Executive Summary
The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan is advancing its transition to a green and circular economy - from a linear model of extraction and disposal to a circular economy that keeps materials, products, energy, and water in use at their highest value for as long as possible. The Ministry of Environment and the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Supply in partnership with the Royal Scientific Society developed the National Circular Economy Roadmap 2050 as a comprehensive long-term commitment and accelerator for a sustainable, resilient, and inclusive economic transformation.
The National Circular Economy Vision and Strategic Goals:
Anchored in the Economic Modernisation Vision (EMV), the Roadmap represents Jordan’s leadership in response to the accelerating triple planetary crisis of climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution.
The roadmap vision statement: “By 2050, Jordan has adopted a circular economy as a national commitment to future generations, advancing green growth” was formulated, acting as a directional marker that guides implementation with three main vision goals:
• Goal 1: Support economic resilience
• Goal 2: Maximise value and security of resources
• Goal 3: Ensure environmental wellbeing and quality of life
This vision ultimately aims to create value for a resilient and thriving economy, contributing to the nation’s environmental and socioeconomic performance and the wellbeing of its people.
The roadmap articulates these opportunities into a comprehensive action plan that extends till 2050, spanning three phases; Foundation (to 2030), Scaling (to 2040), and Circular System Integration (to 2050). It comprises policy, technical, and community-level interventions, which are designed to be evaluated by a set of measurable indicators.
The roadmap development involved iterative stakeholder feedback and endorsement cycles through constructive workshops with institutions from both the public and private sectors. This process ensured alignment with the aspirations of Jordanian industry, civil society, and government, and that the roadmap reflects the country's national directives and development priorities.
As part of the roadmap development process involved, Jordan`s level of readiness was assessed in terms of three spheres: policy and regulatory, the technical and community. Jordan’s legislative framework already provides a solid enabling environment for a circular economic transition; for example with its Waste Management Framework Law, the Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) instructions, the Investment Environment Law, and the newly issued Jordan National Green Taxonomy. On the technical front, Jordan’s waste management infrastructure is still predominantly disposal-oriented, with over 90 % of the estimated 4.24 million tonnes of municipal solid waste generated annually flowing to landfills. Segregation and recycling capacities are growing but still limited, and industrial symbiosis remains nascent. At the community level, a strong cultural foundation of reuse and mindful consumption, represents a significant asset. However, formal recycling participation, consumer-facing information tools, and gender-responsive circular economy policies are still underdeveloped.
Following this baseline analysis, the Roadmap identifies five national priority circularity topics that aim to address Jordan’s structural resource vulnerabilities: circular sourcing of materials, material resource efficiency, waste-to-resource, water circularity, and resource-efficient energy systems. These topics are considered across six EMV-aligned sectors, which have been identified for priority implementation: agriculture, mining, manufacturing, food processing, construction, and tourism. They have been selected on the basis of their impact on energy, water, and material flows and their potential to deliver strong economic, environmental, and social returns.
The implementation of the Roadmap is structured around a three-tier architecture that is fully aligned with the Green Growth governance framework led and coordinated by the Ministry of Environment: the Higher Steering Committee, the Technical Committee and a proposed dedicated circular economy sub-committee that would track progress, strengthen interministerial coordination, and support regular reporting.
The Roadmap’s action plan unfolds across three phases that reflect the long-term nature of the circular transition. The Foundation Phase (to 2030) prioritises the establishment of the enabling conditions, focusing on completing legislative gap analyses, piloting circular public procurement in government agencies, launching national awareness campaigns, integrating circular economy modules into national education curricula, mapping industrial symbiosis opportunities in key industrial estates, and collecting baseline data for circular economy indicators. The Scaling Phase (to 2040) moves from piloting to mainstreaming. During this phase, the EPR is expected to expand to additional product categories, green finance mechanisms for circular investments are operationalised, industrial symbiosis networks scale across priority sectors, and digital material tracking systems become operational in at least three sectors. The Circular System Integration Phase (to 2050) embeds circularity comprehensively across all national procurement, all sectoral legislation, and all planning instruments, with a full circular economy data and monitoring system producing annual public progress reports. Across all three phases, interventions are structured along the three spheres of influence – policy and regulatory framework, technical capacity, and community behaviour – to ensure coherence and accountability.
Running across all sectors and phases is a systems approach that recognises the Water-Energy-Food-Ecosystems (WEFE) nexus as a defining feature of Jordan’s resource security context. Industrial symbiosis, circular design, and shared resource infrastructure are identified as cross-sectoral levers that multiply impact beyond any single sector. Closing the gap between green finance availability and circular project bankability through blended finance, concessional lending, and risk-sharing instruments represents one of the most pressing near-term priorities. The roadmap aims to inform further national and sectoral strategy development, as a key next step to operationalizing the shift towards a circular economy in Jordan.
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