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From closed to open systems
Summary
This review examines the contradiction between Circular Economy principles — which implicitly pursue constant economic growth via cleaner technologies — and the ecological reality that all living systems, including organisations, are open systems dependent on planetary boundaries, arguing that integrating ecological values into strategic decision-making is necessary to address biocapacity decline and biodiversity loss.
Decline in biocapacity, deforestation, climate change and biodiversity loss shows the dependencies of humans, and businesses in their license to operate, on ecosystems. All living organisms, organisations of humans included, are open systems. This is contradictory to the main principles of Circular Economy (CE). The CE concept is implicitly aimed foremost at pursuing the path of constant economic growth and the use of cleaner technologies. This fits with the current way of strategic decision-making in organisations, which is dominantly based on economic values. However, considering planetary boundaries (Steffen et al., 2015), integration of ecological values in strategic decision-making is urgent (Jacobs et al, 2016), especially regarding biodiversity decline since biodiversity is a key indicator of the healthiness of our living environment. Adopting a holistic way of thinking in decision-making requires a reflective mind and creating a shift in the values systems that underlie decision-making. The question is what is needed to make the (collective) mind more resilient or open to change and create an economic system that is able to match ecological principles.
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