Shifting to a circular economy, which is nature-positive by design, can build prosperity while tackling climate change and other global challenges. This study shows that a targeted set of investable and scalable actions in the built environment sector represents a significant economic opportunity for Europe, increasing resilience, competitiveness and the vibrancy of its cities. It also aims to show that circular and nature-positive strategies can be applied across sectors.

To illustrate how the benefits of a nature-positive, circular economy can be realised in a tangible, high-impact way, this study focuses on the built environment using new analysis drawn from quantitative modelling and interviews with expert practitioners.

This study on regenerative agriculture explores the climate impact of current Fertiliser, Agrochemical, Tillage, Bare-soil, Agricultural Systems (FATBAS).

It takes the position that FATBAS is a significant factor in both driving the immediate land-based climate change impacts we are seeing, including ‘global drying’, drought, heating, flooding, fire and heat domes, and increasing the risks of extreme weather events.

FATBAS, by driving down soil carbon and related stored water, reduces the evapotranspiration of plants. This in turn reduces land-based moisture circulation in the form of rainfall. Evapotranspiration of plants cools the planet’s surface areas, whereas sunlight on bare soils heats both the region and the atmosphere.

It calls for FATBAS to be replaced by regenerative agriculture.

This book looks at Flush and Forget (FaF) systems, a traditional method of dealing with sewage which mixes everything (urine, faeces, pharmaceuticals, antibiotic-resistant material, personal care products, forever-chemicals, microplastics and a wider range of other pollutants) together and transports it by water. FaF cannot deal with these components and incineration is generally the only option.

There are better, less wasteful alternatives; vacuum  toilets, for instance, 'flush' using the force of vacuum rather than water and separate faeces and urine at source. There is far less waste water to be treated, creating opportunities for anaerobic digestion for green biogas followed by hyperthermophilic composting of the residue, and saving huge amounts of clean water.

This highly theoretical research paper aims to map out ways and means to build a body of knowledge on the process of regeneration and the ways in which regenerative circular economies may function.

Ultimately, it finds that if stakeholders are willing to follow a bio-inspired approach for co-investing resources, time and planning while considering specific system characteristics and the underlying contexts, then small changes in governance, behavioural patterns and technology improvement may contribute substantially to the development of regenerative circular economies.

The network properties of the global waste trade were assessed using time series data of material and monetary flows between 2000 and 2022 from Chatham House's experimental database. The study focused on the distribution of monetary and material flows, policy recommendations and future research avenues useful for obtaining a more comprehensive understanding of socio-economic systems such as trade networks.

This work is a solid example of the application of network-based methods as an eco-mimicry approach for assessing the sustainability and fragility of socio-economic systems which can be helpful for researchers and policy makers interested in transitions towards regenerative circular economies.