Doughnut Economics - Kate Raworth
Why did I choose this book?
I chose this book because the subject of sustainability really interests me. This book offers a new way of looking at the economy, how the people and the world are set up, which allows me to make other links, for example with the circular economy and the Sustainable Development Goals. This book broadened my view of the economy and helped me understand how it has evolved over time and why we are where we are today.
About the book:
What would a sustainable, universally beneficial economy look like? "Like a doughnut," says Oxford economist Kate Raworth. She explains in her book how we can create regenerative, distributive economies that work within the planet's ecological limits. The problem nowadays is that economies need to grow, whether or not they make us thrive. And what we need, especially in the richest countries are economies that make us thrive whether or not they grow. To begin with, it's important to understand where this obsession with growth come from. GDP for gross domestic product which is just the total cost of goods and services sold in an economy in a year was invented in the 1930s, but it very soon became the overriding goal of policymaking. So much so that even today, in the richest of countries, governments think that the solution to their economic problems lies in more growth. This is obviously linked to industrialisation and mass consumerism. For over half a century on, we are flying into the sunset of mass consumerism with economies that have come to expect, demand, and depend upon unending growth, because we’re financially, politically and socially addicted to it. We are financially addicted to growth, because today’s financial system is designed to pursue the highest rate of monetary return, putting publicly traded companies under constant pressure to deliver growing sales, growing market share and growing profits. And because banks create money as debt bearing interest, which must be repaid with more. None of these addictions are insurmountable, but they all deserve far more attention than they currently get and that’s where the doughnut comes in. Humanity’s 21st century challenge is clear: To meet the needs of all people within the means of our planet so that we and the rest of nature can thrive. Progress on this goal isn’t going to be measured with the metric of money but with a dashboard of indicators. Below, you can have a look at the Doughnut with the different indicators suggested by Kate Raworth.
Source: https://doughnuteconomics.org/about-doughnut-economics#what-is-the-doughnut
The Doughnut model comprises two interconnected rings: the one in the middle represents a social foundation to guarantee that everyone has access to life's essentials with 12 social areas. These are networks, gender equality, political voice, social equity. Peace & justice, income & work, health, food, water, housing, energy, education. The larger one is the ecological ceiling to prevent humanity from surpassing the planetary boundaries safeguarding Earth's life-supporting systems. It consists of 9 planetary sustainability limits which are ozone layer depletion, climate change, ocean acidification, chemical pollution, nitrogen & phosphorous loading, land conversion, freshwater withdrawals, biodiversity loss and air pollution. Within the social foundation and the ecological ceiling, shaped like a doughnut, lies a zone that is both environmentally sustainable and socially equitable, a space where the humanity can flourish.
But can we find this dynamic balance in the 21st century? In 2023, all planetary boundaries were mapped out for the first time and six of nine are crossed as the graphic below shows.
Source: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adh2458
From my point of view, I think we can still reverse the trend and improve our quality of life in general by creating new economies that are much more sustainable and respect the planet's limits. However, we are probably the last to be able to do so, and we need all the stakeholders, including governments, companies and lobbies, to have a very strong impact on our society and the way we consume.
Points I take away from the book:
This double-sided challenge to meet the needs of all within the means of the planet, it invites a new shape of progress. We have inherited degenerative industries where we take earth’s materials, make them into stuff we want, use it for a while, often only once, and then throw it away and that is pushing us over planetary boundaries. The link with circular economy is that we need to create economies that work with and within the cycles of the living world, so the resources are never used up but used again and again. The society in which we live must learn to reconcile growth with planetary limits. It is more important to create resilient and above all regenerative economies in order to repair the damage caused previously. This requires a profound change in the society mindset.
Conclusion
In conclusion, this book gave me a different perspective on the world, the economy and on the way our society is behaving now thanks to his historical context. The various questions raised by the author about growth are very pertinent and led me to think about the solutions we could put in place, even though it is a complex subject. Finally, I was able to apply what I had learned in this reading to prepare a presentation to explain this concept to Officers in the municipality where I currently work. I took the key points from the book to explain this new economy in an understandable and effective way. This exchange enabled me to consolidate the theoretical bases I had acquired from reading the book.
