So far in this series we have covered the current neoliberal orthodox economic model along with what degrowth is and isn't. Next I want to run through what is probably the most popular, well articulated and complete degrowth (or post growth) model out there. Kate Raworth's Donut economics.

Kate Raworth is an Oxford educated economist. She spent three years in the mid-1990s promoting micro-enterprise development in Zanzibar as a fellow of the Overseas Development Institute, then from 1997 to 2001 was an economist and co-author of the UN Development Programme's Human Development Report in New York. After which she spent 11 years as a senior economic researcher at Oxfam and has been a senior teaching fellow at Oxford's Environmental Change Institute. She is, in short, a serious economist who knows her shit.

She first wrote about the donut concept in 2012, following up with a book in 2017. Since then multiple major cities and national governments have adopted either a version of the donut itself, or the same core logic, in their economic frameworks. Institutions including the WHO, the UN and the OECD are all developing frameworks in the same territory as the Donut, under the umbrella of ‘post GDP economies’ or ‘wellbeing economies’. The Donut then is not a fringe idea out on its own, in some ways it is not that far away from mainstream economic thinking.

On the other hand, despite serious organisations starting to recognise the failure of the current economic model and making their way towards some of the same conclusions that Raworth has reached, the Donut is still a pretty radical departure from the mainstream economics practiced by almost all developed countries. This isn't to be seen as a weakness, in fact it's a good thing. The world needs ‘transformational change’ to deal with the climate crisis. A new economic system based on real physical needs and limitations should be part of that. Continuing to daydream about magical infinite growth is simply not possible in the real world.

So what is this alternative model? And why is it a donut? On the surface it sounds like a bit of a gimmick, an attention grabber rather than a serious economic model. But if you look at the interactive graphic below you’ll see it actually covers much more than what would be traditionally classed as economics.

That's because doughnut economics is about recognising that reality trumps economic ideals. We live on a finite planet with finite resources - we cannot simply imagine that away and pretend we live in some abstract, theory-driven world where real limitations do not apply. That is precisely what traditional economics does: it treats the natural world as an externality, something outside the model, assigning no value to a stable climate or a living ocean until the moment they start to fail.

The doughnut represents reality. The outer ring - the ecological ceiling, is defined by nine planetary boundaries identified by earth-system scientists: the physical limits of our climate, our oceans, our soils, our biodiversity, beyond which lie irreversible tipping points. The inner ring - the social foundation, is drawn directly from the UN Sustainable Development Goals: the twelve basic dimensions of a decent human life, from food and housing to political voice and gender equality. Somewhere between those two boundaries lies the safe and just space - the doughnut itself. The goal of any economy, Raworth argues, should be to get everyone into that space and keep them there. No country in the world currently manages it. Not one.

Raworth herself doesn't frame the doughnut as a degrowth model. Her position is deliberately agnostic - an economy operating within the doughnut might grow or shrink, what matters is whether it stays within the boundaries. But for wealthy, high-consuming nations already deep in ecological overshoot, getting back inside those boundaries almost certainly means producing and consuming less. You can call that agnosticism if you like. The rest of us might call it degrowth.

The doughnut is not a complicated idea. Look after people, don't destroy the planet, and somewhere in between lies a perfectly liveable world. The reason it feels radical is not because the idea is extreme, but because the economic system we've built is so far from it. Every developed economy on earth is overshooting the ecological ceiling in one or more sectors of the doughnut. Billions of people remain below the social foundation. We are simultaneously doing too much damage and leaving too many people behind.

That is the diagnosis. The doughnut is the prescription. Not a detailed blueprint for every policy decision, but a compass, a way of asking the right questions instead of the wrong ones. Instead of "how do we grow GDP?" we ask "are people fed, housed, healthy and heard, and can the planet sustain it?" Those are harder questions to answer. They are also the only questions worth asking.

Raworth has given us the framework. The rest is a matter of political will.