DELIVERING THE CIRCULAR ECONOMY A TOOLKIT FOR POLICYMAKERS

DELIVERING THE CIRCULAR ECONOMY – A TOOLKIT FOR POLICYMAKERS • 87
• Policy analysis
• Circular economy
• Environmental and resource issues
• Country-specific understanding of policy and circularity context
There might be other reasons for policymakers to limit analytical effort or organise it
differently at one or more stages of the process, such as a lack of relevant data, time
and/or resource constraints, lack of political buy-in to the idea of the circular economy,
or different, previously established policy analysis methods. At each stage of the
methodology it is possible to limit the analytical effort to match available expertise and
local constraints:
• Step 1: Align on starting point, ambition and focus
o
o
A simplified baselining exercise could eliminate quantitative
benchmarking of resource efficiency and/or circularity metrics. It could
also limit the policy surveying effort – especially where very few policies
are known or suspected to be in place.
Sector selection could be achieved without quantitative economic
analysis, instead taking the country’s priority sectors, regardless of their
resource and/or GDP impact – it being unlikely that the GDP impact
of a priority sector would be negligible. A review of the circularity
potential might focus on a qualitative assessment and forgo quantitative
analysis of the resource material and energy intensity, volume of waste
generated, and share of waste landfilled/incinerated.
• Step 2: Assess sector opportunities
o
o
Mapping and prioritising circular economy opportunities in each sector
could be simplified by referring to existing inventories and reports (such
as this report or the reports mentioned in Table 1 in Part 1) to get a quick
overview of relevant possibilities.
One of the biggest analytical tasks, assessing the various impacts of the
selected levers, could be reduced by relying more on standard impact
assessment figures taken from other studies (again such as this one
or other studies mentioned in Table 1 in Part 1). At least a minimum of
localisation is necessary, i.e. to consider whether the inventoried levers
would be similarly attractive and feasible in the country under study.
Local factors to take into account when considering the inventoried
levers include different starting points (e.g. organics recovery may be
an important part of an otherwise underdeveloped waste management
system), different industry structures and different access to (export)
markets.
• Step 3: Analyse economy-wide implications
o
o
Instead of quantifying national economy-wide impact through
macroeconomic computational general equilibrium modelling,
policymakers could choose to use partial equilibrium sector-level
modelling and/or rely on existing studies assessing the national
economy-wide impact.
Policymakers could decide to rely on informal assessments of policy
impact, cost and political feasibility, such as stakeholder consulting
methods – or use assessment methods more commonly deployed in
their territory.