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DOUGHNUT ECONOMICS KATE RAWORTH RSA: Doughnut Economics - Kate Raworth ... A lot more than simplistic money profit! Original article: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqJL-cM8gb4 Peter Burgess COMMENTARY Peter Burgess
Doughnut Economics - Kate Raworth >br> RSA >br> Jan 9, 2013 >br> 784K subscribers ... 106,411 views ... 1.3K likes >br> Oxfam senior researcher and former co-author of the UN's annual Human Development Report Kate Raworth visits the RSA to explain 'doughnut economics' -- the bold new theory that is sweeping the development world. >br> Listen to the podcast of the full event including audience Q&A: http://www.thersa.org/events/audio-an... >br> Follow the RSA on Twitter: / thersaorg >br> Like the RSA on Facebook: / thersaorg >br> Our events are made possible with the support of our Fellowship. Support us by donating or applying to become a Fellow. >br> Donate: http://www.thersa.org/support-the-rsa >br> Become a Fellow: http://www.thersa.org/fellowship/apply Transcript 0:07 mad or an economist we don't want to focus Politics on a notion that involves the rejection of principles around which a large majority of our fellow citizens were organize their lives we are not as endlessly manipulable and as predictable as you would [Music] think I'm fascinated by a question and I know I'm not the only one and that question is what should economies be aimed at I mean if you were in charge of a country's economy where would you be trying to take it or if indeed you had to give the impression of being in charge of a country's economy what would you be trying to deliver with 0:46 it well I studied economics at University 20 years ago and we never 0:50 actually asked that question even though 0:52 it seems like a very fundamental one because the answer was a given it was economic growth we were aiming to gener 1:00 economic growth in the way we were studying and modeling economies since 1970 it's quadrupled and if you believe mainstream predictions which it's hard to do in the current atmosphere but if you do it's set to quadruple Again by 2050 on the global scale so economic growth has been doing very nicely in the long-term big picture and yet there are some things that we fundamentally care about that aren't coming along with it and there are three I want to highlight one deprivation secondly degradation and thirdly inequality more and more social commentators are talking about the rise of inequality and the importance of tackling it 2third of the world's population today live in countries that are now more unequal than they were in 1980 and just taking one country as an example in 2010 the top richest 10% of people in the United States captured 93% of the increase in national income that year so inequality is really quite extraordinarily at the heart of the way 2:00 economies are 2:02 growing our politicians know it we're 2:05 hung up on talking about economic growth 2:07 but because they know that we need more 2:09 than this there's one leave doesn't 2:11 really capture everything we care about 2:12 they're increasingly trying to qualify 2:15 what they're calling for with with extra 2:17 terms so Merkel has called for 2:20 sustainable growth David Cameron for 2:22 balanced growth Barack Obama for 2:25 long-term lasting growth baroso wants 2:27 the EU to have smart sustainable 2:30 inclusive and resilient growth and all 2:32 these terms I mean sometimes I feel like 2:34 I'm walking into a New York Deli bar and 2:36 what kind of growth do you want today 2:38 you can have it balanced and Equitable 2:39 add in some good you want it green maybe 2:42 that seems too hard just a bit Greener 2:44 you know so many different terms are 2:46 being added to this idea it's clear that 2:48 we want something more than 2:50 growth the fact that we want something 2:52 more than growth though shouldn't seem 2:54 like news because when the very idea of 2:56 national income and its growth was 2:58 conceived it's inventor warned us that 3:01 we needed something more than that in 3:03 1934 when Simon KET wrote the first 3:06 report to the US Congress describing how 3:09 you could measure national income he 3:10 said but the wealth of a Nation can 3:13 scarcely be inferred from a measure of 3:15 its national income he gave us that 3:17 caveat on day one but it's as if we just 3:20 tuck that quietly aside and carried on 3:22 with the obsession on on economic growth 3:24 GDP growth 3:26 itself so 75 years later 3:29 two Nobel prizewinning economists Amara 3:32 sen and Joseph stiglets brought together 3:35 an assemblage of of top economic 3:36 thinkers to have a good hard look at GDP 3:40 and our focus on national income and 3:41 they said those attempting to guide the 3:44 economy and our societies are like a 3:45 pilot trying to steer without a reliable 3:48 Compass we're still there