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Circle Economy and ICLEI have partnered up to initiate the go to knowledge hub of case studies about the circular economy in cities. The Cities Collection is a repository of case studies that demonstrate the role of cities in the circular transition, and includes policies, business cases and research articles. Cases in the Collection flow into an ecosystem of digital products which support users in transitioning cities to circularity, for example [Ganbatte](https://ganbatte.world/cities/) and <a href="https://circulars.iclei.org/" target="_blank">ICLEI Circulars</a>, both part of the <a href="https://circulars.iclei.org/circle-lab-for-cities/" target = _blank">Circle Lab for Cities Programme.</a>




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Circular Cities

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Circular food systems entail that the food is produced regeneratively and, where appropriate, locally. Food and packaging waste are designed out entirely, while healthy, low-impact diets are promoted and easy to access. 

[Circle Economy](https://www.circle-economy.com/) is a not-for-profit organisation working to accelerate the circular transition. Through the *Circularity Gap Reporting Initiative*, our mission is to deliver an annual global Circularity Metric that measures the state of the world economy and identifies key levers to transition to global circularity. With nature as our guide, we work alongside cross-sector stakeholders from academia, businesses, NGOs and governments to provide a powerful combination of practical and scalable interventions that transform circular opportunities into realities. 

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Circular Food

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Limes and lemons - Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

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Starter Kit collection

Policy case

Impact on the availability of resources as well as their effect on living organisms, ecosystems, and components of the environment.

Ecological Impact

Impacts on the social fabric of the community and well-being of the individuals and families.

Social Impact

Impacts on the financial condition of a company, as well as the the economicconditions of its stakeholders and on economic systems at local, national, andglobal levels.

Economic Impact

Impact on the quantity or quality of jobs, and shifts in the labour market

Jobs

Direct and indirect effects that increase revenues or the potential for new revenues, for example from new products, customer segments, partnerships or business models

Revenue Potential

Reduced green house gas emissions released into the biosphere

Reduce Emissions (SDG13)

Producing agricultural products and processing them into food and beverageproducts for consumption

Agri/Food

Producing and gathering crop and animal products from land and water through farming, hunting, and fishing

Agriculture

Processing and producing food and beverages for consumption

Food and Beverage

Work together throughout the supply chain, internally within organisations and with the public sector and communities to increase transparency and create joint value

Team up to create joint value

Engage and guide customers and consumers to ensure circular use of products

Customer / consumer collaboration

Working together with customers to jointly create products fit for them

Co-creation

'Inform' increases the overall levels of awareness and builds the necessary skills and knowledge around the circular economy to foster long-term change.

Inform

'Manage' influences the use and function of physical and material elements within the urban environment. 

Manage

Infrastructure

Develop infrastructure to support sustainable lifestyles

Visions and Ambitions

Roadmaps and strategies and targets

Govern the Transition

Cross-departmental collaboration and engagement

Awareness raising events

Redesign systems to lay the foundation for circular activities and enable the transition to a circular economy 

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Rethink

Do better with less by using and supporting infrastructure, processes and products that are designed to minimize material, water and energy use and waste generation from production to end of use


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Reduce

Facilitate cross-collaboration by engaging city departments, industries and businesses on ambitious, closed-loop circular projects.

Support closed-loop systems and cross-sectoral synergies

High-level changes to policy and practice (such as taxation systems, investment and procurement guidelines and criteria) that disincentivize activities that perpetuate linear economic systems, as well as vision-setting (goals, roadmaps) to catalyze
action on circularity across the city

Eliminate linear incentives and set goals and incentives for circularity

Increase efficiency and promote local economic growth by shortening supply chains and connecting local producers to consumers.


Support local low-impact circular economies

As cities have expanded, they have conventionally pushed space for agricultural activities to the peripheries and surrounding rural areas, and have become reliant on globalised supply chains. Cities can nevertheless have a home for organic urban and peri-urban agriculture. 

Organic urban and peri-urban agriculture refers to production of food that happens either in or near the city. It includes organic farming at any scale, and can also refer to small holders, various forms of private urban farming initiatives, and community initiatives (vegetable gardens). Organic urban and peri-urban agriculture can support food security in the city, boost biodiversity, as well as stimulate local economies and community participation.

A local government may stimulate and enable organic urban and peri-urban agriculture by making spaces in and near the city available for markets, growing spaces and waste processing through spatial planning. Communities may be engaged through the use of making information and tooling available, alongside making spaces in neighbourhoods available and accessible to different people through spatial planning. Local governments can support local food services businesses in sourcing and obtaining locally grown organic crops. 


