Experimenting with a new paradigm
What can we learn from how Amsterdam is using the doughnut model to create socio-economic and environmental change?
In a recent article in the Guardian, extensively quoted in further articles around the world, I learnt that the city of Amsterdam will embrace the Doughnut theory to inform future strategy planning and policy making.
If you’ve never heard of it, the doughnut of social and planetary boundaries is a model developed by Kate Raworth in 2017 to frame the challenge of meeting the needs of all within the means of the planet. In other words, “to ensure that no one falls short on life’s essentials (from food and housing to healthcare and political voice), while ensuring that collectively we do not overshoot our pressure on Earth’s life-supporting systems, on which we fundamentally depend — such as a stable climate, fertile soils, and a protective ozone layer”.
While some experiments have been run around the world since the publication of the book to use this model to define future development pathways, the bold move announced by the city of Amsterdam will undoubtedly shed a new light on the possibilities of the model.
While the announcement of the decision has probably been accelerated by the current crisis, the thinking preceded it as the city was considering some of the bigger waves ahead of us like the rise of populism and the climate crisis. What the current COVID-19 crisis has allowed however, is to make that decision and its announcement sound complete natural and in sync with the times, which may not have been the case only a few months back.
So how can an 850,000 people city suddenly turn its back to the dominant model?
The project has started with asking a very fundamental question:
How can our city be a home to thriving people in a thriving place, while respecting the well-being of all the people and the health of the whole planet?
To dive into this question, the team explored four interdependent questions with a broad range of stakeholders to produce a new ‘portrait’ of the city from four inter-connected perspectives. This portrait became a starting point to define aspirations, set goals and catalyze actions.
Find out more about the current progress of the project here.
It is too early to evaluate the transformational impact of this initiative on the city, its people and its environment but it is interesting to consider the conditions that the team has created to maximize the chances that it brings about positive socioeconomic and environmental change.
Here are some of the conditions I have been able to gather through my research…
1. Challenging some of the foundational hypothesis of the current paradigm and in particular, the premise that indefinite growth is viable.
2. Relying on a credible alternative framework to help structure the thinking and the doing, and to create a new common reference and language.
3. Facilitating cross-sector collaboration between government, municipalities, businesses and academia at every level.
4. Create a cross-sector coalition of leaders to establish the legitimacy and credibility of the approach (in the case of Amsterdam, a Doughnut coalition composed of over 30 organizations — including community groups, commons-based organizations, SMEs, businesses, academia and local government).
5. Engage simultaneously with policy makers and communities to explore both the perception of what is, and the aspirations of what could be, building on facts & data as well as people’s lived experience.
6. Launch a multitude of projects (over 200 in their case) that, while independent from each other, all pursue a similar intent. This allows to ensure a critical mass of impact in the right direction regardless of the proportion of projects that may fail or under-deliver.
7. A dedicated team focusing on enriching the body of knowledge with new tools and framework that could facilitate the work (Doughnut Economics Action Lab) as the needs arise on the ground.
I am struck by the convergence between some of those principles and the findings of our current research at Openfield on how to drive deep and sustainable systemic transformation.
In particular, here are 6 considerations, illustrated once more in this story, that we increasingly believe could be regarded as universal to transform a system (organization, sector or society):
- Strong distributed leadership across the system to hold the space for a new paradigm and to ensure effective strategic navigation throughout the journey.
- A safe experimentation environment, with facilitation and guidance, to catalyse, accelerate and amplify multiple initiatives with convergent goals.
- An enabling set of models, frameworks and tools to support new ways of thinking and doing.
- Engagement mechanisms to involve the broader ecosystem into the shaping of the ambition, the exploration of options, and the implementation of solutions.
- A sense of place to create a container for the initiative with a different authorizing environment and sense of possibilities.
- A deliberate effort to generate a new narrative that places what’s emerging at the heart of the new normal within the system.
On a professional level, I’ll be monitoring this Doughnut coalition to extract every possible learning about cross sector collaboration and systemic transformation. On a personal level, I’ll keep my fingers crossed that this project demonstrates a society can thrive without focusing on growth.
