An economy based on continuous growth will deplete the natural systems sustaining life. It’s time for a mindset shift to balance and wellbeing, according to Kate Raworth’s proposal for a doughnut economy. Anjani Ganase considers the challenge for Trinidad and Tobago.
Ideas of the growth economy took hold in the last century; there was a global mission to get people out of poverty and improve social wellbeing. For the most part, we have been incredibly successful in improving the quality of lives by getting people out of poverty. In 1981, 42.7 per cent% of the world’s population was in extreme poverty; and in 2018, only 9.3 per cent is still in extreme poverty (World Bank). However, experts have come to realise that endless growth of economies comes at significant ecological cost, especially as many economies are based on extractive industries such as oil and gas, minerals and agriculture. Continuous extractive processes will undermine the very ecological foundations fundamental to our lives. The biggest backlash we face now is climate change, which can thrust a country back into poverty with a single environmental devastation.
It is time to shift from the mindset of endless growth to a new phase of maintaining wellbeing and enhancing social infrastructure and connectivity.
Kate Raworth, an economist and senior associate at Oxford University’s Environmental Change Institute, tells us how in her book Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist. Raworth understands the urgency to upgrade economies of the world to be more reflective of social wellbeing and mindful of ecological limitations. She sees the push for continuous growth as the contributor to many of issues of the 21st century such as ecological disasters and now social disparity because of poor ethics and governance. Raworth has come up with an alternative vision for economies, one that seeks a significant shift in mindset: we stop growing and start thriving.
What does her doughnut represent?
Kate Raworth’s doughnut is a society living in the happy balance where all the social wellbeing needs are met, while avoiding overconsumption and exploitation of the ecological resources that provide life-supporting services. The hole in the centre represents social shortfalls where we must ensure that basic needs, such as education, equity, food and water resources are met. The space around the donut is the zone of ecological overshooting. This area represents things that we have over-consumed and over-exploited which undermine the planetary life support systems. Systems that we have already overshot or are likely to overshoot in the near future include biodiversity, land and ocean resources, the planet’s capacity to mitigate climate change and pollution.
[caption id="attachment_899752" align="alignnone" width="1024"] A doughnut diagram by Keiko Sono to be presented at the 2021 Basic Income Earth Network Congress in August. PHOTO COURTESY Donut Economics Action Lab -[/caption]
