and indicator needs. We suggest complementing current resource flow dominated indicator sets with measures of the local environmental state and the application of urban footprint models to help cities monitor the desired global environmental impact of their measures.
Grants:	Agència de Gestió d'Ajuts Universitaris i de Recerca 2021/SGR-00734 Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación CEX2019-000940-M
Note:	Unidad de excelencia María de Maeztu CEX2019-000940-M
Rights:	Aquest document està subjecte a una llicència d'ús Creative Commons. Es permet la reproducció total o parcial, la distribució, la comunicació pública de l'obra i la creació d'obres derivades, fins i tot amb finalitats comercials, sempre i quan es reconegui l'autoria de l'obra original.
Language:	Anglès
Document:	Article ; recerca ; Versió publicada
Subject:	Circular city ; Environmental impacts ; Policy evaluation ; Urban metabolism ; Waste management ; Climate mitigation
Published in:	Sustainable Production and Consumption, Vol. 50 (October 2024) , p. 431-444, ISSN 2352-5509

DOI: 10.1016/j.spc.2024.08.009

14 p, 2.5 MB

The record appears in these collections:
Research literature > UAB research groups literature > Research Centres and Groups (research output) > Experimental sciences > Institut de Ciència i Tecnologia Ambientals (ICTA) > Sustainability and Environmental Protection (Sostenipra)
Articles > Research articles
Articles > Published articles