Consultative Meeting on Strengthening Regional Cooperation for Accelerating the Transition towards a Circular Economy in the Arab Region was held online on 7 August 2024. It was attended by 89 participants, including representatives of governments, academic institutions, regional and international organizations, civil society organizations and representatives of the private sector.
Key messages and recommendations that resulted from the meeting include:
- Develop a comprehensive political vision and regulatory framework that includes measures to support the transition to a circular economy at both national and regional levels, such as updating laws, enacting implementing regulations, establishing mandatory directives, and providing economic incentives. Examples include regulations that support the implementation of mechanisms such as Deposit Recovery Systems, Extended Producer Responsibility, and Sustainable Public Procurement policies.
- Establish the institutional framework for transitioning to a circular economy, including clearly defining and distributing responsibilities among stakeholders and ensuring effective coordination among them and various sectors.
- Identify priority sectors for the transition that are cost-effective, offer clear benefits, and where circularity can be implemented relatively easily, such as waste management, to achieve quick and tangible results that can be later applied to other sectors.
- Build on existing national and regional efforts, initiatives and projects to accelerate the transition to a circular economy.
- Identify synergies between current green economy strategies and circular economy strategies.
- Develop and adopt clear indicators to measure progress in transitioning to a circular economy based on global standards, ensuring sustainable progress.
- Raise community awareness about the economic efficiency of transitioning to a circular economy and the positive return on investment associated with circular practices.
- Partner with civil society to raise awareness and change unsustainable consumption behaviors, with a particular focus on youth to ensure lasting changes in consumption culture.
- Create the demand for circular economy by helping consumers identify and choose circular products by implementing certification systems and eco-labels.
- Enhance businesses' capabilities to integrate circular processes into their investments.
- Raise awareness within the production sector about the importance of sustainability reporting and its preparation, thereby supporting the transition towards a circular economy.
- Enhance private sector involvement, including national and regional companies and innovative startups in the transition to a circular economy.
- Incorporate circular economy principles into educational curricula at all levels, starting from early education.
- Adopt a bottom-up approach to advancing a circular economy, tailored to the needs of each sector and national and regional contexts.
- Enhance the capacity of local authorities to implement circular economy principles, enabling a gradual expansion of their application.
- Start by determining the cost of transitioning at the level of small and medium projects to assess national-level costs.
- Gather accurate and reliable data from producers.
- Develop frameworks or models illustrating how industrial integration and symbiosis can be achieved among national, regional, and global companies.
- Establish a comprehensive regional Arab market for waste recycling and improve the quality of recyclable materials to enhance their efficiency and value and ensure that recycled materials do not cause additional harm to the environment by conducting research and safety assessments before their widespread use.
- Invest in research to advance new technologies and materials that promote circular practices, ensuring that the research is directly connected to practical applications.
- Prepare reports on the financial benefits of transitioning to a circular economy for both private and public sectors.
- Promote Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) to identify and measure the environmental impacts of a product, process, or service throughout its entire lifecycle, and work to mitigate these impacts, for advancing circular economy.
- Strengthen international cooperation and engage with global platforms (e.g., World Circular Economy Forum) to exchange expertise with countries both within and outside the region and to benefit from best practices and experiences in the field of circular economy.
- Work on transferring and localizing technology related to the circular economy.
- Develop a regional circular economy network to strengthen Arab partnerships and promote the exchange of knowledge on best practices.
Baghdad, Iraq
