An article written by ERI Researcher Dr Eoin McLaughlin (also CUBS) and colleagues in the School of Geography and Sustainable Development, University of St Andrews in the UK, has been awarded the best Sustainable Development Article 2019 from the International Sustainable Development Research Society (ISDR).

The International Sustainable Development Research Society was founded in 2005, it was built on the tradition of International Sustainable Development Conferences that had been held since the early 1990s.

The have an award for best research article published in the previous calendar year. The criteria includes content addressing a sustainable development topic with an inter-disciplinary or transdisciplinary perspective; making a well-defined contribution to academic debates and shows awareness of the complex nature of sustainable development; offering or at least providing hints for possible solutions to sustainability problems; and enabling positive societal impacts, bridging between science and society.

The article from Dr McLaughlin et al., The Circular Economy: Swings and Roundabout? originally published in the journal Ecological Economics was shortlisted by the society in May 2020 and following a vote of society members for the award, was announced as winner at the 2020 conference – held virtually due to Covid-19.

The article is a critical review of the circular economy and sustainable development literatures and highlights numerous challenges concerning conceptual definition, economic growth and implementation that inhibit the use of the Circular Economy as a tool for Sustainable Development in its current form. A literature review was conducted to interpret the current conceptual relationship between the Circular Economy and Sustainable Development. The review highlights numerous challenges concerning conceptual definition, economic growth and implementation that inhibit the use of the Circular Economy as a tool for Sustainable Development in its current form. The review concludes by providing suggestions for how research concerning the Circular Economy should proceed if it is to provide a potential approach for achieving Sustainable Development

The article was published in Ecological Economics in April 2019. There is an open access version of the article found here. It’s been cited 62 times to date.