The Circular Economy (CE) is promoted as a sustainable model of economic growth and a quintessential example of a “sustainability mission.” Despite expected co-benefits in job creation, waste reduction and poverty alleviation, the Global South is largely missing from both missions and CE literature. Employing cross-disciplinary insights from environmental policy and the geography of sustainability transitions, this paper documents the diffusion of CE missions and compares CE policy development between the Global North and Global South. Analysing 61 national-level CE strategic policy documents, we focus on the policy levers, CE strategies, materials and sectors. We show that CE mission development is widespread in the Global North and developing in the Global South. Despite linkages to other national-level social and sustainability agendas, CE policy instrument choice shows limited place-sensitivity and geographical variation. Where the Global South is replicating the Global North's CE trajectory, the transformative potential of circularity missions is threatened.

中文翻译：

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循环任务的地理分布：北半球和南半球循环经济政策方法的跨国比较


循环经济（CE）被宣传为一种可持续的经济增长模式和“可持续发展使命”的典型例子。尽管预期在创造就业、减少废物和扶贫方面具有共同效益，但南半球国家在任务和CE文献中基本上都缺失了。本文利用环境政策和可持续发展转型地理的跨学科见解，记录了可持续发展使命的传播，并比较了全球北方和全球南方的可持续发展政策发展。我们对61个国家级循环经济战略政策文件进行了分析，重点关注政策杠杆、循环经济战略、材料和领域。我们表明，CE 任务开发在北半球广泛存在，而在南半球正在发展。尽管与其他国家层面的社会和可持续发展议程有联系，CE政策工具的选择显示出有限的地方敏感性和地理差异。当南半球正在复制北半球的循环经济轨迹时，循环使命的变革潜力就会受到威胁。