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🍏  Organic urban and peri-urban agriculture

The food system nourishes populations and employs 50% of the global workforce, but:
- it currently drives a quarter of the overshoot on the climate change planetary boundary due to its greenhouse gas (GHG) production, 
- animal farming alone uses over one-quarter of all land, equivalent to the size of the Americas,
- nearly a quarter of freshwater resources are lost due to rampant food waste, and
- it is the single largest driver of biodiversity loss.

A circular food system must address the whole value chain, from production to consumption to waste management. The four key solutions for the food system are:
- Put healthier, satiating foods first: Prioritise satiating and healthy foods with a lower environmental impact—ideally shifting calories from meat, fish, and dairy towards cereals, fruits, vegetables, and nuts.
- Go local, seasonal, and organic: Prioritise the production and consumption of local, seasonal, and organic produce (sometimes in combination with GMO to reduce pests and disease loss on crops), which can lead to a significantly reduced need for chemical inputs, fuels, and processing services that contribute to environmental impacts.
- Mainstream regenerative agriculture: Scale up agricultural practices that regenerate ecosystems, recirculate nutrients and sequester carbon by design. 
- End avoidable food waste: Minimise food loss and valorise waste following the food waste hierarchy along the supply chain and at the consumer level through better management of transport and storage, more refrigeration and smart planning, and technology at the consumer and food service levels.



🍏 Food Systems

Communities

Governments

Much of the world’s croplands are situated within peri-urban areas, yet this food is often not consumed in its neighbouring urban area, rather it is exported and consumed vast distances away. By strengthening links with food producers in surrounding peri-urban and urban areas, to create city-region food systems, cities can influence the way food is produced and how resources are managed. For example, reconnecting cities with their local food production can create local economies, encourage local seasonal diets, denser local transport networks, and even support regenerative techniques that support native crop varieties. This in conjunction with trade supports a more distributed system that relies on a diverse range of suppliers, and can cycle nutrients from food wastes back to the surrounding ecosystem. 

To foster city-region food systems, local governments can engage and convene stakeholders along the local food chain, from farmers, to logistics companies, to jointly envision the path to a local circular food system. This can be facilitated through the creation of platforms to connect local stakeholders. The City can also stimulate the use of regionally and regeneratively produced foods through, for example, rewarding best practices, and raising public awareness through campaigns. 


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🍏  Strengthen urban-rural links within the food system

Current dominant, globalized food systems trigger far-reaching detrimental socioeconomic and environmental effects. As such, they struggle to meet the food demands of a growing population and face external shocks, such as resource scarcity, climate change and health crises such as the Covid-19 pandemic. 

Local governments are directly or indirectly connected to all stages of the food value chain. For this reason, it is importanto for them to leverage this strategic position and develop an initial and collective vision, setting out transformational targets, monitoring and evaluation frameworks, and key action areas and solutions urgently required to transform food systems—from food consumption and production to waste prevention and management.

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🍏  Targets and roadmaps for a circular food system

Impacts

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Industries

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A framework of policy instruments that enabled and encourage the transition to the circular economy

Policy Instruments

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A framework of policy instruments that enable and stimulate the transition to the circular economy

The principles of a circular economy concern designing out waste, regenerating ecosystems and keeping items in use. Decoupling the economy from material flows—improving the rate of resource productivity faster than the economic growth rate—is also a consistent guide. By evolving with the growing number of applications of circular economy principles, and consolidating these strategies across thematic areas, Circle Economy’s Key Elements Framework (KE) renders the elements of the circular economy salient and serves as a basis to derive contextual strategies and interventions. 


The Framework consists of:
- Core Elements: Activities directly handling product or material flows; and uniquely,
- Enabling Elements: those that remove obstacles for core actors.


Key elements of the circular economy

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Circle Economy's framework of strategies and activities that define the circular economy

The Circular City Actions Framework provides urban changemakers with five complementary strategies they can use to start working towards a more circular system. 

The framework is action-based to provide users with concrete strategic directions and showcase the desired outcomes of each strategy. 
The framework consists of five complementary **strategies**, under which **sub-strategies** provide further detail. Finally, each sub-strategy consists of a diversity of tangible **solutions** which are framed in relation to key thematic areas. 

Note: solutions are currently focused on:
- 🍏 **Food systems**
- 🏢  **Built environment**
- 👕📱  **Consumer goods**
- ⚡ **Energy Systems**
- 🚌 **Mobility Systems**
- 💧 **Water Systems**

More thematic areas are coming soon...

