THE STATE AND PROSPECTS OF THE TRANSITION TO A CIRCULAR ECONOMY

Abstract

The main pressing threats to human existence are nuclear war, ecological collapse and technological breakthrough. They are all closely linked to both security policy and economic development. The purpose of this study is to reveal the main trends associated with the transition to a circular economy. The world's economic system uses resources that take a year and a half to recover in a year, thus having an irreversible impact on the planet's ecosystem. The growth of world GDP has provided significant progress and has allowed, to some extent, free from impoverishment billions of people. At the same time, economic growth is fueled by a steady increase in demand for natural resources. This, in turn, leads to the loss of biodiversity and problems with water scarcity, which are caused by the methods used in the extraction and processing of natural resources. To develop a circular economy that is climate-neutral, appropriate policy initiatives are being launched and programmatic actions are being developed. Transformation is already underway, but conceptual decisions need to be developed and adopted in the coming years. Politics and economics must be aimed at making activities that contribute to a more environmentally friendly society economically viable. The most obvious step should be to ban subsidizing any activities that are harmful to the environment. In Ukraine, there are ample opportunities to transform the dominant model of a linear economy into an environmentally and economically efficient circular model. The development of the circular economy in Ukraine can give not only a positive environmental effect, but also the economic effect of increasing energy and resource efficiency, as well as the social effect of creating additional jobs, profiting companies in new industries and activities.