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.
WHAT IS THE
DOUGHNUT MODEL?
Raworth
came up with the Doughnut model back in 2017 (see figure 1).
The
inner ring represents the social thresholds where human societies should not
underperform, based on the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.
The outer ring represents the ecological thresholds that
humanity should not overshoot. When taken together, they provide a roadmap of
indicators that define humanity’s
“safe operating space”—one in which social fragmentation does not undermine
well-being or social peace and where nature’s ecological foundations are not
just safely guarded but also regenerated and sustained over time.
The
Doughnut model offers a theory of economic change and a multifunctional
analytical tool for a climate-disrupted world. To a certain extent, it aims to
provide a civic engagement tool that pushes decisionmakers to find economic
activities with meaning beyond growth and reason within ecological limits. The
model provides its users with a vision, tool, and platform for socioeconomic
engagement—albeit at micro-scale for now.
This
combination is potentially significant. The last decade’s social movements,
culminating in France’s Yellow Vest protests, were said to lack form and technical ability to
engage political actors constructively. The Doughnut model may help to bridge
that gap, offering a tool that makes cities directly accountable to their
dependent networks. What is missing in the model, though, is a methodology to
design political and civic engagement processes that translate diagnoses into
policy, behavioral, and economic action. Unless this gap is filled, the model
will not fulfill its potential and aspiration for systems change.
CHANGING THE
ECONOMIC NARRATIVE
In
Raworth’s words, the doughnut represents a “compass for progress,” underpinned
by nine principles—two of which may well redefine the future relationship
between politics and economics. The first is that economics should be
redistributive and regenerative by design, matching the indicators of the upper
ceiling and lower social ring of the doughnut. The second is that economists,
politicians, and policymakers alike should be agnostic about economic growth
and pursue multidimensional indicators of performance beyond gross domestic
production. Taken together, these principles (along with the other seven) imply that socioeconomic and geoeconomic models
should pursue simultaneously functional and ethical goals that aim to stabilize
and nurture human and ecological systems. Production and consumption patterns
should be adapted accordingly to stay within the safe operating space for
humanity.
This
narrative—about redirecting the notion of progress toward ecological
foundations while serving people’s well-being—is obviously compelling, as it
responds both to the climate crisis and the democratic rift of confidence that
has undermined social contracts. The key question that remains is how the
Doughnut model can be translated from a visionary concept into a practical
tool.
This is
where the role of cities is so important.
THE DOUGHNUT METHODOLOGY
Like
any good methodology, the Doughnut model starts
with a question: “How can our city be a home to thriving people, in a thriving
place, whilst respecting the wellbeing of all people, and the health of the
whole planet?” This big question can be broken down into various categories to
explore the linkages between the local and global levels, as well as the
economic, social, and ecological dimensions of a city’s ecosystems and
dependencies (see table 1).
These questions have been explored interactively in Doughnut labs, analytical workshops that ask participating citizens to create “city portraits.” In some cases, these workshops have been prompted by city authorities, consisting of consultative processes based on voluntary participation by private actors and citizens that want to actively contribute to transition planning. On the whole, though, they remain mostly driven by volunteers who have little leverage over city governance for now.
So far,
Doughnut labs have yielded a few interesting results:
1. Where they are applied, they can redefine city-level performance
on transitions. In Brussels, the Green Party sitting within the regional government officially adopted the Doughnut model
to test transition pathways. They outsourced lab and diagnostic implementation
to a local association that
involved citizens in their reflections. The result is a new monitoring and
evaluation framework for the city to define its transition success. Doughnut
lab participants painted a “city portrait” that is now composed of
multidimensional indicators, adaptive over time, and designed to reflect the
relationships between people, their economy, and their direct environment.
2. In some cases, Doughnut lab participants have provided road map
questions to hold political parties to new standards of accountability during
election campaigns. In Cambridge, for example, activists sent a series of Doughnut-related questions directly to various political candidates
running for city leadership and published the results. Such questions include
how political parties plan to respond to the twin challenges of climate and
social emergencies and whether they plan to vote for a climate and ecological
emergency bill. This exercise helped to translate political agendas regarding
the climate crisis and social issues into less technical terms and a more
digestible format.
3. Doughnut labs have also helped redefine climate targets through
network and supply chain analysis, providing transparency on city dependencies.
