**3. Conceptual history of sustainability**

In academic circles, there is agreement that sustainable development requires simultaneous improvement of environmental, social, and economic outcomes [10]. Overall, sustainable development takes a global and long-term perspective for a prosperous, just, and secure future [11]. Sustainability science has been defined as "an emerging field of research dealing with the interactions between natural and social systems, and with how those interactions affect the challenge of sustainability. Sustainability is one of the most used concepts in almost every field today. This situation is related to today's global and local conditions. Here, we look at the historical background of the concept and discuss the current situation. The derivation of technical and academic terms and concepts relates to a use, application or invention. When concepts express approaches, they reflect deeper content, so is the concept of sustainability [10].

Looking at the past, it can be predicted that there were practices within the scope of sustainability in different civilizations in the past centuries, although they do not exactly overlap with today's terminology and content. This area is a subject of a separate study, and it is possible to find various examples that can inspire today when researched. However, when the available sources are examined, the first use of the term and concept of sustainability dates back to the 18th century. Historically,

#### *An Evaluation of the Transition from Linear Economy to Circular Economy DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.107980*

depletion of natural resources is not new and hits renewable resources first. The scarcity of wood was the concern of feudal Europe and led to the introduction of sustainability principles in forest management. It was in order to preserve wood supplies for the Kingdom of Saxony where in 1713 it was for the first time clearly formulated that forestry had to be "sustainable", which meant that logging and reforestation had to be in balance. Similar concepts arose in France and Japan [12].

In the same sense as today's literature, the term "sustainability" itself was used for the very first time in 1953 by JL. Fisher [13, 14]. However, as an original idea "limits to growth", which underlies the whole concept of sustainability and sustainable development, and which would later take the form of the contemporarily well-known multidimensional sustainability idea, was expressed much earlier by Malthus's population growth theory, in the end of the 18th century. The United Nations Conference on the Human Environment was an international conference convened in 1972, and brought the industrialized and developing nations. It was the UN's first major conference on international environmental issues and marked a turning point in the development of international environmental politics [15]. The present and modern understanding of this concept have been though fully and explicitly articulated for the first time in 1987, within the frame of the so-called Brundtland Report on Sustainable Development, which is sometimes termed shortly "Our Common Future". As the term sustainability is considered not only a scientific idea, but a moral value, a normative goal based on this value, and a pathway for the international policy or social movements as well [14]. Generally in its most widespread perception, sustainability is defined as "a development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs" [11]. In this context, sustainability stands out as a concept whose frequency of use is constantly increasing in academic literature and socioeconomic life and which remains to be one of the major agenda items because it represents an important approach to the future of the world, humanity, and the ecosystem.

So, the concept of sustainability has been in use for more than three centuries. Therefore, after emerging out of necessity, it has made its way to today's lexicon, getting enriched in content and being used in conjunction with different concepts.

## **4. Towards sustainability and circular economy**

During the industrial revolution, the increasing demand for inputs and the production factors put into commercial use paved the way for the development of economics and new economic models. The journey that started with the classical economics still continues. However, in addition to factors such as the scarcity of resources, challenges related to resource utilization efficiency, misuse of natural resources, limitedness of production factors and unjust distribution of resources, threats such as climate change have also paved the way for discussions around new models as an alternative to linear economy. This has, in a sense, rendered the SDGs central to sustainability discussions, and the developments that support the SDGs, such as the green economy, circular economy, and bioeconomy have become popular narratives in macro-level sustainability discussions in policy, scientific research, and business. The 17 Sustainable Development Goals set forth by the United Nations in 2015 have renewed a global vision to address sustainability challenges and emphasized the urgency for concerted efforts by multiple societal actors. Over the past decades, "[s]ustainability science" has attracted tens of thousands of researchers,

practitioners, knowledge users, teachers, and students from diverse institutions and disciplines from across the world [16]. However, circular economy (CE) is currently a popular concept promoted by the EU, by several national governments and by many businesses around the World [17]. Therefore, the process of change that we have experienced demonstrates the UN will play a key role in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. According to Velenturf and Purnell [10], economic growth is still part of the goals, e.g., SDGs 8 and 9, which relate economic growth to resource efficiency, and the main mechanism proposed to achieve a balance is through decoupling. SDG 12 does not mention circular economy literally, but it does cover the sustainable management and efficient use of natural resources, reducing and preventing wastes, uptake of reuse etc., and changes in lifestyles, procurement policy and business reporting, all of which are closely aligned with circular economy principles. Targets under sixteen out of the seventeen SDGs are related to a circular economy (**Figure 2**).

