MechChem Africa September-October 2024

The growth problem and doughnut economics

Peter Middleton

I recently attended a festival in the UK called Greenbelt, originally an alternative Christian festival, but it is now described as a celebration of ‘artistry, activism and belief’. This year’s theme was ‘Dream-on’ – in the ‘call to action’ sense rather than implying ‘it’s never going to happen’. Along with the music, comedy and poetry performances, speakers from all over the world were presenting on and debating the world’s current problems: how much trouble we are in and how we ought to be responding. Not much of what I heard offered cause to celebrate. One of the talks I attended was entitled: ‘We need to talk about growth’ by Kate Raworth, the author of a book called Doughnut Economics. She started by using pool noodles to demonstrate the difference between exponential and logistic growth: the one curve arcing ever more steeply upwards, the other flattening off and entering a decline as the resources run out. Her point: in a world of limited resources, we cannot expect our economies to continue to grow exponentially. Yet we are “addicted” to GDP growth. In a very entertaining way, she went on to highlight some of the reasons why governments, financial institutions and ordinary people have become totally dependent on “endless” growth: The new British Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, has promised not to raise taxes, so she needs revenue growth to fund the services shortfall; the banking system depends on interest being paid on bonds, mortgages and loans; pen sion schemes are based on the value of monthly payments growing into a comfortable retirement income for members; and nations almost always have large defence budgets that have to be continu ally expanded to meet national security concerns or to feed ongoing regional conflict. As a climate-change response, she says that many nations, including the new UK Government, believe that green growth is still possible, where we transition away from exploiting our low-cost fossil fuel resources and, instead, invest in renewable energy options, which will create green job growth in a host of associated industries and activities. But the rate of this transition is way too slow to prevent climate change and we are still likely to overshoot at least six of the nine planetary boundaries on which all life utterly depends. Kate Raworth believes that we should be more ‘agnostic’ about GDP growth. We don’t want it to grind to a halt, but we need to transform our economies to deliver what we and the planet need,

rather than being fixated on whether or not GDP is going up or down. We need to ask ourselves why we need the growth and are there ways of directly meeting the needs we have rather than simply focusing on economic growth so that we might afford to fund a solution. Which is where the idea of Doughnut Economics comes in. Humanity’s 21 st century challenge, she says, is to meet the needs of all within the means of the planet: to ensure that no one falls short on any of life’s es sentials – from food and housing to healthcare and political voice – while at the same time ensuring that, collectively, we do not overshoot our Earth’s life-support systems, on which we fundamentally depend: a stable climate, fertile soils, a protective ozone layer, etc. The Doughnut of social and planetary boundar ies is a playfully serious approach to framing that challenge, and it acts as a compass for human prog ress in this century. The outer ring of the doughnut is the environmental ceiling of our planet. It consists of nine boundaries, beyond which lie unacceptable environmental degradation and potential tipping points in Earth systems. One of these is climate change, but eight other environmental concerns are also included. Overshoot on this outer ring represents an area of unsustainable degradation. The twelve dimensions of the social foundation form the inner ring and are derived from interna tionally agreed minimum social standards, as identi fied by the world’s governments in the Sustainable Development Goals. The empty space in the middle of the doughnut represents a shortfall in provision, an area of unacceptable social inequity. Between these social aspects on the inner ring and planetary boundaries on the outer lies an environmentally safe and socially just space in which humanity can thrive. [www.kateraworth. com/doughnut] The word economics comes from a Greek word ‘oikonomia’ meaning ‘household management’. It should be holistic in its nature, equitably balancing all our present and future needs, for ourselves and the planet, and Kate Raworth’s doughnut expresses this well. It also fits excellently with Greenbelt’s ‘Dream on’ slogan in both senses: I am sure many will feel it is simply ‘not going to happen’, but it certainly of fers a new perspective on identifying urgent global needs and putting into place a properly integrated set of actions for steering our plant and societies towards true and equitable sustainability.

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