Better or different? A reflection on the suitability of indicator methods for a just transition to a circular economy

Abstract

Indicator-based methods have long been used as assessment tools in relation to measuring and purportedly enabling sustainable transitions. Common limitations of indicator approaches are well documented in the literature, and include both technical issues related to data availability and the handling of complexity, and epistemological challenges such as the nature of trade-offs and risks associated with reductionism. Nevertheless, such methods remain popular due to their ability to convey complex information related to timely issues in a synthesised way to policy- and decision-makers. In light of this, and the burgeoning literature on indicators for a Circular Economy (CE), we aim to reflect on the extent to which such methods are suitable for engendering a transformative social and ecological transition to a just CE. To do so, we examine the broad literature on the limitations of indicator methods by considering an archetypal three step process of selection, framing, and implementation. As critical CE scholars keen to repoliticise CE by embedding principles of justice, we ask to what extent indicator methods serve our transformative purposes, and whether our stance towards such methods should be to do things better or different? Our answer to this is: both. Yet we emphasise the need to reconceive ‘better’ as moving beyond fixes to technical problems to address more fundamental epistemological challenges and rethink the purpose of an indicator approach as not a technical tool, but a politicised artefact for shaping alternative narratives.