However, the circular economy can contribute positively to most of the sustainable development goals, but sustainable development and circular economy are on diverging pathways. While the sustainable development agenda puts people front and center with economic prosperity recognized as a means for living fulfilling lives in harmony with nature, circular economy remains fixated on technological solutions, the implementation of which is driven by a promise of traditional economic growth. Circular economy also must be fully integrated with sustainable development. Circular economy should be understood as an emerging practical ideology that lacks an evidence-based theoretical framework to guide implementation. It lacks an economic theory that can pragmatically guide the transition from the prevailing neoclassical model toward one that would drive the transition toward a sustainable circular economy and be palatable for governments. The critique on circular economy should be understood as much as a critique on sustainable development itself, and both require research and constant learning to ensure progress towards sustainability [10]. It is an inevitable necessity to manage the process taking into account the contribution of local and international cooperation efforts to sustainability.

As is known, circular economy is an economy constructed from societal productionconsumption systems that maximize the services produced from the linear naturesociety-nature material and energy throughput flow. This is done by using cyclical materials flows, renewable energy sources and cascading1 -type energy flows. Successful circular economy contributes to all three dimensions of sustainable development. Circular economy limits the throughput flow to a level that nature tolerates and utilizes ecosystem cycles in economic cycles by respecting their natural reproduction rates [17].

Previous research shows that Circular Economy (CE) is a concept that stems from the need to address environmental degradation, social unrest and inequalities, institutional instability, resource scarcity, and economic challenges caused by the linear nature-society-nature systems that a large portion of society operates on [18]. In this framework, the acceptance of circular economy on a global scale gives rise to a need for novel technologies such as renewable energy generation technologies, which will be among the major topics of discussion in the medium term. It would be appropriate to explore academic research to clarify this issue. The following sections deal with the extent to which topics such as sustainability, green economy, and circular economy are addressed and what other topics are highlighted in scientific research and publications. It is of particular importance in that it shows the direction of change in scientific studies with respect to the concepts in the specified fields. Therefore, a bibliographic assessment of sustainability is provided below.

*An Evaluation of the Transition from Linear Economy to Circular Economy DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.107980*

#### **Figure 2.**

*Circular economy can enable a significant number of targets under the UN sustainable development goals (legend: Fraction of targets under each goal that would be strongly (red) and partially (orange) enabled by the implementation of circular economy measures).*

### **5. An assessment of sustainability approach**

Bibliometric analyses provide a big and profound picture of the current knowledge base. Also known as science mapping, bibliometric analyses have been applied in a variety of fields and disciplines. However, studies on the concepts of circular economy and sustainability are also being conducted. Therefore, this section analyses the global knowledge base on sustainability and new concepts associated with it.

The concept of sustainability has been used continuously in academic literature and socio-economic life on a global and local scale since the day it was introduced. Pollution and the threat of global climate change, especially as a result of industrialization, led to controversies surrounding classical economics and the search for alternative methods. In this context, they paved the way for the emergence of circularity-based concepts and approaches as an alternative, such as green and blue economies. To provide a better understanding of this development process, the concepts of sustainability, green economy, circular economy, and green deal are addressed.

### **6. Material and methodology**

In the bibliometric analysis, VOSviewer was used to retrieve the publications on sustainability. VOSviewer is a software tool for constructing and visualizing bibliometric networks. At the same time, it can be used to construct maps of authors or journals based on co-citation data or to construct maps of keywords based on co-occurrence data [19, 20]. To identify the most commonly used themes associated with the theme of the research, an analysis of the networks was conducted based on the keywords. There are several network techniques used for this purpose. Among them, researchers usually employ methodologies based on distance, graphs, and

timelines [21]. Keywords refer to the basic concepts used in a study. They are the core and essence of a document, which is a high-level summary of the article content [22]. In this paper, the bibliometric data come from Scopus, one of the world's leading academic databases. What is conducted here is network of fractional order research on the scientific literature concerning sustainability, green economy, and circular economy. The figure shows the distribution of hot keywords in fractional order research, and different colors in the figure represent different clusters of research hotspots. Figures are mainly composed of nodes and connecting lines. The larger the keyword node, the higher the frequency of occurrence, and the thicker the line between nodes, the higher the co-occurrence frequency. Moreover, the distribution of the distance between nodes is positively correlated with the relevance of keywords [23]. Accordingly, the analysis of the keywords provides strong data about the content of the subject discussed in the research articles.
