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Doughnut Economics in Amsterdam
University of Oxford economist Kate Raworth in her 2012 paper ‘A Safe and Just Space for Humanity’ and in her 2017 book ‘Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist’ introduced the concept of Doughnut Economics.
After the 2008 financial crash, Raworth sought an alternative to the economics she had been taught. Doing work for Oxfam, a nonprofit organization focusing on the eradication of poverty, she came across the work of a group of scientists identifying nine “planetary boundaries” that threatened humanity’s survival. These boundaries were presented in a diagram showing a circle — the safe place for humans to be, was inside the circle. Raworth thought that if there was a problem of overextending the economy over the planet’s resources, there was also a problem of a shortfall — not securing decent living conditions for the people: access to housing, health care, education, food. So she drew a second circle within that circle, and the diagram ended looking like a doughnut.
The inner ring of the doughnut represented the resources required to live a decent life — people living in the middle of the doughnut lived in deprivation.
The outer ring of the doughnut consisted of the limits beyond which we inflicted serious damage to the environment. The area between the two rings would be the environmental and social space in which humanity should…
