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“Sustainability in all things” should be our species philosophy; the Doughnut Model, our compass for the journey. — David Attenborough
When I first heard the term “Doughnut Economics,” I thought it might be a joke about some guy who spends all his money at a bakery. But I kept seeing references to the concept in the various environmental and sustainability journals I follow, so I got “the” book on the subject, and my eyes were opened.
A hallmark of English economist Kate Raworth’s book “Doughnut Economics” is its accessibility. Unless you’re mathematically inclined, what could be more intimidating (or duller) than a book about economics? But Raworth takes a graphic approach to the field, illustrating her ideas not with equations but with simple diagrams that anyone can understand and relate to.
First, she illustrates the concept of a circular economy, where, rather than following a straight line from their source to their sink — that is, from Nature to the county dump — material exchanges follow a circular path in which goods are reused and recycled by design. She illustrates this concept by drawing, of all things, a circle.
Then she draws a second, smaller circle, inside the first. The open space between the circles is a graphic track, or “doughnut,” where material exchanges (economic activity) should take place — the “safe and just space for humanity.”
Outside the larger circle is the unsafe space of environmental overshoot — our current situation in which we are using the planet’s renewable resources faster than they can be replenished and dumping more pollutants than nature can process.
The center of the diagram, inside the inner circle, is the unjust space, where poverty and deprivation are allowed to fester. A healthy, sustainable economy must operate between the lines — within the doughnut.
Once she illustrates and explains the Doughnut Economy, Raworth outlines, in her subsequent chapters, seven steps for creating it.
The first step is to change the goal, that is, to no longer measure economic health by GDP growth but by the ways in which the economy serves human needs.
To clarify this concept, she quotes the 18th century English social thinker John Ruskin, who wrote: “That country is richest which nourishes the greatest number of noble and happy human beings.”
After changing our economic goal, Raworth says we must stop viewing the economy as a self-contained entity, and instead see it as a subset of functions that are completely embedded in the global ecosystem. Economic activity is dependent upon, and reciprocally affects, the biosphere.
Next, she says we need to nurture human nature, changing our image of the individual from that of “rational economic man” — which she illustrates with a stick figure carrying a dollar sign and labeled “ME” — to that of socially interactive, interdependent and mutually supportive humans.
She then explains that we need to “get savvy” with systems thinking, abandoning the idea that the economy naturally seeks stagnant equilibrium and regarding it as an organic, complex system that is always in a state of flux affected by seemingly minor inputs and feedback loops.
This “living economy” model is an essential tool for managing economic fluctuations before they become inflationary or recessive spirals.
Her fifth and sixth steps, designing the economy to be distributive rather than accumulative (wealth redistribution), and regenerative — that is, reusing rather than wasting its resources — are also management tools that will contribute to sustainable economic health.
Finally, Raworth implores us to be “agnostic” about growth, meaning that we should view growth as multifaceted — we can grow more forests, not just more money — and see growth as beneficial only within the boundaries of the Doughnut.
Economics is, after all, just a set of ideas. Doughnut Economics is a new set of ideas that might just save our ecological house.
Philip S. Wenz
Philip S. Wenz studies environmental trends and developments. Visit his blog at Firebird Journal (firebirdjournal.com).
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Philip S. Wenz
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