Centre of Expertise for Economic Transformation (CET)

Raworth’s 2017 bestselling book, Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist, has graced the bedside table of people ranging from the former Brexit secretary David Davis to the Guardian columnist George Monbiot, who described it as a “breakthrough alternative to growth economics”.

The inner ring of her donut sets out the minimum we need to lead a good life, derived from the UN’s sustainable development goals and agreed by world leaders of every political stripe. It ranges from food and clean water to a certain level of housing, sanitation, energy, education, healthcare, gender equality, income and political voice. Anyone not attaining such minimum standards is living in the doughnut’s hole.

The outer ring of the doughnut, where the sprinkles go, represents the ecological ceiling drawn up by earth-system scientists. It highlights the boundaries across which human kind should not go to avoid damaging the climate, soils, oceans, the ozone layer, freshwater and abundant biodiversity.

Between the two rings is the good stuff: the dough, where everyone’s needs and that of the planet are being met.

On Wednesday, the model will be formally embraced by the municipality of Amsterdam as the starting point for public policy decisions, the first city in the world to make such a commitment.

“I think it can help us overcome the effects of the crisis”, said Amsterdam’s deputy mayor, Marieke van Doorninck, who joined Raworth in an interview with the Guardian via Skype before the launch. “It might look strange that we are talking about the period after that but as a government we have to … It is to help us to not fall back on easy mechanisms.”

Source: The guardian

Zie ook: De donut economie

Watch this video externally on: Vimeo

Het donutmodel. Een economisch model waar groei niet langer centraal staat. Een model dat eerlijker en socialer is.
Het idee van de donut is vrij simpel: iedereen moet er in passen. Mensen, dieren, de aarde, iedereen. Als je enkel naar de vorm van een donut kijkt, dan zie je twee cirkels. Een kleine cirkel in het midden en een grote cirkel aan de buitenkant. Voor een economie zonder teveel ongelijkheid tussen rijk en arm én zonder te veel van onze planeet te vragen, moet er beleid zijn dat ervoor zorgt dat iedereen tussen de twee cirkels blijft. In het deeg van de donut, zeg maar.
Heel specifiek zit het zo: De kleinste cirkel stelt een sociale ondergrens voor. Niemand zou hier buiten mogen vallen, want zit je onder deze ondergrens dan kom je tekort aan basisbehoeften. De grote cirkel staat voor wat we van onze planeet vragen. Daar zit ook een grens aan (denk aan klimaatverandering).

De Donut als denkkader
De Donut geeft ons een heel nuttig denkkader. De transitie naar een duurzame samenleving kan niet alleen vanuit ondernemerschap en burgers komen, ook overheid en politiek moeten een bijdrage leveren vanuit de verantwoordelijkheid om een beter Nederland en een betere wereld te creëren. De Donut-theorie heeft een sterke connectie met de Duurzaamheidsdoelen (SDGs).

Waarom een donuteconomie model voor Amsterdam?
De gemeente Amsterdam heeft besloten om samen te werken met Kate Raworth en Circle Economy om het eerste donuteconomie model voor de stad te ontwikkelen. Met de donut kan Amsterdam de stad van de toekomst opnieuw maken en vormen.
De donut stelt Amsterdam in staat een holistische visie voor een circulaire economie te creëren, relevante ontwikkelrichtingen te ontwerpen en de voortgang daarvan te meten. Het model geeft inzicht in de dynamiek tussen grondstofstromen en milieu- en sociale kwesties. Het toont hoe nauw alles met elkaar is verbonden in een samenleving. Ook helpt het negatieve (bij-)effecten bij de implementatie van een circulaire economie te voorkomen.

Bron Amsterdam Smart City

This session was moderated by Mesiha Tepic and Juan-Carlos Goilo.

In the virtual co-design session, the following challenge was chosen to work on in the session: Develop services for different stakeholders, so they can recognize themselves in the material streams. The other possible challenges can be seen in photo 1.

Photo 1

Subsequently, design requirements were formulated for this challenge:

• Include subsectors (hotels, citizens, etc.)
• Interactive communication (people can bring in ideas)
• Provide info on main actors per stream
• Develop personas for different stakeholders
• Consensus on data points across subsectors of a value chain
• More detailed information about the commodity groups
• A system where local companies/districts/streets can upload data (to contextualize the data)
• Focus on just one value chain
• The frequency of informational needs

Subsequently, these design requirements were further grouped and linked to an inspirational example (see photo 2), including the Together against food waste initiative, the World Business Council for Sustainable Development and the AMS session on organic waste on 17 February.

In conclusion, the importance of stakeholder involvement was emphasized. The city cannot develop a monitor in isolation. Value chains are dynamic and the necessary data can only be obtained through stakeholders.

Photo 2

Author:

Kate Raworth

Nicky Pouw (Governance and Inclusive Development, CUS, UvA) & Hebe Verrest (Governance and Inclusive Development, CUS, UvA), with research assistance by Jennifer van Beek (Research Master Urban Studies, UvA)

Contemporary cities are confronted with the challenge of creating inclusive and sustainable communities under conditions of mounting and compounding social, economic, cultural, environmental and spatial inequalities. In attempts to better understand and address this challenge, scholars and urban professionals are looking for new sets of wellbeing criteria- beyond a narrow set of economic growth indicators - to value city performance and reflect ambitions for a new urban paradigm (Gupta et al., 2015; Pouw, 2020). The City Doughnut (Raworth, 2020), and the Brede Welvaartsmonitor (OIS, 2020) are recent examples of indices aiming to capture a broader understanding of the quality of urban life. However, such alternative indices often find restricted or contested usage in urban policy and governance (e.g. Uitermark 2014). One reason for this is the mismatch between the wellbeing perspective expressed through the available data and the perspective that is lived and experienced at the level of communities, households and individual residents (Curtis et al., 2020).

This project aims to address this issue by bringing a household and community-level perspective on wellbeing in conversation with that expressed at municipal level. It aims at a. understanding wellbeing as lived and perceived by households and community groups in an ontwikkelbuurt (Venserpolder) in Amsterdam; and b. analysing the extent to which this perspective matches (or not) the data and instruments that are collected and used at city-level to present urban wellbeing. The research design adopts a sequential qualitative design, consisting of interviews with residents of Venserpolder (n=15), key informants (n=5) and participatory methods with community groups in Venserpolder to develop a local perspective on well being, and analysis of existing primary and/or secondary datasets (see Table A.3 in Annex) to identify gaps and similarities. In this project we work together with Fearless City, Najah Aouaki (urban strategist) and community groups in Venserpolder.