Leadership to Cultivate the Circular Economy

Introduction

The world population is standing at around 7.5 billion as of April 2019, according to recent statistics, out of which, India alone is contributing approximately 17.9% in the total population. Together, we have reached at an alarming situation where the bearing capacity of our planet has jeopardized to the extent that if immediate panacea is not looked out, the reverberations will be unendurable. The rate of consumption is far beyond the regenerating capacity of the planet. The continuous increase in the physiological needs of the humans has put the business organizations under immense pressure to provide them with their necessities at the right time and right place. The notion of take-make-consume-waste, as followed by the majority of people, is one of the main reasons behind the destructive use of the limited resources. The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment 2005, as given by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation (2013), says that fifteen out of the recognized twenty-four ecosystem services (i.e. processes of nature that support human wellbeing) are used in an unsustainable manner and are being depleted. Thus, continuous measures at global, institutional and individual level have to be taken up for the sustainability so as to ensure that there are no pernicious consequences in near future. This realization has led to the emergence of the concepts like Circular Economy,sustainable development, resource planning and management, triple bottom line, Reuse-Reduce-Recycle and many more,keeping aside the old school of thought, like Linear Economy. Where Linear Economy works on the simple principle of gratification of needs, Circular Economy takes into consideration the environmental sustainability as well.

Circular economy is the major focus of this chapter. The chapter will be talking about the how the leadership impact upon circular economy. We will try to focus sustainability first which is again a very popular and important expression these days. Then we will relate it with economy and will move forward to linear and circular economy. Finally, we will discuss that how leadership can be helpful in establishing circular economy in countries.