'Click through each of the five strategy cards below to explore the framework and circular economy case studies in more depth!'



This framework was developed in collaboration with ICLEI, Metabolic and Ellen MacArthur Foundation with support from the MAVA Foundation. Read more about it [here]( https://circulars.iclei.org/action-framework/). 



Circular City Actions Framework

An action-based framework for local governments working towards circular cities

Thematic Areas

City Stakeholders

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Based on the work of [Bocken et al. (2016)](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/309699661_Product_design_and_business_model_strategies_for_a_circular_economy), the Four Flows Framework serves as a simple framework for managing resource flows in a circular economy by using less (Narrow), using for longer (Slow), using again (Cycle), and using clean, regenerative materials and energy (Regenerate).

These different principles of circular economy can be applied to our socioeconomic metabolism: we can design stocks like buildings, infrastructure, machinery, and vehicles to be rich resource mines for the future, and design manufactured goods and consumables to be cycled and made regenerative. Furthermore, the focus must also centre on getting more value out of fewer materials. Achieving the aims of a circular economy—minimising material use, regenerating the Earth, and preventing material losses—can be done through these four key strategies mentioned above.

Source: Circle Economy. (2023). *[The circularity gap report 2023](https://www.circularity-gap.world/2023)* (p.22). Amsterdam: Circle Economy. 

