Regions play a key role in channeling and landing Circular Economy policies and connecting them with citizens and businesses. Article by Oscar Menéndez in the RETAMA magazine (Nov / Dec 2021)
“Think globally but act locally” is an idea that has its origins in the activist Patrick Geddes, a Scottish urban planner who died in 1932, whose work focused on urban planning and whose pioneering idea took shape almost a century later.
The participants in the Summit of 92 wanted to show something very simple, and apparently intuitive. The climate crisis has to be fought from the great institutions of the planet and the efforts and initiatives of global entities such as the United Nations or continental entities such as the European Union are essential. However, the closeness that the entities closest to the citizenry represent, even at a lower level than the countries, is very important.
In the case of Spain, the report Situation and Evolution of the Circular Economy in Spain carried out by Cotec 2019 shows this need for strategies to have their feet on the ground: "On many occasions, strategies are developed without a prior diagnosis , with which the objectives and measures planned at European or national level are simply transferred to the regional level. This circumstance can weaken the implementation of strategies, since it ignores the specific characteristics of each region, both in its cultural dimension, essential for the involvement of the population, and in the characteristics of its productive fabric and in the governance structures necessary to correct implementation of the measures. In other words, the local is closer to reality and can better understand the mechanisms for transforming it.
The full article here.