Under the Patronage of Mr Emmanuel Macron, President of the French Republic, Reed Expositions France organized the first international event dedicated to resources efficiency and the low carbon economy to help professionals from all sectors, whether private or public, local or international, implementing their ecological transition and thus supporting the commitments made through the Paris Agreement and the Sustainable Development Goals.
Maria Grazia Pedrana (Lombardy Region) and Andrea Crump (LWARB) attended the workshop “Strategies for implementing the Circular Economy at the urban and regional levels” - chaired by Emmanuelle Moesch (Institute of Circular Economy- France) - together with Xavier Lemoine, (Greater Paris), Rebecca Walker (Scottish Environment Protection Agency), Kari Herlevi (SITRA – Finland) Nathalie Cousin (Britany Region).
Local action has proven the most relevant and efficient scale for implementing sustainable projects that respond the best to the very needs of the economic stakeholders and communities. Circular Economy definitely relies first on local dynamics to be the best defined and implemented; contexts, necessarily varied according to local economic, social, environmental, political and leadership conditions, impact the nature of a circular economy strategy being adopted and delivered by a City and the surrounding Region within circular schemes.
The session highlighted the key challenges to circular cities and regions, their levers and pillars (recycling, waste management, reduced resources consumption, waste to energy and renewables options, life-cycles of products and infrastructures, sharing products ways of style and new services based economy, regenerating nature capital …) and the common or specific barriers to overcome, overlaps between strategies and synergies to invigorate at each level for effective circular action.