This is singularly important. A lot of greenhouse gas emissions are imported
rather than produced in cities themselves. Truncated carbon accounting systems
and targets skew city-dwellers’ perceptions of their own climate footprint,
which often leads to residents taking less responsibility for their
consumption, production, and waste footprint outside city limits. Portland, Oregon, for example, realized upon applying a
Doughnut analysis that its emissions were double what it had originally
calculated. In turn, this type of truncated view creates the false perception
that cities drive
climate transitions while rural areas don’t care. Such perceptions can easily
cause unnecessary and counterproductive polarization. Transitions will only
succeed if they are systemic, an outlook that relies on crosscutting
collaboration and the harnessing of economic interdependencies for better
collective purposes.
The
Doughnut model’s strength so far is that it equips citizens with a set of
questions and analytical lenses that support accountability through a
transition that goes beyond decarbonization. This provides visibility over
ecological and economic interdependencies on the one hand and socioeconomic
interdependencies on the other. Though results remain limited for now,
Amsterdam is engaged in some
interesting experiments with construction projects that reduce the city’s
ecological footprint and spur more social fabric and resilience at the local
level.
WHERE THE DOUGHNUT
MODEL FALLS SHORT
Building
a social fabric on the basis of participatory civic engagement of the likes of
Doughnut labs is often labeled a form of democratic engagement. But the two
should not be conflated. It is in this regard that the Doughnut model falls
short, because it is agnostic not just about growth but also about designing
the necessary political processes for economic systems change. As the model
makes economic interdependencies between cities, rural areas, and foreign
supply chains apparent, it makes use of analytical tools to keep decisionmaking
solely the purview of the city. It therefore misses an opportunity for joint
reflection and decisionmaking between cities and supply sources and also fails
to make systems change co-creative and disruptive across lines that have become
politically fragmented. In short, while the model provides transparency and
potential accountability in relational economics, it fails to translate that
accountability to relational democratic processes—despite the need to reconcile
economic agency with civic engagement and political narratives.
The
democratic potential of the Doughnut model should not go unfulfilled, for it
holds some precious keys to reining back economic models within planetary boundaries and
social contracts. Without a narrative that helps political systems adapt and
transform under this new imperative, both transitions and democracies will
mutually weaken. Adopting democratic processes that reflect economic
interdependencies could create a multiplicity of change dynamics and narratives
that will eventually inform national debates within democracies. And this is
becoming increasingly urgent.
Debates
about alternative economic trajectories—such as the ones on degrowth, a research
trajectory that explores how to produce stable economic prosperity without
destructive and exponential economic growth—are already making their way to
presidential contests in countries such as France. However, the
topic is discussed in binary terms, equating alternative economic modeling with
recession and green growth with salvation. The dichotomy is likely to create
further unnecessary rifts that will delay democratic climate resilience. More
nuance is needed, based on actionable research informed by citizens who buy
into a new economic model themselves—not just as a way to respond to the
climate emergency but also to renew flagging social contracts.
Because
technological innovation steals the show in climate debates at present, an
emphasis on social and economic innovation is currently missing in rhetoric
about transition trajectories. Economic remodeling is critical, in that sense,
and should not happen from the top down. National policies can only be directed
by people who base their blueprint for transition on their own lived experience
and contextual versions of resilience and democratic, economic, and ecological
adaptation. National policies, for now, should play a facilitating and
supportive role until a coherent critical mass of inclusive politico-economic
processes emerges. At this point, national governments should work to identify
common patterns to draw lessons in terms of governance-related, technological,
socioeconomic, and democratic solution pathways to ecological and democratic
crises. Hopefully, these lessons will help in coming up with a new value
proposition superseding the liberal democracy paradigm. This is where the key
to a successful transition truly lies—and where the future of democracy should
be headed, too.
The
Doughnut methodology provides space to deconstruct climate action into social
and economic agency—making it more palpable and accessible to citizens. The more
this happens, the harder it will be for politicians to hide behind the argument
that citizens aren’t mobilized by climate agendas. Citizens across the world have made it clear that
they want to see more political and social action on climate change, but no
political party so far has managed to connect the fundamental dots between
redesigning socioeconomic systems, democratic resilience, and
climate-responsive policies in line with today’s ecological emergencies. The
Doughnut model may well help to hack democratic transformation on the climate
front at long last.
Carnegie
Europe is grateful to the Open Society Foundations for their support of this
work.
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