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Environmental sciences, sustainable development and circular economy: Alternative concepts for trans-disciplinary research
Open accessAbstract
The intermeshing of disciplines from the natural sciences, social sciences, engineering and management has become essential to addressing today's environmental challenges. Yet, this can be a daunting task because experts from different disciplines may conceptualize the problems in very different ways and use vocabularies that may not be well understood by one another. This paper explores three alternative environmental concepts used in transdisciplinary research, and outlines some of the epistemological and practical problems that each one poses. It pays particular attention to the increasingly popular concept of “circular economy”, and contrasts it with the more commonly-used concepts of “environmental sciences” and “sustainable development”. In clarifying the nature, meaning and inter-relationship of these alternative concepts, the paper helps trans-disciplinary researchers to understand the opportunities and challenges associated with each one.
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Cites
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Cited by
Conceptualizing the circular economy: An analysis of 114 definitions
Kirchherr, J., Reike, D., & Hekkert, M. (2017) · Resources, Conservation and Recycling · doi:10.1016/j.resconrec.2017.09.005 · Cited by 8,550
Waste Mismanagement in Developing Countries: A Review of Global Issues
Ferronato, N., & Torretta, V. (2019) · International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health · doi:10.3390/ijerph16061060 · Cited by 2,293
Circular economy—From review of theories and practices to development of implementation tools
Kalmykova, Y., Sadagopan, M., & Rosado, L. (2018) · Resources, Conservation and Recycling · doi:10.1016/j.resconrec.2017.10.034 · Cited by 1,412
Circular business models: a review
Geissdoerfer, M., Pieroni, M. P. P., Pigosso, D. C. A., & Soufani, K. (2020) · Journal of Cleaner Production · doi:10.1016/j.jclepro.2020.123741 · Cited by 1,089
Measuring circular economy strategies through index methods: A critical analysis
Elia, V., Gnoni, M. G., & Tornese, F. (2017) · Journal of Cleaner Production · doi:10.1016/j.jclepro.2016.10.196 · Cited by 892
Metadata
- Authors
- Sauvé, S., Bernard, S., & Sloan, P.
- Venue
- Environmental Development
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2016-01
- Volume
- 17
- Pages
- 48-56
- ISSN
- 2211-4645 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W1729697543
- Cited by
- 1,166
- References
- 1
- FWCI
- 86.84
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- Licence
- www.elsevier.com/tdm/userlicense/1.0/ (tdm)
- www.elsevier.com/legal/tdmrep-license (tdm)
- creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (vor)
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- Sauvé, S., Bernard, S., & Sloan, P. (2016). Environmental sciences, sustainable development and circular economy: Alternative concepts for trans-disciplinary research. Environmental Development. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envdev.2015.09.002
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.