Antecedents and Origins of The Circular Economy Research Area in The History of Economic Thought

Abstract

As the circular economy is gaining momentum in the UN Decade of Action for Sustainable Development, recent years have witnessed a growing interest in the history of environmental economic thought. Although the iterative development of the circular economy concepts and schools of thought, including “spaceship economics”, industrial ecology, performance economy, Cradle to Cradle philosophy, and biomimicry, dates back only to the 1970s, today’s circular framework is the product of many centuries of economic theory. While most of the research on the topic has been sporadic and fragmented, the present study takes a holistic approach to provide a comprehensive chronological survey. Based on retrospective analysis, the paper reviews the key relevant economic ideas from the 16th century onwards that contributed to the theoretical understanding of the circular economy. It sheds light on the legacy of the classical tradition, particularly the physiocratic school and the Malthusianism, and the neoclassical theory, including the establishment of environmental economics as a separate subdiscipline and the evolution of ecological economics, among other things, which shaped an integrated circular economy approach in a postparadigmatic period. The research findings suggest that the emergence of modern environmental and natural resource economics in the 1960s–70s as well as the rise of green growth thinking in a diversified policy discourse after the 2008– 2009 Great Recession facilitated the development of the circular economy field and led to the promotion of the circular economy within the global sustainability context since the 2010s. Highlighting the antecedents and origins of the circular economy research area, along with the rationale behind the adoption of a restorative and regenerative economic system, these results incorporate the circular framework into the body of existing knowledge and help to capture the essence of the circular economy.