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Environmental sciences, sustainable development and circular economy: Alternative concepts for trans-disciplinary research

Open access
Sauvé, Sébastien, Bernard, Sophie, Sloan, Pamela·2016·Environmental Development

Abstract

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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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

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CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Environmental sciences, sustainable development and circular economy: Alternative concepts for trans-disciplinary research. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1016/j.envdev.2015.09.002
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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

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Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).

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