Monitoring Progress towards a Resource-Efficient and Circular Economy

This report presents a harmonised conceptual framework and indicators for monitoring progress and supporting the implementation of policies that foster a transition towards a more resource efficient and circular economy. Its main purpose is to provide a source of inspiration for countries seeking to build a coherent framework to assess progress towards a circular economy and to support OECD and, where appropriate, other international work on a circular economy.

The main audiences are ministries, government agencies and statistical offices involved in the preparation and evaluation of policies that encourage a resource-efficient and circular economy, in the measurement of progress towards a CE and in the development and communication of related indicators.

This report is not a statistical compilation guide and does not create any requirements for implementation in countries. It rather provides general guidance for a harmonised monitoring through indicators and advocates the development of a coordinated measurement and indicator research agenda and a phased measurement approach to allow for countries with different capacities to engage in the production of CE data and indicators. 

The monitoring framework and indicators presented in this report are a first step towards better information on the transition to a resource efficient and circular economy. The list of indicators will be regularly reviewed and refined as better data become available and the implementation and monitoring of circular economy policies in countries progress. The framework and its indicator set are supported with a statistical framework, consistent with the System of Environmental-Economic Accounting (SEEA) where possible, to help structure and combine underlying statistics, to link CE terms and definitions to the terms and definitions used in official statistics, and to ensure coherence among data sets (UNECE, 2024)