Avoiding utopian and paralytic narratives about circular economies
Visions for more sustainable futures are often captured by polarised perspectives and narratives. Developing more grounded narratives may help.
Futures thinking, at least the good stuff, is often about navigating competing conflicts, uncertainties, and maybe even “terrors.” An intellectual odyssey, caught before and between futures versions of Scylla & Charybdis - like hype and reluctance or intransigence to change.
Adopting circular economic approaches
A good example is development of “circular economies.” These types of economies are where reuse and recycling dominate, reducing the need for new materials, and minimising waste and pollution. The concept of a circular economy emerged over many decades, with the Ellen MacArthur Foundation being a leading advocate in recent years.
However, according to a group that monitors the circular economy around the world, there has been a decline in recycling and reuse in the past year, which was very low anyway
“… the vast majority of materials entering the economy are virgin, with the share of secondary materials falling from 7.2% to 6.9% as of the latest analysis.” Circle Economy
Extraction of new materials has tripled over the last five decades, and is set to keep increasing, according to data from Circle Economy.
Some cities in the Netherlands and Finland provide good examples of where circular or semi-circular economies are operating already. However, a global review of circularity practices has noted that enthusiasm for the idea is way ahead of actual progress.
Two unhelpful narratives
Jonatan Pinkse discusses why there is such a gap between vision and reality in an article in The Conversation. He identifies three reasons for the struggle to adopt more circular lifestyles – “too much talk, too little support and the hard limits of physics.” Pinkse draws on his and colleagues research, published recently in Organization & Environment, which suggests that two different narratives are constraining development and adoption.
The circular utopia narrative argues that with the right innovation and ambition, organizations can regenerate ecosystems, eliminate pollution, and drive sustainable development—all while maintaining profitability. This sees barriers as easily overcome, underestimating the impediments, effort, and time required to overcome them.
The circular paralysis narrative instead argues that there are simply too many barriers for a full transformation to circular business models. This narrative tends to see many barriers as insurmountable, leading to expectations that circular economy initiatives will underdeliver on their promise in perpetuity.
Developing circular economies requires a shared understanding, which is achieved Pinkse says, through “discourses, symbolic notions, and practical applications.”
He and his colleagues identify three categories of factors (or “Dimensions” in their paper) that act as barriers and can reinforce one or other narrative:
Discursive – the lack of a common meaning for a “circular economy”;
Relational – the need to build novel relations and take an ecosystem perspective; and
Material – relates to technological feasibility &/or affordability for enabling circular processes, as well as institutional constraints. An example of a material barrier is the absence of standardised product information on labels, such as for textiles.
The paper identifies “inflators” for each dimension that feed into the utopian narrative, and “impediments” that drive the paralysis narrative. Examples of inflators include a simplistic understanding of what is needed to create a circular economy, being overly optimistic about collaborations, and focussing too much on recycling rather at the expense of other necessary behaviours and activities.
Examples of impediments are the belief that circularity can become economically viable in the short term, the difficulty in creating new supply chains, and business practices designed for linear not circular economies.
In the paper (which serves as an introduction to several papers on the same theme in the journal issue), Bocken et al. suggest that the material dimension is a particular sticking point for circular economies - there are fewer cases of inflators and impediments being effectively addressed.
They conclude that a more “grounded and realistic” circular economy narrative is needed to break away from the two disabling ones. More work, they suggest, is needed on hybrid models – combining linear and circular practices – to show how a transition could occur more generally. They also see the need for addressing the power and information asymmetries that exist when trying to go from linear to circular pathways.
“The transition to the circular economy demands radical shifts in stakeholder relationships, particularly in ecosystems where power asymmetries and institutional legacies hinder collaboration”
They advocate for “polycentric” forms of governance to resolve differences in perspectives & expectations, and power imbalances between groups of stakeholders. Polycentric governance has been proposed to better support the sustainable use of shared or privately owned resources. It is distinct from self-regulation because it spans multiple industries and stakeholders. Instead of contracts or voluntary agreements, distributed coordination of practices are usually the norm. Patala & colleagues (2022) give examples of polycentric governance.
NZ’s nascent circular economies
New Zealand is a slow adopter of circular economy thinking. Less than 1% if materials in our economy are recycled, although the Ministry of Business, Innovation & Employment notes that several regional circular economy initiatives are emerging. To try and stimulate more circular-style initiatives MBIE is developing a better understanding of the opportunities and challenges for circular economies here. Last year they commissioned a series of reports.
The Barriers, enablers, and approaches report identified a variety of factors impeding development, which they summarised in a set of “systems maps”.
It’s great to see the government thinking more systemically, and there are good analyses in this and the other circular economy reports MBIE commissioned. However, there are limitations and risks too.
Most of the barriers and enablers in the systems maps are general features of the NZ socio-political economy, rather than specific to circular ones. A bit more digging down to distinguish linear from circular models and distinct barriers and enablers for the transition would be helpful.
The Barriers report’s recommendations focus mostly on roles for the government, rather than the wider range of stakeholder mindset shifts and actions that are also needed to create a more grounded narrative. Many of the issues that Bocken & colleagues discuss in their more recent paper are not covered, or only lightly touched on, in the MBIE report. Different governance models, for example, are not considered.
The report categorises system elements rather than synthesises them, as Bocken et al. do. A risk of the system maps is that government, industries, and NGOs may, as usual, take a piecemeal approach to barriers (& enablers), rather than a systemic one. While the need for better collaboration and engagement is highlighted, this has been a common economic refrain for decades with limited success.
I’m not confident that in the current political environment, where “quick economic wins” are prioritised and political focus is on control rather than decentralisation, that we’ll get past the utopian and paralysis circular economy narratives in the short- to medium-term.
Better narratives beyond circular economies
This also seems to be the case for other economic and social issues. Polarisation, where you choose to accept one or other narrative, isn’t helping progress. I see the framework of Bocken et al., or variants of it, as useful for a range of futures issues and topics. It seems like a compliment to aspects of the Three Horizons method– helping people and institutions look beyond hype and resistance to change, by sharing different perspectives and finding solutions that more effectively support enablers and reduce unnecessary impediments so we can navigate through together.