Environmental sciences, sustainable development and circular economy: Alternative concepts for trans-disciplinary research

ABSTRACT: The intermeshing of disciplines from the natural sciences, social sciences, engineering and management has become essential to addressing today's environmental challenges. Yet, this can be a daunting task because experts from different disciplines may conceptualize the problems in very different ways and use vocabularies that may not be well understood by one another. This paper explores three alternative environmental concepts used in transdisciplinary research, and outlines some of the epistemological and practical problems that each one poses. It pays particular attention to the increasingly popular concept of “circular economy”, and contrasts it with the more commonly-used concepts of…