The webinar “Circular Economy – Governance & Scale: Europe & Latin America and the Caribbean in conversation about circular transition” took place on 22-23 November 2021 and was co-organised by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Slovenia and the EU-LAC Foundation, in partnership with Exchange 4 Change Brazil (E4CB), Circular Change, and the Brazilian Centre for International Relations (CEBRI). It was held in the framework of the Slovenian Presidency of the Council of the European Union and was part of the celebration of the EU-LAC Foundation’s 10th anniversary, in line with its area of work on Sustainable, Resilient and Inclusive Economy. The recordings (Part 1 and Part 2) are available on the EU-LAC Foundation’s YouTube Channel.
The event aimed at providing a platform for experts and business leaders from selected sectors to showcase their expertise and share best practices as well as to enable a high-level dialogue about opportunities for new partnerships to advance the circular transition. In this sense, the panels and keynotes allowed to shed light upon recent advancements in the field of circularity while contributing to raise awareness on the importance of overcoming the traditional notions of a linear and unsustainable economy. In particular, the potential of building on the post-COVID-19 recovery efforts of the European Union (EU) and Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) to leverage the shift towards a circular economy on a global scale was emphasised.
The structure of the seminar consisted of two working days, one keynote speech, and five panel discussions (one high-level conversation, a second on circular roadmaps, a third on network governance and the last two of each day on circular business). The two-day event was opened by Dr Adrian Bonilla (Executive Director of the EU-LAC Foundation) and Mr Bogdan Batič (Deputy-Director for Common Foreign and Security Policy of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Slovenia), who highlighted the crucial role of building bi-regional networks between the EU and LAC to foster dialogues on circular transition issues. These opening remarks also acknowledged the leadership of the EU-LAC Foundation and the Republic of Slovenia in promoting circular economy cooperation between both regions— for instance, through the LAC Days Conference.