What does the developing world need? Sustained development growth should be the answer. From an environmental and natural resource management perspective, what will that mean? Sustainable use of resources guided by the principles of the circular economy is the answer.
The use of resources is intertwined with the monetary and social impacts to communities. The right approach to utilizing resources in any economic system reflects in the pockets of people in the society and improvements in their social well-being including employment opportunities. Current resource economies in developing countries are characterized by what is described as linear i.e. societies where resource extraction and consumption is the norm. In these systems, what we see is a pattern that reads like; extract resources, make products with these resources, use the products made from these resources and dispose of the products at the end of its use into the receiving environment upon which the society depends. What this system encourages is societies overburdened with nonstop resource extraction leading to possible scarcity which in turn impacts on resource demand deficits, higher prices on resources and may also lead to lower quality of life resulting from not only environmental pollution but also lower employment rates associated with reduction in resource availability due to over exploitation of these finite resources. This scenario presented is representative of what happens in many developing countries including Ghana, Nigeria and Nepal. Examples of linear economies in practice in these countries are noted in the waste management sector where resources like glass, metals, plastics which sometimes come as packaging for other products end up in landfills or incineration plants after use. These material resources that end up in landfills or incineration plants should not classed as “waste”. This is value being lost in the linear economy.
To capture this potential lost value, the circular economy approach applied will chart a new frontier for resource utilization and sustainable development. The circular economy approach involves a shift in mentality and practice whereby societies and industries retain as much value from materials that used to be considered waste. These include used car parts etc. Employing circular economy principles mean recouping the over $4.5 trillion materials previously considered waste in the current linear economy. This means closing the loop of material cycles from the take-make-use- dump model to a model that looks like recover-recycle-repurpose-remanufacture- repair-reuse-reduce and refuse. This model is working in countries such as Japan, China, Germany and the Netherlands, countries considered developed. With the right frameworks in place and support from both government and the society, developing countries and businesses in these countries can take advantage of the beneficial value creation as well as societal equity that come along with charting new futures guided by the principles of circular economy. This is the future and its time developing countries harness it.
