doughnut economics

worked with Oxfam for over a decade.

There I witnessed the precarious existences of women – from Bangladesh to

Birmingham – employed at the sharp end of global supply chains. We lobbied to

change the rigged rules and double standards governing international trade rules.

And I explored the human-rights implications of climate change, meeting

farmers from India to Zambia whose fields had been turned to bare earth because

the rains had never come. Then I became a mother – of twins, to boot – and

spent a year on maternity leave, immersed in the bare-bum economy of raising

infants. When I returned to work, I understood the pressures on parents juggling

job and family like never before.

Through all this, I gradually realised the obvious: that I could not simply walk

away from economics, because it shapes the world we inhabit and its mindset

had certainly shaped me, even if through my rejection of it. So I decided to walk

back towards it and flip it on its head. What if we started economics not with its

long-established theories, but with humanity’s long-term goals, and then sought

out the economic thinking that would enable us to achieve them? I tried to draw

a picture of those goals and, ridiculous though it sounds, it came out looking like

a doughnut – yes, the American kind with a hole in the middle. The full diagram

is set out in the next chapter, but in essence it is a pair of concentric rings. Below

the inner ring – the social foundation – lie critical human deprivations such as

hunger and illiteracy. Beyond the outer ring – the ecological ceiling – lies critical

planetary degradation such as climate change and biodiversity loss. Between

those two rings is the Doughnut itself, the space in which we can meet the needs

of all within the means of the planet.

Sugary, deep-fried doughnuts hardly seem a likely metaphor for humanity’s

aspirations but there was something about the image that struck a chord in me

and in others, so it stuck. And it prompted a profoundly exciting question:

If humanity’s twenty-first-century goal is to get into the Doughnut, what economic mindset will give

us the best chance of getting there?