The Butterfly Framework for the Assessment of Transitions towards a Circular and Climate Neutral Society

The Butterfly framework of Wageningen University & Research (WUR) for assessing transitions towards a circular and climate-neutral society is presented. The Butterfly framework is built after analysis of existing frameworks that could only partly comply with the needs of the full set of stakeholders interlinked and operating in domains like society and well-being; food, feed, and biobased production; natural resources and living environment. It shows that for adequate action perspectives on and in these domains, the socio-ecological, socio-technical, and socio-institutional subsystems should be fully integrated, and stakeholders should be equally consulted and appreciated. In order to advance and integrate action perspectives of different stakeholders in the light of the transition to circularity with high-level ambitions like climate neutrality, stakeholders (groups) need to understand their position and links in a full systems perspective, which the Butterfly framework provides.