Circular North Sea Regions - Improving Governance for the Circular Economy

The Circ-NSR project aims to bring the North Sea Region on a path to a stronger Circular Economy (CE). Key instrument for reaching this aim is to bring in focus and promote better CE governance structures. Circ-NSR goes beyond implementing singular pilot activities, focusing instead on success factors and mechanisms for upscaling, transferring and mainstreaming circular solutions in regional economies and installing a circular mindset among public and private stakeholders. To do so, Circ-NSR follows a two-folded approach. 1. Partners carry out 8 pilot activities in 5 different regions on different CE topics and promote and analyse the governance structures. 2. Partners interview and survey other CE projects and initiatives to capture transferable mechanisms and success factors. From both streams of activities, experiences are captured in a governance transfer centre including an online toolbox targeted at municipal, regional & sectorial actors beyond the partnership to inspire them for adapting practices and improve governance structures. The Circ-NSR project intentionally focuses not on one particular topic of the CE, but on systematically capturing governance implications and successful, transferable mechanisms of a wide array of projects and initiatives as well as the pilot implementations to demonstrate and make this knowledge available. Finally, it leads to reduced CO2 emissions, higher committment and increased capacity of actors for the CE and a greener North Sea Region.