Interconnections between the CircularEconomy and the SustainableDevelopment Goals (SDGs), asystematic study

Sammanfattning: 2015 is a turning point in the common history where the 2030 Agenda has set 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to transform our world into a thriving and sustainable society in which humankind’s well-being is ensured while protecting the planet’s environmental boundaries. The same year, the European Commission adopted its first Circular Economy Action Plan with 54 actions to be implemented with a concise milestone: closing the loop. This inspiring concept of shifting to a Circular Economy (CE) in opposition to a linear economy is now gaining tremendous attention worldwide in the light of the emergency of redesigning our society to accelerate the journey towards a sustainable development. To successfully make this transition, a systemic change is required and it is a necessity to join forces to implement an extensive collaboration needed to align those two far reaching commitments. Thus, this study scrutinizes the interconnections between the CE targets and the SDGs targets using unique pairs of indicator time-series from 2000 to 2019 for 28 member states of the European Union (EU). The Global SDG Indicators Database and the Circular Economy Monitoring Framework of the European Commission were selected to perform this analysis. Firstly the correlations are disentangled into synergies for positive correlations and trade-offs for negative correlations using the Spearman’s rank correlation. Secondly this study aims at going further in the interpretation by examining causality in correlations found through a Transfer Entropy (TE) model measuring the power of coupling strength for two possible causal directions. This means that the directionality is assessed in a correlation by understanding which indicator in a pair is the cause and which is its effect. Hence a synergy could either be due to a positive impact of a CE target on a SDG target or to a SDG target that enhances a CE target. An analogous analysis is performed for a tradeoff. Broadly, the outcomes highlight a stronger causality in the interconnections in the direction CEtowards SDGs and overall the results show more positive interconnections with 22.43% of share than negative ones with 8.62% of share. The highest share of positive impacts of the CE on the SDGs isfound with SDG 7 (Affordable and Clean Energy), SDG 3 (Good Health and Well-Being) and SDG 15(Life on Land) while the highest share of negative impacts of the CE on the SDGs is found with SDG 2(Zero Hunger), SDG 9 (Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure) and SDG 10 (Reduced Inequalities). Additionally, the study identifies various speeds of development between countries in the alignmentof their SDGs progress and CE implementation. United Kingdom, Spain and France gather the best results in term of positive interconnections while Italy, Latvia and Luxembourg appear to have the highest share of negative interconnections. To succeed in both commitments, identified synergiesshould be leveraged and trade-offs efficiently tackled.