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Resources such as water, energy, and arable land represent bottlenecks with regard to achieving key sustainability paradigms such as the circular economy (CE). They exhibit vital inputs and outputs for economic development, and they are closely linked to the environmental challenges to the protection of ecosystems, emissions reduction, and sustainable resource use. In the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), aridity, large environmental footprints and the reliance on carbon fuels accentuate the importance of the water and energy sectors. This paper analyzes the resource nexus in KSA using the lens of the CE. It examines the relevance of the CE paradigm, and presents current progress, interventions and policy initiatives to promote this paradigm in natural resource sectors and subsectors such as desalination, electricity production, urban mobility, and agricultural water use. The current directions in KSA show a …