Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are increasingly aware of the benefits of closing loops and improving resource efficiency, such as saving material costs, creating competitive advantages, and accessing new markets. At the same time, however, various barriers pose challenges to small businesses in their transition to a circular economy, namely a lack of financial resources and lack of technical skills. The aim of this paper is to increase knowledge and understanding about the barriers and enablers experienced by SMEs when implementing circular economy business models. Looking first at the barriers that prevent SMEs from realising the benefits of the circular economy, an investigation is carried out in the form of a literature review and an analysis of a sample of SME case studies that are featured on the GreenEcoNet EU-funded web platform. Several enabling factors that help SMEs adopt circular economy practices are then identified. The paper concludes that although various policy instruments are available to help SMEs incorporate circular economy principles into their business models, several barriers remain. The authors recommend that European and national policies strengthen their focus on greening consumer preferences, market value chains and company cultures, and support the recognition of SMEs’ green business models. This can be achieved through the creation of dedicated marketplaces and communities of practice, for example.

Attempts to structurally transform segments of the agri-food system inevitably involve trade-offs between the priorities of actors with different incentives, perspectives and values. Trade-offs are context-specific, reflecting different socio-economic and political realities. We investigate the potential of structured boundary objects to facilitate exposing and reconciling these trade-offs within the context of multi-stakeholder social learning processes with pastoral and mixed crop-livestock communities in Burkina Faso, Ethiopia and Tanzania. Building on boundary objects as items flexible enough to be understood by all without having one common definition, structured boundary objects visualize actors’ input in a comparable format to facilitate knowledge sharing. Stakeholders in each country used a simulation tool and board game to explore the implications of changing livestock stocking and management practices for the environment and for actors’ future socio-economic priorities. Using structured boundary objects elicited trade-offs between household food and animal feed, and between livestock for income, labour, and/ or cultural functions, reflecting the context-specific and subjective evaluations actors make when attempting to plan livelihood changes. Our findings suggest to policy and decision-makers that sustainable transition plans can be developed when stakeholders in local agri-food systems employ approaches that allow shared understandings of trade-offs inherent to sustainable agriculture to emerge.

Climate change presents an urgent and growing hazard to the economic and social wellbeing of countries throughout Asia and the Pacific. To address this issue, substantial investments in climate adaptation action are crucial, yet the currently existing climate finance flows, especially from the private sector, remain insufficient. Unlocking these resources requires more than new financial mechanisms; it calls for targeted, data-informed policy action and regulatory reforms, strengthened institutional capacity, and strategic coordination across all sectors and levels of government. This report explores the barriers that hinder finance flows for climate adaptation in four Asian countries: Bangladesh, Cambodia, Nepal and Thailand. It shows how policy and regulatory constraints, often worsened by insufficient capacity and governance shortcomings, weaken the efforts to mobilize and allocate climate finance, particularly in key sectors such as energy, water, agriculture and disaster risk management. The findings of this report come from a mixed-method research approach including a literature review, expert surveys, several interviews and in-country focus group discussions. This mixed-methods strategy allowed us to gain a comprehensive view of the climate finance landscape in each country. Key insights • Capacity and expertise gaps, especially in project preparation, risk assessment and accessing international funds, are widespread across all four countries in the policy but also the wider banking environment. • Governance fragmentation (which we use in the sense of unclear decision-making and/or policymaking power among a multitude of actors, often uncoordinated), unclear mandates, and misaligned vertical coordination hinder policy execution and climate action planning. • Regulatory uncertainty and complex procedures discourage private sector participation and restrict investment flows, especially in Thailand and Cambodia. • Monitoring, evaluation and data systems are often weak or non-existent, limiting transparency, accountability and investor confidence. • Despite these issues, each country shows local innovation and policy potential, evidenced by multiple success stories.