Doughnut Economics - Kate Raworth - Part 2 of 8

2020 Reading Challenge - Day 210

July 30, 2020

Book 58 - Doughnut Economics
Kate Raworth
Chapter 1 - pages 27-51

Reading Time - 60 minutes

This chapter takes a look at how we can Change the Goal. For decades, nations have focused on the GNP (Gross National Product) or GDP (Gross Domestic Product) to measure economic health and growth. But this has come at the expense of climate change which does not compute for the GDP economists. Using GDP is simply using a very narrow, single metric to measure a nation's economic health.

Raworth asks... what is our goal... she suggests... prosperity for all, within the means of the planet. And then she looks at how the goals have changed over the last few hundred years.

In the 1700s, the goal of economics was secure living and jobs for all. In the 1800s, with John Stuart Mills, that changed to the production of wealth and figuring out the laws of economics... laws that would make economics one of the hard sciences. Today, economics is the study of how society manages its scarce resources bu there is no mention of goals.

If we look at GDP... the goal is simply exponential growth upwards and forwards... words that are taken to mean something is "good".. but is more better? Is unending growth desirable? Focusing on GDP as the sole indicator of economic health omits a number of other indicators. In addition... it raises some interesting questions: growth of what and why? growth for whom? growth for how long?

Rather than a goal of unending growth... what about having this as a goal: advancing the richness of human life. What about enlarging people's capabilities so that they can be healthy, empowered and creative. The doughnut model looks at two areas... the area that humans need and the area that the planet needs. What if our goal were to provide for every person's needs and safeguard the world at the same time.

Shortfalls in the Social Foundation and Overshoots in Ecological Ceiling

If we look at the indicators of the social foundation and the ecological ceiling... we can see that we are not doing too well... Millions of people still live without the basic necessities of life. And the planet is under immense pressure as we blow past the upper limits of things like biodiversity loss and climate change.

We live in a precious time, the Holocene ,which has seen a remarkably stable climate... but we are now moving into the realm of human-induced climate change and we don't know what that might do. We live in a complex socio-ecological system and human thriving depends upon planetary thriving. In the same way that Copernicus rocked the world when he said that the Earth was not the centre of the solar system... we need to understand that we are not the centre or the pinnacle of the ecosystem. We are highly dependent upon everything from water to air to worms and bees.

Raworth argues that we don't need onwards and upwards... we need to come into dynamic balance. We could even map out our own lives on the doughnut model... are we living a doughnut life? Companies and cities can do it as well. To live in a society that is equitable and sustainable.