and no wonder 3:52 our politicians are searching grasping 3:54 for the language that they need to 3:55 describe where we're trying to go 3:56 because growth isn't enough as an idea 3:59 of what we're trying to achieve so what 4:01 would it look like if we actually tried 4:03 to come up with the kind of compass that 4:05 we could put in their hands and give 4:07 them something to steer the economy with 4:10 what if we could actually help 4:11 politicians get away from the very 4:13 short-term thinking about the next three 4:15 months of GDP outcomes is it going up or 4:18 down and just get away from that 4:20 short-termism and go to the long term so 4:22 if we're going to go to the long term 4:23 let's go to the really really long term 4:26 and look at the last 100,000 years of 4:29 the plan planet and its temperature and 4:31 what you can see here is that the 4:33 temperature of the planet has varied 4:35 incredibly and yet the last 10 to 12,000 4:37 years have been remarkably relatively 4:40 stable compared to all of that other 4:41 history and that last 10 to 12,000 years 4:44 is the geological era known as the 4:46 hollene it's no 4:48 coincidence that we began agriculture in 4:51 this era it's no coincidence that 4:53 Humanity began to master the resources 4:56 that we had around us because this has 4:58 been an extraordinarily Ben prent period 5:00 of the planet's history for 5:03 Humanity and so we need to say well what 5:05 is it about this period that's made it 5:07 so benevolent for us and that's exactly 5:10 what Johan rockstrom of the Stockholm 5:11 resilience Center did he said hang on 5:14 what is it about the holos what are the 5:17 critical Earth system processes we need 5:19 to hold on to to keep ourselves in this 5:21 extraordinarily benevolent phase of the 5:23 planet's history and just stepping back 5:25 a minute that's it's fascinating that 5:28 that's almost the first time someone's 5:29 asked the question question like that 5:30 because we've been trying to understand 5:32 how the human body works since the 14th 5:34 century trying to understand the limits 5:36 of how high a temperature can go before 5:38 you collapse how fast the heart can beat 5:40 how long you can go without water we 5:42 understand the limits of our bodies it's 5:45 now the 21st century scientists are 5:47 trying to understand the limits of 5:49 pressure that Humanity can put on planet 5:50 Earth before we push it out of this 5:53 state that sustained us so rock Strom 5:56 and his fellow scientists came up with a 5:58 set of nine boundaries that they call 6:00 the nine planetary boundaries and they 6:03 said if we can keep Humanity's pressure 6:05 on the planet within sustainable limits 6:07 on these boundaries so that we don't 6:09 push ourselves into tipping points push 6:12 these processes over the edge so that 6:14 they change catastrophically then we'll 6:16 be in a safe space for Humanity so we 6:19 mustn't put so much greenhouse gases in 6:21 the atmosphere that we cause 6:22 catastrophic climate change change the 6:24 world's rivers and Waters diverting 6:27 through dams and water withdrawals so 6:28 that we actually dry River beds mustn't 6:31 use so much nitrogen phosphorus in 6:32 fertilizers that we create the runoff 6:35 creates dead zones in the ocean mustn't 6:38 again increase so much carbon dioxide 6:39 use that the oceans acidify killing off 6:41 much of the sea life creating chemicals 6:44 such as heavy metals or radioactive 6:46 materials or persistent organic 6:48 pollutants that start to change the very 6:52 reproductive abilities of humanity and 6:54 other animals loading so many aerosols 6:57 into the atmosphere sulfates and other 6:59 kinds of gases that we put up that we 7:00 start to change cloud formation and move 7:03 Monsoon patterns and actually give 7:05 ourselves lung disease from All That 7:07 pollution we mustn't put so many gases 7:09 in the air that plete the ozone layer 7:11 that we have a hole in the ozone layer 7:13 that gives us skin cancer and that 7:14 destroys marine and terrestrial systems 7:17 we must hang on to biodiversity because 7:19 its loss makes us all the more uh 7:22 vulnerable to to sudden shocks and 7:24 changes and again land use mustn't be so 7:27 changed from its original state that we 7:29 create a vulnerability and lack of 7:32 resilience in the planet's systems and 7:34 then they said well if that's if those 7:35 are the boundaries where are we at today 7:37 in relation to those boundaries and they 7:39 tried to estimate first estimate of 7:40 where they think we are on a global 7:42 scale and what this shows us is that on 7:44 at least three of them we're over the 7:46 boundary so on climate change we already 7:48 know this we are putting far too many 7:50 greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and 7:52 really on the verge of causing 7:53 catastrophic climate