Becoming a circular economy expert

I come from a developing country, the one that holds 10% of the world’s biodiversity in just a tiny space of land, so it seemed natural for me to become an environmentalist. I studied economics, environment and development. I became a professional conservationist but always from an integral perspective: helping people protect their environment while enhancing their livelihoods. What I did was helping donors in identifying opportunities to help communities improve their livelihoods while protecting natural resources. I began working on this in 2003 when legislation support and willingness were on the rise.

However, things changed around 2010 when the new government instead of thinking about how to use our resources sustainably decided that mining and extraction were the best options for achieving development in a country such as mine. Why did they decide that? Well, I think it was because commodities became as valuable as gold and that meant lots of money for the economy, and money equals development. Very simple.

In the meantime, environmentalists working with communities on biodiversity conservation had to deal with an additional threat to biodiversity besides unsustainable livelihood practices: big companies not only looking for oil but also coal, copper and gold. And because of a tragic “coincidence”, these minerals seem to be buried exactly under the most diverse and fragile ecosystems.

Besides this, the materials being extracted are not the best for the environment either, given its current state. For example, the coal extracted from the Andean mountain range goes to dirty energy production; gold, well, it goes to the teeth of some eccentric singer who thinks it looks good in his mouth or fancy dishes for the richest. Not vital at all if I may add. But the consequences of this extraction are permanent both in social and ecological terms.

What could we do, working with extremely limited resources against billion size companies that can come to these remote places and just offer a couple of thousand dollars and buy the land from people, increasing their income but forcing them into unhealthy urban settlements that seem to be an indicator of development?

In my case, I concluded that not much. If businesses do not understand the importance of the environment, if they keep on just extracting, extracting and dumping and dumping there is not money that can protect ecosystems and communities. At that moment I decided that the economic model needed to really change. A crazy idea, especially in a developing country which is just doing what countries before us did, following the path to development.

But this is just one of the few programs and here I want to list all the options curious environmentalists or aware recent graduates have to deeper understand the challenges, opportunities and requirements a transition to a circular economy entails from an industrial ecology perspective:

This is not an exhaustive list but rather the first collection of programs that are already contributing to this transition. Please add any other programs you think need to be mentioned here.

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