In April 2020, Kate Raworth was officially invited to join the City of Amsterdam's post-pandemic economic planning efforts, after almost a year’s planning on the adoption of the Doughnut model. This was critical for keeping the planet in the stable state of Holocene that has allowed civilizations to thrive over the past 10,000 years.ĭiagrammatically, the core of the model depicts the proportion of people that lack access to life's essential services like healthcare, education, equity, while the periphery represents the ecological ceilings (planetary boundaries) that life depends on and must not be overshot. In 2009, Johan Rockström of the Stockholm Resilience Centre, brought together a group of leading Earth-system scientists to identify a total of nine boundaries to avoid the danger zone of each Earth-system process (such as setting a boundary of 350 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to prevent dangerous climate change).

The Doughnut Model can be thought of as a circular economy to achieve a set of 11 societal goals within the framework of 9 planetary boundaries. No one should be left in the hole in the middle of the Doughnut, falling short on the essentials of life, ranging from food and water to gender equality and having a political voice. The Doughnut’s social foundation, which is derived from the social priorities in the UN Sustainable Development Goals, sets out the minimum standard of living to which every human being has a claim.

For far too long now, the damages done in the drive for growth have been parked as externalities to be dealt later. The Doughnut Model is an integrated approach that combines circular economy, planetary boundaries and also adds the social justice needs to it. The chase behind utility, efficiency and growth have sidelined some of the fundamental moot points that need to be brought to the core like an unpaid care economy where women take up the humongous burden of looking after their families for no pay, environmental externalities and the raging wealthy disparity. Ignoring the power of the collaborative commons in the economy inevitably has led to ignoring some of the most disruptive, dynamic elements of the economy.

Kate raworth