UNDP (United Nations Development Programme) in collaboration with The Institute of Renewable Energy Promotion (IREP) and support from European Union EU), as well as other development partners, are working to accelerate the transition to a Circular Economy in Lao PDR. In these processes, Shifting Paradigms (the Netherlands); Earth Systems (Lao PDR); Rebel Group (Netherlands); and Circle Economy (Netherlands) have been among the teams to provide technical supports.

The Community of Practice (COP) is one of the Circular Economy Project’s activities in Lao PDR which helps identify barriers to the implementation of the identified circular economy solutions, and work to mitigate them.

With this COP we will harvest knowledge and develop practical and scalable solutions to enhance circular economy and help companies to develop circular business models.

Lao PDR has a rich natural environment that provides numerous opportunities to create a circular economy and that can benefit from responsible eco-tourism.  Hence, this COP will focus on developing circular business models to support eco-tourism in Lao PDR. We will deep dive into two themes, namely i) Circular construction - hospitality infrastructure and buildings; and ii) Circular procurement - circular business models.

With a series of workshops already being held, it helped the project team, and all participants to better understand the challenges faced by COP partners and how they can engage with projects related to eco-tourism.  In addition, the sessions also helped to identify opportunities and bottlenecks for circular construction and circular procurement through a dialogue on relevant themes – such as market demand, technology, finance, legal, policy and etc.

To dive deeper into the theme, COP partners were actively engaged in dialoguing for increased Circularity in Lao PDR for Financial Access, to decrease bottlenecks for resource mobilization. Together with this, a policy discussion was also organized to clarify policy gaps for circular businesses in Lao PDR.

We are pleased to introduce our cooperative COP partners from various sectors who are willing to make changes for the better.

Click here to learn about who they are.