Arnold Tukker is since 1 October 2013 the Professor of Industrial Ecology and Scientific director of the Institute of Environmental Sciences (CML, 130 staff) at Leiden University for 70% of his time. He retains a 30% position as senior researcher at TNO, a large Dutch not for profit research organisation. Arnold set up prominent EU projects in the field of sustainable product design (SusProNet) and sustainable consumption and production (SCORE!) and was core member of the 10 Million Euro Dutch Knowledge Network on Sustainable System Innovations. He co-ordinated a string of major programs of some 15 million Euro with some 20 key European research institutes in the field of resource-efficiency, a.o. constructing the world’s most ambitious and detailed global energy/resource/economic input-output databases and models (EXIOBASE). He further set up with 6 partner universities an EU Marie Curie Innovative Training Network of 15 PhDs researching the circular economy (Circ€uit). Despite working until fall 2013 outside academia, he authored 6 books, over 100 refereed papers and 7 special issues on sustainability research (h-value 43 / 12000 citations in Google scholar; h-value 27/4700 citations in Scopus). He has been engaged with work of the UN on the Green Economy Initiative, the Resources Panel, the Ten Year Framework of Programs on Sustainable Consumption and Production, and Sustainable Development Goals.
Abstract title: Making sense of the circular economy
The concept of a circular economy is popular these days. Yet, we see usually that such new concepts after an excitement phase go through a corroboration and validation phase which determines if it is something that lasts, or appears to be just another hype. Arnold Tukker will present his view on the big picture of a circular economy, indicate what priorities are most relevant, some difficult ‘inconvenient truths’ that need to be taken into account in circular economy implementation, and what transitions are required to make a circular economy a reality. Such insights can help to shape a policy agenda that really works.
