Leveraging Circular-Economy Strategies to Enhance Sustainability and Climate Resilience for Decarbonization Pathways

Abstract

Climate change and increasing pressure on natural resources highlight the limitations of the predominantly linear economic model of production and consumption, and the need for more integrated sustainable approaches. Circular economy (CE) strategies offer a potential alternative, contributing to reduction of emissions and resource conservation, while increasing the resilience of systems to climate shocks. This review examines the relationship between CE, emission reduction, resource efficiency, and climate resilience. A bibliometric analysis was first conducted for the initial subset of reviewed articles obtained from the Web of Science (WoS), following particularly predesigned criteria for inclusion and exclusion, to establish the main conceptual and thematic structures in the literature. Across the 72 studies included in the final review, sectors such as construction, energy, and waste management emerged as prominent application fields, with strategies like reuse, recycling, industrial symbiosis, and product as a service among frequently investigated strategies. The contribution of CE to climate resilience in the current review remains limited. Resilience, however, is often harder to measure and less well-documented. To address this gap, an integrated framework is proposed that brings together indicators of emissions reduction, resource saving, and climate resilience, allowing potential synergies and trade-offs among these dimensions. The findings further highlight the need to move from isolated assessment towards a more systematic interconnected assessment.