engGarcía Madurga, Miguel ÁngelGrilló Méndez, Ana JuliaCircular economy and the rural environment in the post-covid era: new models against longstanding challengesART-2023-135850The depopulation of rural areas is a major problem with relevant environmental and socio-economic implications. This article identifies and analyses the proposals made by the academic literature to contribute, with the help of the circular economy, to gradually reverse this situationwhile recovering from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. For this purpose, a systematic review has been carried out, whose flow of inclusion decisions, based on the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses [PRISMA]methodology, has allowed the selection of thirty-nine articles from the main scientific databases, Scopus and Web of Science. Its qualitative analysis concludes that the research focuses on the strategies to be adopted to implement the principles of the circular economy in rural areas and on case studies on the use of fruit and vegetable waste and energy generation. Future studies should establish the procedures for scaling up theseexperiences.2023http://zaguan.unizar.es/record/129579http://zaguan.unizar.es/record/129579oai:zaguan.unizar.es:129579Journal of rural and community development 18, 4 (2023), 125-154All rights reservedhttp://www.europeana.eu/rights/rr-f/info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess