On September 13, SEED Executive Director Dr. Arab Hoballah spoke at the 5th World Circular Economy Forum (WCEF) on the importance of creating an enabling environment for circularity-relevant Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs).  Arab Hoballah commented - “Transition and transformation are generally not properly factored when designing green and circular economy policies. This is mainly because entrepreneurship has been generally at the edge, not correctly mainstreamed, and considered in these strategies.

SMEs cannot be easily scaled-up and adapted for an application simply because of inappropriate institutional, financial, and market ecosystems with weak bottom-up circular innovation infrastructure. To that end, it’s essential that policymakers, industry associations, and financial institutions come together to support SMEs”.

Arab Hoballah also briefly mentioned SEED’s journey in assisting SMEs in getting access to markets, replicating and scaling up business models, and delivering innovation. 

Watch Day 1 of the World Circular Economy Forum 2021 and Arab Hoballah’s speech (starting from 7:20:29) here.

The event took place virtually from 13 – 15 September. The event looked at the remarkable achievements of WCEF in the last five years and highlighting the goals of the next three days sessions. To which the president of Sitra, Jyrki Katainen, commented – “In the last five years, WCEF has supported in framing the urgency and credibility of circular economic solutions as well as its complexity. The transition is happening in all levels, but I must say the systemic change to a fully circular economy is still waiting to happen globally”.

The forum provided a platform to learn from each other and identify best practices that can create lasting results. Over the three days, the forum featured sessions to share information, experiences, and successes in promoting a more circular global economy.