Documents Genovese, Andrea 2 results

"Indicator-based methods have long been used as assessment tools in relation to measuring and purportedly enabling sustainable transitions. Common limitations of indicator approaches are well documented in the literature, and include both technical issues related to data availability and the handling of complexity, and epistemological challenges such as the nature of trade-offs and risks associated with reductionism. Nevertheless, such methods remain popular due to their ability to convey complex information related to timely issues in a synthesised way to policy- and decision-makers. In light of this, and the burgeoning literature on indicators for a Circular Economy (CE), we aim to reflect on the extent to which such methods are suitable for engendering a transformative social and ecological transition to a just CE. To do so, we examine the broad literature on the limitations of indicator methods by considering an archetypal three step process of selection, framing, and implementation. As critical CE scholars keen to repoliticise CE by embedding principles of justice, we ask to what extent indicator methods serve our transformative purposes, and whether our stance towards such methods should be to do things better or different? Our answer to this is: both. Yet we emphasise the need to reconceive ‘better' as moving beyond fixes to technical problems to address more fundamental epistemological challenges and rethink the purpose of an indicator approach as not a technical tool, but a politicised artefact for shaping alternative narratives."

"The transition to a circular economy is often presented as a straightforward, neutral and apolitical process, characterised by an implicit techno-optimistic and eco-modernist stance. However, in their recent paper on ‘circular futures', Bauwens et al. (2020) illustrate that the circular economy is best understood as an umbrella term that might come to define very contrasting visions of sustainable development. Despite this, there continues to be a lack of discussion about the basic assumptions regarding social and economic structures on which the circular economy should be based, with research predominantly focusing on technical and practical questions. Therefore, in this conceptual paper, we assess the a priori compatibility of different plausible configurations of the circular economy with the principal theories of value found in mainstream and heterodox economics. We argue that these futures are themselves value articulating institutions that implicitly adhere to a theory of value even if this is not recognised. Moreover, given that theories of value go to the heart of how economies and societies function and reproduce themselves, we argue that circular economy research should recognise the importance of value and acknowledge how value theory might enable or contradict the visions of sustainable development articulated."