Is total circular economy an illusion
Description
"Is total circular economy an illusion?" How realistic is it that circular economy guarantees our security of supply?
The meeting will be introduced by Prof Dirk-Jan Koch and is part of KIVI's theme year. Within this, TME has chosen to focus on the circularity of raw materials in 2017, following its Energy theme year in 2016.
Where energy is delivered every day, raw materials are finite. This introduction will once again put down a challenge to KIVI members to think about future Technical, Social and Economic solutions. Results will be presented at the KIVI Annual Conference in the autumn.
About the content of the lecture:
Both the Dutch and European economies are highly dependent on the import of raw materials. To illustrate: of the 54 critical materials for Europe, 90% are imported. The Netherlands gets 68% of its raw materials from abroad. We import not only from our allies, such as the United States or Canada, but also from countries like China and Russia. Now, with uncertain times ahead, it is wise to make ourselves resilient.
Speaker(s)
Dirk-Jan Koch (1980) serves as the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs' Special Envoy for Natural Resources and is an associate professor of International Trade and Development Cooperation. Dirk-Jan received his PhD (cum laude) from Radboud University in 2009 and focuses on geographical choices of international development NGOs.
He focuses on contributing to socially, economically and environmentally sustainable access, exploitation and use of natural resources. He seeks to push the boundaries of the interlinkages between trade and aid, creating win-win solutions for consumers, communities and businesses.
He argued in the Spectator a year and a half ago that the wrong commodity dependencies should be reduced by intensifying the circular economy. When he expressed this view recently in a debate, a representative of the technology industry argued that that government plan of 100% circular economy by 2050 was a "fairy tale". This got him thinking: how realistic is it that circular economy will guarantee our security of supply?
Location
Prinsessegracht 23, 2514 AP The Hague
Organiser
Technology, Society & Economy
Name and contact details for information
Further information via the e-mail address below: