Introduction
That’s
why cities including Amsterdam, Brussels, Copenhagen, Berlin, and Cambridge are
experimenting with Kate Raworth’s Doughnut model—a new framework for regenerative development—in their efforts
to tackle the climate crisis and ecological collapse. Their focus on economic
remodeling is opening up new areas of debate about the transition. However, it
still falls short of what is needed to democratically usher in systemic
transitions that go beyond decarbonization. One thing the Doughnut model gets
right is how economic relationships need to change as part of climate
transitions. It is on the back of this relational change that different
political redesigns can take place and give birth to new reflections on
democratic engagement and resilience combined with climate ambitions.
BACKGROUND
Social
contracts have been on increasingly fragile ground in democracies over the last
decade. Beginning with the 2007–2008 financial crisis and the Occupy Wall Street movement
that emerged from it, deep unease turned into a profound democratic rift of
confidence. People have grown increasingly skeptical of political institutions
they perceive to prioritize financial interests over social resilience—thereby
exacerbating the concentration of economic power and political decisionmaking
in the hands of an unaccountable minority.
These
concerns were again on display during the Yellow Vest demonstrations
that gripped France for over a year. The introduction of a fuel tax—however
small it was—highlighted the ways that important segments of French society
feel their standards of living have slipped and future economic opportunities
have dried up. They worry that climate-related policies may leave a large
majority behind—especially in rural areas. To be sure, the protesters were
never against the transition; rather, they were against bearing the costs of an
economic system they perceive to be working in favor of elites who benefit from
city-driven economies. Because the welfare state is widely seen as either
biased or broken, climate-related transitions are at risk of failing. This is
especially true if transition costs reinforce perceptions of economic
stagnation and misgovernance.
The
current gas crisis has
compounded these fears, bundling the effects of carbon pricing with twin shocks
from the coronavirus pandemic and energy competition. If anything, this crisis
demonstrates clearly that energy and fuel-subsidized economics are no longer a
means to greater social mobility, freedom, and better standards of
living—former cornerstones of the liberal democracy framework. The twin promise
of political stability and expansive individual freedoms is questioned as a
result, without an alternative value-proposition in sight. The challenge is not
to fix the old paradigm, though, it is to invent a new one, something
institutions and states are struggling with.
At the
regional level, the EU is trying to revive a new age of economic opportunity
with the Green Deal, investing into new sectors, new jobs, and green growth.
The EU has coupled this with its Climate Pact, a framework through which the union hopes
to activate civic engagement within the transition. But for all it’s worth, the
Green Deal is still focused on a model that fails to take into account
the full breadth of looming
ecological crises. And while it banks on higher digital employment
opportunity and virtual mobility for the future of work, these prospects may
entirely fail to address fundamental grievances in societies where labor
conditions have grown increasingly fragile and where digital divides may lay
bare socioeconomic and territorial inequalities. This has a direct impact on
voting behaviors and political polarization vis-à-vis ecological issues. The
economics of the transition are still mired into polarized perspectives over
the distributional effects of costs and opportunities. More generally, they
lack a value narrative that people can rally behind.
This is
why city-level experiments with the Doughnut model’s application could be so
significant. Cities are currently home to over half of the world’s population.
They cover only 2 percent of
the world’s terrestrial surface, yet they use more than 70 percent of the
world’s natural resources and emit approximately 70 percent of greenhouse gases.
Their demand drives extraction around the world, and their waste spreads in
equal measure. The global economy revolves around them as hubs for consumption,
innovation, commerce, financial exchanges, services, and technological
concentration. Cities, especially in developed countries, have become a force
of geological change in our time of the Anthropocene.
While
the globalized economy depends on cities to function, cities themselves depend
on complex networks of supply chains in rural areas and outside country
borders. These dependencies are often associated with ecological destruction
and exploitative supply chains (such as in the agricultural sector). In other
words, cities outsource their negative impacts beyond their confines, making
the consequences invisible to their inhabitants and lessening the political
appetite for accountability and change. So, in a global system that revolves
around cities, logic would have it that transformational systems change could
begin there too.
This is
the idea that Raworth’s Doughnut model offers a way to act on.
