 I'm Elmar Wiedems from the Circle of Flanders, which is the agency or organization that's part of the OVAM, the Flams Waste Agency, to promote the Circle of Economy in the Flanders region. I'm the facilitator for the Circle of Economy, one of the 15 or 14 people that are working in our team. I would call myself a policy entrepreneur as well. I'm really engaged with policy making, policy projects, but in a proactive manner. Finding new projects, finding new ways to think about our society and see what works or not. So this is what I do. I've done different things at OVAM, different policy fields, engaged with different policy fields by waste or legislation. But the transition towards the Circle of Economy is really an important topic to work on these days. It should be in 2014 with the IABR in Rotterdam at the time. Walter, a colleague of mine, Walter Temst, found that it should be a really interesting exhibition to visit. We went there together with a colleague and some other people. I was really astonished and pleased by what I've seen, what I've experienced. The study by fabrications at that time about the metabolism of Rotterdam and also a study on the metabolism of the Netherlands as a whole, the Delta region, was really interesting and they used the word urban metabolism. I've been more familiar with industrial ecology for my studies. It was a concept that was used, but not really very much used or very much put in practice on the umbrella of circular metabolism or urban metabolism. So in the Rotterdam exhibition, the IABR, I was really enthusiastic about the concept and what it could bring and the discussion it provoked. It started together with thinking about the circular economy as well in 2014. It came both ways. From a circular perspective, you need to think about the flows and the way streams that are going in and around your city or in your region. And from a metabolic perspective, you should think about this as well and connect different flows and different approaches to have a complete picture of your system. Because from 2004-2005, we have a real big thing going on about system thinking. What can we do in a system that is our society and waste is a part of it, materials are a part of it and it needs some good thinking and good concepts to have real solutions. In 2014, it really gathered pace and momentum to talk about a circular economy and also to talk about urban metabolism. So from that point on, we've been interested and we've been involved in research actually. Most of the time, we've been involved with research, research by design and research into the material flows of a region or a city. And as a general regional agency, we partnered and we worked together with some of the more local initiatives that have been going on. For example, in the region of Limburg, which was struck by a closing down of a big company, Ford, the car company. So there was a new economic plan necessary to think about the region. What's the perspective of this region? And of course then the concept of the metabolism of the region and the circular economy came up. As an innovative way to think about the region. So we supported research, we initiated research and discussions, not only research but a lot of discussions with policymakers, with entrepreneurs, with local people to start thinking about a new perspective for the region. And this is a thing that we've been doing for some instances in the last four to five years. Some things have been really new to me, like research by design, which was also an eye-opener. Like first see the flows in your city or in your region and try to couple them in a way. And then make the link to planning and design, which was really new to me. So for me that was really important to get this more into detail for myself. And it still needs to be elaborated and still needs to be fine-tuned. So how can we indeed work with research by design? At what stage do you really need research by design and the work of planners? And at what stage do you need the work of policymakers or data specialists? So this is still an exploration we are more or less in because it's not a standardized approach. This is not an institutionalized way of thinking. We are more familiar with waste statistics and so forth. We are familiar with waste planning and there you have a lot of regulation around. So this is a field that is quite new to us. We've been working from a top-down agenda as well and also from a bottom-up agenda in both ways. And it really depends on the situation where you're in or the context that you find yourself in. Depending on the region or the city that poses the problem there or that asks the problem or that wants to discuss the issue. And this hasn't changed the last four to five years. This is still going on and there's so much to learn from this approach. And all these elements I've mentioned like bottom-up discussion or connecting top-down agenda with bottom-up agendas, involving research by design, involving new flows of data. These are all elements that you really need in your work and it's still going on. For me and maybe a bit for my organization as well, the political ecology perspective was a bit at the background. And that's one thing that I've been learning as well in the last year or year-and-a-half that these aspects are really much more important and that should enrich the concept of a circular metabolism. This has been a change for me but not for all of us in the community because some of the researchers are very well acquainted with it with the need of thinking in political power balances and societal questions. But for the circular economy it's been put on the background a bit and that we need to take to the fore. We make a central point of discussion in the next two to three years. Then it can have more impact than it has right now. It has impact. We know that companies and people are willing to step into the circular economy. They're showing what they can do and there are practices. But at the same time people are left out or regions are not developing in an optimal way. And then you should indeed also look at the societal questions of inequality or cooperation of distribution of welfare and so forth. This is an interesting challenge for the coming years. Well there are actually two communities in the broad sense. First you have these existing companies and municipalities and people that are actually trying to figure out how they could work on a circular economy in their city or region or in their companies. And you have all kinds of hubs and communities in Flanders. And then you have a research oriented community around circular metabolism. And these two communities aren't connected at this point today. Local communities and municipalities for example I speak for because I have some experience working with local and regional authorities and communities. They are not actually involved or they're not really looking into the concept of the urban metabolism except for some bigger entities like Antwerp or Gend or like I said the region of Limburg. But the other ones they are feeling overwhelmed by all the information and all the targets that are being put onto them and they really are busy with things that they should do or need to do by default. So these new concepts are not gaining too much ground at this point. And I think we are actually as a circle of Flanders is involved with both communities. You know like the research community. Brussels is a very serious spot in this with people from ELB and people from the city and so on. And of course also in Flanders there are some people very much from universities that are involved but now we have to make the connection with entrepreneurial communities and companies and local authorities. They are sometimes just out of a lack of time or not of a lack of interest but a lack of time to be involved. So we should work together with the Vaviersché for example which is the Flemish organization for municipalities and cities and other institutes to get this on the agenda and to see what do they need, what do they want and how can they become a community. And I think talking about the metabolism is also a bit frightening for them because it sounds complex. So you should talk about integrated problem solving or circular agenda and then you get easier access to them because a metabolic picture of their area putting effort into that part is sometimes a bit worrying or frightening. That's the way that we use our language. What kind of language do we have to use to get these things on the agenda, to keep it on the agenda as well, to broaden the agenda, to deepen it. There are the physical networking activities of course. You can visit a place together and see what's happening there. In November there is a circular economy hotspot in Belgium which is a nice event and you speak to each other. We have some good hope that some of the cities in Flanders are really taking it up like Leuven or again Antwerp as well and other cities, smaller and bigger cities and we should connect to the networks that already exist to put it on the agenda because if you create another one, another community of practice then it might be on top of other things and it might be, well, not too impactful. We've been so grateful for the work that you've been doing both content-wise like getting the foundations of the circular metabolism right and also about the way you are dealing with organization and people and the network. So that's a really good job. You are actually a researcher but you're more than that, you're engaged with policymaking and this is like from practitioners and from policymakers, they should be the same. I would love to be a researcher as well at some point or two days a week or one day a week and I would love to be an entrepreneur as well, like taking a risk in the circular society, carrying things out. So this hybrid of different roles, that's our challenge and I hope we might take it to a success with Circular Flanders but at every level people can have these different roles and take up these different roles. I hope so for the future.