The Horasis Global Meeting has become a leading global forum for business leaders and entrepreneurs in a discussion platform where leaders can bridge divides. I was at Horasis meeting on November 18 and 19 in Dubai.
“What did you say about circular economy?” asked a friend of mine.
Here is what I said:
For some initiative to be successful you need to check the leadership around it. Circular economy has a leadership and planning around it.
One important piece of leadership is what the regulatory bodies say about the subject. I am very happy to see that there exits a COMMUNICATION FROM THE COMMISSION TO THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT, THE COUNCIL, THE EUROPEAN ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL COMMITTEE AND THE COMMITTEE OF THE REGIONS in EU called “A new Circular Economy Action Plan, For a cleaner and more competitive Europe”.
In 2023, the Commission revised the circular economy monitoring framework, which was previously adopted in 2018 and updated it in 2023. It is a document worth reading and if relevant adapting.
The link is here:
https://environment.ec.europa.eu/topics/circular-economy_en
In the link there are sector informations like electronics, batteries and vehicles, plastics, textiles, packaging and construction as well as a general policy framework.
Second step is what the leader say? If the leader says “Yes, we can ruin the environment, if we shall make money out of it” then I would suggest that you find another job or another country for yourself.
If the legislation and positive leadership exist, we can have governance that would create money for us. To create money we need to plan properly. Where shall we buy from? What kind of production shall we have? Where shall we sell to? What are the side products? Will there be recyclable products? What is our environmental affect? What would be our social responsibility? And finally where can we create the difference in the marketplace?
So, actually ESG starts with G. When you have money, you can have E & S. Without money, you can hardly have circular economy, climate friendliness, likeable and livable environment and social responsibility.
There are 17 SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals) topics. For example to clean the ocean you need money. The lowest cost SDG is SDG 5 (Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls) which is in short gender equality. You can have gender balance around you, it will be the easiest goal to accomplish.
In G20 that are the largest 20 countries in which about 85 percent of the world GNP is produced, only 75 percent of the climate change is attributable to these G20 countries.
In 2014 in Brisbane Australia G20 countries signed a declaration that read “let’s decrease the gap between men and women in our respective countries labor force participation by 25% until the year 2025”. Only in this way G20 countries will have sustainable development and add an US and China to the world GNP. In short “invite women to the work force”. In between just the opposite happened, and due to Covid 19, female labour force declined.
The W20 was established as an outreach group in 2015 to propose policy solutions to have sustainable growth for the countries. Some of countries picked up these recommendations quite quickly and some other did not due to their internal dynamics.
Now we need to start accomplishing SDG starting first by accomplishing SDG 5 to have sustainable development. Women and girls represent 80% of the victims of climate disasters which is an unjust, disproportionate burden of the impact of the climate crises as they remain socially, politically, and economically underserved.
Within climate and environment sphere women had traditionally been seed keepers, seed layers and yet they have not been at the decision making table at todays world.
By the way every individual needs to plan for their own recycling, reuse, repair and minimize their own waste and act responsibly towards their own respective environment.