World Circular Economy Forum 2022
Accelerator Session
"A Global Roadmap for an Inclusive Circular Economy"

At the Stockholm+50 conference in June 2022, Chatham House launched a paper that presented the idea of a global roadmap for an inclusive circular economy.

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Based on feedback received by multiple stakeholders from around the world, Chatham House with partners UNIDO, WBCSD, AfDB, ACEN, GIZ, Circular Innovation Lab, EU CE Stakeholder Platform, PACE, World Economic Forum, IGES and Circular Electronics Partnership, have decided to move from concept to collective action and proceed with the Global Circular Economy Roadmap Initiative.

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The rationale and objectives behind the global initiative include:

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• Many governments have, or are, preparing national circular economy roadmaps. Yet, on the international and multilateral level, there is no process or mechanism of sufficient scale to facilitate integrated coordination and policy alignment.

• A global process could support policy exchanges and sharing of lessons learned on the national level and unlock the pathway to a global inclusive circular economy. Furthermore, it could identify options for a multilateral process to develop over time.

• Currently, there is no collective common vision for an inclusive global circular economy transition. Different countries and organizations have put forward soloed and varying visions of what the circular economy entails from their contexts.

• The first step of a global roadmap process is to develop a shared vision on the the inclusive element of circularity that can feed into other multilateral processes.

• To increase the level of ambition for the circular economy and adequately address the triple planetary crisis, a global roadmap process can enable ambitious actors to come forward and lead the way, identify areas for collective actions and propose solutions that need to be advanced at the international level.

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As part of the World Circular Economy Forum 2022 Accelerator Sessions in Kigali, Rwanda, Apoorva Arya, founder and CEO of Circular Innovation Lab, spoke at the session which presented the Global Circular Economy Roadmap Initiative, provided updates and a plan of activities for 2023 and beyond, and enabled a group discussion to explore options for the roadmap process.

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The World Circular Economy Forum 2022 brought together forward-looking thinkers and doers and presented the game-changers in the circular economy for the first time in Kigali, Rwanda, in Africa.