Circular Economy and Resource Productivity: Systems and Governance for Sustainable Development

The global transition toward a Circular Economy (CE) is no longer optional but essential for achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) at scale. CE’s core thrusts—intensifying use, prolonging product life, maximizing post use revalorisation through reverse loops, and fostering material innovation and responsible sourcing—directly address the systemic drivers of resource depletion, waste generation, and environmental degradation that undermine SDG 12 (Responsible Consumption & Production), SDG 13 (Climate Action), SDG 6 (Clean Water & Sanitation) and and related goals articulated in the UN Secretary-General’s Guiding Principles on Critical Energy Transition Minerals, which call for material efficiency, circularity, and value-chain responsibility as foundations of the energy transition. By embedding CE principles across different scales and levels from material flow, activity based, value creation and business model layers, and aligning them with macroeconomic policy levers, societies can unlock unprecedented resource productivity gains, enable value addition across material life cycles, including reuse, remanufacturing, servitization, and secondary resource markets, decouple economic growth from environmental impact, and create resilient, low carbon economies. While Circular Economy methods are increasingly well understood and supported by growing proofs of concept, the pace and scale of implementation remain insufficient to keep pace with accelerating pressures across environmental, social, policy, and economic systems. This Research Topic responds to a growing demand from governments, industries, and international institutions for system-level frameworks that translate Circular Economy concepts into implementable, measurable, and investable pathways across policy, investment, and project life cycles.To support this transition at scale, this Research Topic positions the United Nations Resource Management System (UNRMS) as an integrating framework that connects circular-economy principles to decision-making across policy, investment, and project life cycles. UNRMS, building on the United Nations Framework Classification for Resources (UNFC), is increasingly adopted and applied across Europe, Africa, Asia-Pacific and other regions as a system-level approach to sustainable resource stewardship, value creation, and intergenerational responsibility. Within this collection, UNRMS provides a common language to link material flows, governance, innovation, and societal outcomes.We encourage manuscripts that combine case studies, examples and applications of UNRMS, modelling Circular Economy approaches to support decision making at systems level, policy analysis, and innovation science to advance the field’s understanding of how Circular Economy transformations can support achieving SDGs at scale.We welcome articles addressing, but not limited to, the following themes:• Circular Economy driven resource productivity gains• UNRMS as pivotal framework for effective circular resource stewardship• UNFC as a resource accounting and classification framework enabling transparent measurement, comparability, and governance of circular resource flows• Policy analysis to fast-track scaling and implementation of Circular Economy practices at different scales• Role of technology, digitalisation, and innovation (including data platforms, modelling tools, and AI-enabled decision support) in scaling circular resource productivity• Case studies promoting feasibility and evidencing scale of productivity gains• Applications towards the most resource intensive value chains• Applications towards optimisation of critical resources in the global (renewable) energy, energy storage, and decarbonisation value chains• Interdisciplinary methods bringing together science, engineering, management, societal engagements and policy formulation• Review articles on policy levers and Circular Economy resource productivityThis Research Topic aims to support policymakers, industry leaders, and international organisations by advancing evidence on what is implementable, scalable, and measurable in circular resource productivity transformations, with a focus on accelerating real-world impact rather than conceptual proliferation. Topic editors: Markus Zils, Dario Liguti, Harikrishnan Tulsidas Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/77251/circular-economy-and-resource-productivity-systems-and-governance-for-sustainable-development