From website Kate Raworth (14/02/2019):
Doughnut Economy
Humanity’s 21st century challenge is to meet 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. The Doughnut of social and planetary boundaries is a playfully serious approach to framing that challenge, and it acts as a compass for human progress this century.
The environmental ceiling consists of nine planetary boundaries, as set out by Rockstrom et al, beyond which lie unacceptable environmental degradation and potential tipping points in Earth systems. The twelve dimensions of the social foundation are derived from internationally agreed minimum social standards, as identified by the world’s governments in the Sustainable Development Goals in 2015. Between social and planetary boundaries lies an environmentally safe and socially just space in which humanity can thrive.
• For the 21 century a far bigger goal than increasing GDP is needed: meeting the human rights of every person within the means of our life-giving planet…Instead of pursuing ever-increasing GDP, it is time to discover how to thrive in balance.
• it is time to draw the economy anew, embedding it within society and within nature, and powered by the sun…
• Rational economic man: self-interested, isolated, calculating, fixed in taste and dominant over nature. But human nature is far richer than this: social, interdependent, approximating, fluid in values, and dependent upon the living world. It is possible to nurture human nature..
• Design economies to be far more distributive of the value they generate: going beyond redistributing income to exploring ways of redistributing wealth, particularly the wealth that lies in controlling land, enterprise, technology, knowledge and the power to create money.
• A design in order to create a circular – not linear – economy, and to restore humans as full participants in Earth’s cyclical processes of life..
• What we need are economies that make us thrive, whether or not they grow.
• Growth was portrayed as a panacea for many social, economic and political ailments…
• GDP growth shifted from being a policy option to a political necessity, and the de facto policy goal.
• What enables human beings to thrive? A world in which every person can lead their life with dignity, opportunity and community- and where we can all do so within the means of our lift-giving planet.
• The Doughnut: both an ecologically safe and socially just place for humanity.
• The Holocene has given us the best home we’ve ever had: stable climate, ample fresh water, thriving biodiversity, and healthy oceans.
• We have now left behind the Holocene and entered uncharted territory, known as the Anthropocene. In a single life time humanity has become a planetary-scale geological force.
further reading: Kate Raworth ‘Doughnut Economics’ – Penguin Random House 2017