The World Resources Forum Association is enthusiastic to announce a new collaboration with the Springer Journal “Circular Economy & Sustainability” (CIES) for the publication of a Special Issue hosting selected papers presented at the World Resources Forum 2021. This collaboration will enable authors whose abstracts have been accepted for presentation to submit an extended manuscript for publication, therefore increasing the impact of their contribution and of the scientific conference itself. The publication of the Special Issue will take place in February 2022 and thanks to a special offer by Springer all content will be freely accessible to everyone until the end of 2022.

 

 

Special Issue: “A Green Deal for Sustainable Resources – Extraction, Recovery, Circularity (WRF2021)”

This Special Issue will host selected papers presented at the World Resources Forum 2021 (WRF 2021) conference “A Green Deal for Sustainable Resources”, which is held on 12-14 October 2021 in an innovative hybrid format, consisting of an online conference and two physical hubs, in Switzerland and Ghana. The conference is organised by the World Resources Forum Association (WRF), and co-hosted by the Ghanaian Ministry of Environment, Science, Technology and Innovation (MESTI), and the Swiss Federal Office for the Environment (Bundesamt für Umwelt, BAFU). All the scientific presentations will take place online.

The WRF 2021 hybrid conference covers parallel topics streams along the whole global value chain of natural resources, with the attainment of the SDGs as overarching guidelines. Topics covered by this Special Issue include the implementation of a Green Deal for Sustainable Resources, with the following thematic areas:

•  •  •

Primary Resources: Fair resource extraction for a quality future

• Mineral governance:

Responsible sourcing, Perspective of extractive economies, Public-private partnerships, Supply security

• Artisanal and Small-Scale Mining:

Social and environmental impacts, Minamata Convention, Driving forces in global value chains, Informal ASM integration

• Trade & Finance:

Trade flows, Illicit Financial Flows, Transparency and traceability methods, Sustainable financing, Legal and regulatory provisions

•  •  •

Secondary Resources: From waste to resources for development

• Special waste

E-waste, End-of-life vehicles (ELVs), Plastics, Batteries, ODS Management

• Innovation and technology

Hazardous waste treatment, informal – formal partnerships, take-back systems, due diligence approach

• Favourable framework conditions

Policy and regulations, EPR and financing, transboundary movement, inclusive recycling

•  •  •

Circular Economy: Designing circular systems for resources

• CE across different sectors and products

Electronics, Plastics, Food systems, Textiles

• Rethinking business models (for CE)

From products to services, Product design, Industrial symbiosis, Enabling environment

• Africa circular

The human side of circular economy, Low carbon solutions, Leap-frog opportunities, Transition process

•  •  •

 

Authors can choose to publish under the traditional publishing model (no charges apply), but the journal also provides the open access option (with article-processing charges).The submission portal will open immediately after the conference in October 2021, and the submission deadline is set for the end of February 2022. As a special offer by Springer, all content published will be freely accessible to everyone until the end of 2022.

The Guest Editors of this Special Issue will be:

Prof. Dr. Patrick Wäger , Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology – Empa, Switzerland (patrick.waeger@empa.ch)

Prof. Dr. Charisios Achillas, International Hellenic University, Greece (c.achillas@ihu.edu.gr)

Prof. Dr. Sonia Valdivia, WRFA, Switzerland & Leuphana University of Luneburg, Germany (sonia.valdivia@wrforum.org)

Dr. Masuma Farooki, MineHutte, UK (masuma.farooki@minehutte.com)

All details related to submission procedures and guidelines can be found on the Special Issue webpage and the Journal’s webpage.

 

About the Journal: Circular Economy and Sustainability (CIES)

Circular Economy and Sustainability (CIES) is a new journal aiming to bring a new approach of the key concepts of circular economy and sustainability, by combining the scientific disciplines of economy, management, engineering, technology, environment, and society, and investigating the relations, interactions and synergies that should be further developed among them.

As circular economy is necessary today to promote the goals of sustainable development, these scientific areas are not independent to each other, but their relations, interactions and synergies exist and should be further developed and studied. Interdisciplinary approaches and multiple connections between these scientific areas are required not only to reach the sustainability goals but also to solve diverse environmental problems, expand technological limits and overcome potential economic disturbances. This approach is expressed with new policies (command and control, market-based instruments, and circular public procurement), technological suggestions (e.g. technical cycle solutions), environmental engineering technologies (e.g., waste management, 3r strategies, water recycle, wastewater treatment and reuse, renewable energy), circular business models, circular innovations, circular management solutions, consumers’ behavior in circular economy, new circular economy products labels and social acceptance in circular economy.

These topics could be classified in three levels; the micro-level (firm-level engineering and managerial level), meso-level (industrial ecology, industrial symbiosis, eco-clusters, eco-industrial parks), and macro-level (general policies, plans, green and sustainable entrepreneurship).

Website & Submission portal: https://www.springer.com/journal/43615