The Role of Local Circular Change Makers in Co-Created Circular Economy Transition

Attention to transitions towards a circular economy has grown significantly over the last decade in both policy and governance research. This reflects that scholars and policy makers alike increasingly acknowledge that the world’s consumption of resources is on track to overshoot major planetary boundaries and thus undermine the resilience of the Earth system. What is required is a shift in governance towards minimizing the extraction of ‘virgin’ resources and providing a regenerative or circular economy model that aims to give back to the planet more than it takes. An increasing body of research suggests that forms of collaborative governance (co-creation) have the potential to facilitate such a transition from a linear to a circular economy. However, co-creative transition processes place considerably demand core actors not only to alter their own internalized ways of doing, but to challenge, operate beyond and in opposition to existing institutions. Limited research has been accorded to the role and importance of the multitude of change makers involved in such collaborative transitions. This paper studies how public, private and civil society change makers navigate in their institutional environment with the intent of identifying common governance factors hampering or facilitating change makers to engage in co-created transition initiatives. We are interested in who they are and what roles they undertake, including how they engage in designing, convening, facilitating, brokering knowledge, and catalyzing change, and thus enhance the combined capacity for circular transition. The paper provides new knowledge on how championing strengthens cross-agency ecosystem collaboration.