Four Flows Framework

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  "Urban Agriculture Casblanca: UAC", projet de recherche Maroco-Allemand du Ministère fédéral de l'Education et de la Recherche (BMBF) rentrant dans le cadre du programme " Developpement Durable des futures Mégapoles: Adaptation aux changements climatiques et aux défis de l'efficience énérgétique"  a pour objectif d’examiner la pertinence de l’Agriculture Urbaine en tant que facteur de développement urbain durable en prenant en cosidération les nouvelles conditions relatives aux déréglements climatiques et aux enjeux énérgétiques. L’Agriculture Urbaine est définie comme étant toute forme de production agricole, formelle ou informelle, au sein d’une ville. Les objectifs fondamentaux du projet sont les suivants: - Initier une prise de conscience concernant la nécessité de pratiquer une nouvelle recherche spécifique à la mégapole dans un contexte interdisciplinaire et transdisciplinaire. - Démontrer que le sujet en question est un élément de réponse qui permettra à la ville de s'adapter quant vis à vis des changements climatiques. - Initier et stimulter la collaboration et la mise en oeuvre d'actions entre les divers parties du projet.  Le projet pilote intitulé «Urban Agriculture Casablanca - PP4: Production Alimentaire Saine » vise le développement d'une production alimentaire moderne organique sur le site de Dar Bouazza. La livraison de paniers de légumes 100% naturel par les producteurs, et le paiement par avance des consommateurs favoriseraient la création de relations durables entre les parties impliqués dans ce processus. Le projet se félicite que la population périurbaine maintienne l'activité agricole, pour pouvoir générer des revenus et avoir une autosuffisance alimentaire saine. Par ailleurs, le PP4 poursuit la réalisation des objectifs opérationnels suivant:  - EXPERIMENTER / Expérimenter et démontrer les techniques de production agroécologique à travers le Jardin pédagogique de Dar Bouazza ; - FORMER A LA PRODUCTION / Sensibiliser, former et accompagner les paysans et paysannes à la démarche et aux techniques de production agroécologiques ; - FORMER A LA TRANSFORMATION ET VALORISATION / Sensibiliser, former et accompagner les paysans et paysannes à la transformation directe valorisant les produits des terroirs locaux et les savoir faire traditionnels ; - FORMER A LA COMMERCIALISATION ET CREER DES MARCHES / Appuyer la mise en place de systèmes de valorisation des produits à travers des circuits de commercialisation de proximité, basés sur des relations de partenariat producteur-consommateurs directes et équitables, dans la démarche de l’économie sociale et solidaire ; - LABELISER / Appuyer la mise en place d’un système de labellisation locale basée sur la reconnaissance de qualités propres aux produits de terroirs, agroécologiques de proximité ; - COMMUNIQUER / Sensibiliser les consommateurs du bassin de consommation du Grand Casablanca à l’alimentation biologique, et à l’engagement volontaire pour le soutien de l’agriculture agroécologique locale. L'Association Terre et Humanisme - Maroc, Partenaire majeur du projet pilote 4, qui plaide pour la diffusion de l'Agroécologie, mobilise son capital humain et son large réseau de contact afin de réaliser les objectifs du projet.   Les membres de Terre et Humanisme - Maroc, accompagnés par Fettouma Djerrari Benabdenbi, Initiatrice du jardin pédagogique de Dar Bouazza & Co Fondatrice de Terre et Humanisme Maroc. Depuis sa rencontre avec Pierre Rabhi et l’Agroécologie lors du séminaire les « Chemins de l’Alliance entre féminin d’orient et féminin d’occident » en 2001, organisé par ESPOD, dont elle est la Présidente fondatrice, Fattouma Djerrari Benabdenbi, sociologue de formation, n’a de cesse, de proclamer là où elle va, le message agroécologique. Elle ne se limite pas aux paroles qui s'envolent mais elle milite à le traduire en actions concrètes. Le réseau Terre et Humanisme, dont elle fait partie, au coté de Zakaria Ouissafane (Créateur de l'association et grand Monsieur de l'Arganier), Aicha Krombi (La Conquérante de Kermet Bensalem), ABDELFettah Derouiche (Le Nutritioniste Universitaire), Sabah Chraibi (Partenariat Espod) et bien d'autres, va incarner cette cause de développement durable, de lutte contre la pauvreté et la desertification. Fattouma Benabdenbi est très engagée dans la recherche et dans l’action associative, elle fait partie des fondatrices d’ESPOD, première association d'appui à l’entreprenariat féminin au Maroc (1991).  Principale organisatrice des << Chemins de l’Alliance entre féminin d’orient et féminin d’occident >> , elle y invite Pierre Rabhi, qui intervient en cette occasion pour la première fois au Maroc. Une longue collaboration s’en suivra. Elle organise depuis lors, plusieurs conférences et met son large réseau de contacts à disposition des acteurs locaux pour diffuser l'Agroécologie partout au Maroc. Très rapidement, après que les premières actions de sensibilisation et de formation à l’Agroécologie  aient été entamées, que le réseau agroécologique (cité plus haut) ait été créé et le partenariat avec Terre et Humanisme France ait été signé, une évidence s’est fait jour. Celle de l’impossibilité de transmettre sans montrer, de convaincre, sans démontrer. L’idée de créer une ferme expérimentale et pédagogique est très vite née de ce constat, mais la recherche d’une ferme d'Etat où installer le projet, fut elle, fort laborieuse et sans résultat. Fattouma décide donc de prendre l’initiative  de créer un espace pédagogique à Dar Bouazza        (Ferme Jnane Lakbire) pour le mettre à disposition des expérimentations et de l’association ESPOD et T&H France. Touché par les premières activités de formation organisées sur terrain, la Commune rurale de Dar Bouazza met à la disposition d'ESPOD un terrain sur lequel sera bati un marché dédié au produits Bio. Sensible aux divers problèmes de valorisation des produits du terroir et de l’artisanat sur lesquels elle travaille avec l’association ESPOD, Fattouma participe activement à son aménagement. Des Halles Rurales, destinées à accueillir un marché hebdomadaire de petits producteurs locaux, sont inaugurées en 2004. Le jardin pédagogique, quant à lui, est officiellement inauguré en 2005. A l’occasion, une semaine de sensibilisation et de formation, animée par Pierre Rabhi et Joseph Lucas, Zakaria Ouissafane, Fattouma Benabdenbi, Aïcha Krombi et Abdelfettah Derouiche a été organisée à destination de quelques 150 paysans, étudiants et enseignants, autorités locales venus de tout le Maroc. Toujours sur le front du plaidoyer agroécologique, les membres du réseau portent le message à travers de nombreuses manifestations nationales et internationales, dont ils font leur tribune. C'est à partir des nombreux contacts mobilisés par Terre & Humanisme - Maroc, autour de la cause Agroécologique, qu'ont émergé des pistes de partenariat et des perspectives de projets.  C’est le cas du projet pour lequel ce blog est destiné. 

Casablanca

Dar Bouazza

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Federal Ministry of Education and Research of Marocco

<p>The pilot project entitled “Urban Agriculture and Healthy Food Production” aims at developing a modern organic food production on the site of the agro- ecological pedagogical Farm of Dar Bouazza. The organic products, which would be singled out through a local quality label, will enable the creation of direct and fair relations between the producers and the consumers involved in supporting the proximity (within reach) production. The pilot project is addressed to the producers and consumers in Dar Bouazza, and in Casablanca. It welcomes the peri- urban population to try out the agricultural activity, for the sake of a healthy life, and as a source of income.</p>