Circular Economy: A Multifaceted Concept and Its Scientific Promise Across the Global North and South

The circular economy has emerged as a central paradigm for addressing the environmental pressures associated with contemporary patterns of production and consumption. Yet, its meaning and transformative potential cannot be fully understood without accounting for the profound asymmetries in resource use, environmental impacts, technological capacities, and development needs between the Global North and the Global South. This contribution examines circular economy as a component of a broader global material transition and asks how circularity can simultaneously contribute to reducing planetary pressures and enabling human development within Earth-system boundaries.
Global material use has increased dramatically over recent decades, while resource extraction and processing account for a substantial share of global greenhouse gas emissions and other environmental pressures. These dynamics demonstrate that the transition to sustainability cannot be reduced to an energy transition alone: it also requires a fundamental transformation of the material basis of economies. However, resource use and environmental impacts remain highly unequal. Whereas high-income economies face the imperative of reducing absolute levels of material consumption and associated environmental pressures, many countries in the Global South continue to face essential development needs related to housing, mobility, energy, food, healthcare, infrastructure, and livelihoods. Circular economy strategies must therefore address two interdependent challenges: reducing resource extraction and environmental impacts while enabling equitable socio-economic development.
Against this background, the contribution argues that circularity cannot be conceived as a universally transferable technological model. Circular economy pathways are inherently context-dependent, shaped by territorial characteristics, existing material stocks, infrastructures, industrial structures, resource endowments, technological capabilities, and development trajectories. This has important implications for international scientific cooperation. Conventional North–South models based primarily on the transfer of technologies, knowledge, and expertise are insufficient to address the complexity of circular transitions. Instead, circular economy research calls for approaches based on co-creation, contextual knowledge, transdisciplinarity, and reciprocal learning, in which research priorities emerge from locally grounded needs as well as global sustainability objectives.
Building on these arguments, the contribution proposes five priorities for an international research agenda: determining science-based boundaries for sufficient material use; assessing whether circular strategies generate absolute reductions in environmental pressures; investigating how circularity can support development and human well-being in the Global South; identifying and mitigating rebound effects; and strengthening global scientific cooperation through shared data, modelling frameworks, open research infrastructures, and North–South innovation networks.
The contribution ultimately proposes a shift from a predominantly efficiency-oriented understanding of circular economy towards a more systemic perspective centred on material sufficiency, planetary boundaries, human development, and contextualised pathways of transformation. Such a perspective is essential if circular economy is to become not merely a strategy for improving resource efficiency, but a meaningful scientific and policy framework for advancing the Sustainable Development Goals across diverse development contexts.