Doughnut Economics

Currently reading: Oxford economist Kate Raworth’s model for a safe operating space for our economies, modelled on a doughnut where the middle cavity is our failure to provide for society’s most vulnerable, a space of have-nots. The crust or outer limit of the model, conversely, depicts earth’s ecological ceiling - beyond which we are no longer meeting all our needs in a sustainable way, but overshooting our resources and borrowing from a fund we cannot repay.

In her model, an economy is considered prosperous when all twelve ‘social foundations’ (water, food, health, education etc) are met without overshooting any of the nice ecological ceilings (climate change, air pollution, ocean acidification etc).

Also see Johan Rockstrom’s work on planetary boundaries (Stockholm Resilience Centre).