Thriving Livelihoods and Sustainable Ecosystems in Lower Income Countries
Circular Economy: Thriving Livelihoods and Sustainable Ecosystems in Lower Income Countries
Objectives
The short-term objectives of this project are to identify economic activities in Bangladesh that generate substantial harm to the environment and to community health, and to work collaboratively with in-country colleagues and Stanford faculty and students to identify alternative, scalable and sustainable economies that generate employment and income.
The long-term objectives of this project are to prototype and pilot the approaches that are most promising in their ability to move selected economic activities towards sustainability. Ultimately, the project aims to expand successful models for economic activities to other countries.
Rationale
Why we care about this
Traditional linear economic activities extract raw materials and create products that are used and then disposed of, alongside with waste byproducts. The extraction process degrades the natural environment, and product manufacturing and disposal is highly inefficient and polluting, leading to humans and environmental health harms. Over time, our degraded ecosystems will no longer support livelihood activities that allow human beings to survive and thrive. In contrast, circular economies focus on designing out waste and pollution by using wastes as inputs, and on regenerating natural systems.
Why we see the knowledge we are generating as strategic
Increasing climatic stress, burgeoning populations and the depletion of our natural resources are pushing the resiliency of our ecosystems to their limits. Economies and people, like those in Bangladesh, depend on the extraction and use of natural resources for the generation of daily livelihoods, but when we surpass the ability of these ecosystems to recover, we also undermine our own resiliency as human beings, and security of our future. This research strikes a balance between the necessity of income generation and the human and environmental health of the present, with that of the future.
Project Dates (Initial)
2020 - 2021
Stage of Work
Stage on Stairway of Research - Stage 2: Explicate the causal pathways that generate the problem
What has been accomplished so far within the project
We are investigating the top 10 polluting industries in bangladesh to determine the viability of circularizing economies around these industries. We're still in this phase.
What are we focusing on now
Alongside our partners in Bangladesh, we are identifying the top polluting, yet economically important industries in the country and examining opportunities to implement circular economic interventions. At present, we are focusing on the top two export industries in the country, the textile sector and shrimp aquaculture, as well as two emerging sectors, plastics and e-waste.
People
Primary Contact: Clara Rose Bonaventura
Stanford University
. Stephen Luby, Professor, PI
. Kathy Burke, Senior Associate Dean for Global Health
. Clara Rose Bonaventura, PhD Student
Funding