change but also on 7:55 nitrogen they estimate we're putting 7:58 three times more reactive nitrogen out 8:00 in the atmosphere than the planet can 8:01 sustain and we are massively over on 8:03 biodiversity loss and on those other 8:06 boundaries though we may be below the 8:08 global boundary we know that within 8:09 regions many regions are already 8:11 experiencing severe stress so we may not 8:13 have gone over the fresh water use 8:15 boundary globally but some regions live 8:17 at the Ping water scarcity think of Lake 8:19 Chad which has shrunk around 10% of its 8:22 size over the last 30 years over 1 8:24 billion people live in water scarce 8:25 regions already and we're moving towards 8:27 the boundaries on those on those other 8:30 areas so they've defined this safe 8:33 operating space for Humanity from that 8:35 standpoint and it's really important to 8:36 say at this point that this is not an 8:38 environmental agenda these boundaries 8:41 have not been defined for tree frogs and 8:44 for polar bears sure they need them too 8:47 but these boundaries have been defined 8:48 for us for Humanity because it is these 8:51 Earth system processes that keep the 8:53 planet in a benevolent state for us to 8:55 thrive in we need to come back within 8:59 the pressure that we're putting on those 9:00 boundaries back below the environmental 9:02 ceiling and yet still that's only half 9:04 the challenge we face because just as 9:06 there's beyond that environmental 9:08 ceiling is lies unacceptable pressure on 9:11 the environment unacceptable resource 9:13 degradation so too at the center there's 9:16 unacceptable human deprivation where 9:18 people lack the resources they need to 9:21 meet their human rights to having Health 9:23 to having enough food to eat and water 9:26 to having income the rights to education 9:28 to be resist iant in the face of shocks 9:30 to having voice in their society to 9:32 having jobs access to energy and to 9:35 having social equity in a society and 9:37 gender equality this diagram in a way 9:41 captures the challenge that we face in 9:43 the 21st century and that challenge is 9:45 to say how can we ensure that every 9:48 human being has the resources they need 9:51 to meet their human rights but that 9:54 collectively we do it within the means 9:56 of this one planet we've defined the 9:59 boundary and an outer environmental 10:01 ceiling or or a planetary boundary and 10:03 our challenge is to move into that safe 10:05 and just space for Humanity between the 10:07 two shaped like a donut and in the space 10:10 there that is where inclusive and 10:13 sustainable Economic Development would 10:14 take place and just as the natural 10:16 scientists said where are we in relation 10:18 to the planetary boundary so too we can 10:20 say where are we in relation to that 10:22 social foundation and looking at United 10:24 Nations data we can see that we're 10:26 falling far below it on every single 10:29 dimension ion for which we can get those 10:30 data together so for example on food 13% 10:34 of people in the world don't have enough 10:36 food to eat 19% of people in the world 10:39 live without access to electricity 10:40 indeed millions of people around the 10:42 world still live with the most 10:43 fundamental deprivations of access to 10:46 resources to meet their human rights far 10:48 below the social Foundation while 10:50 collectively we've already gone over at 10:52 least three of the planetary 10:53 boundaries we're outside this donut on 10:56 both sides and I think that's an 10:57 indictment of the pathway that Global 10:59 development has taken to date so 11:02 unsustainable and so inequitable and 11:04 that's pretty depressing so here's some 11:06 good 11:07 news we could get everybody out of this 11:10 level of poverty without putting 11:13 pressure on the planet what would it 11:15 take to end Hunger it would take around 11:18 3% of the current Global food supply 3% 11:21 according to the International Energy 11:23 agency they could get access to 11:24 electricity to everybody in the world 11:26 with just a 1% increase in global carbon 11:28 emissions that's fantastic news because 11:30 it means the challenge of tackling 11:31 climate change and the challenge of 11:33 ending ending energy poverty are 11:35 completely separable so this begs the 11:38 question if we could end poverty without 11:39 pushing putting pressure on the planet 11:41 where is this pressure coming from well 11:44 it's coming from the other end of the 11:46 global consumer base if we look at that 11:49 challenge on climate change researchers 11:52 at Princeton University estimate that 11:53 around half of the world's greenhouse 11:55 gas emissions are produced for just 11% 11:58 of the world's popul population that the 12:00 richest carbon intensive users in every 12:02 country in the world I call them the 12:04 global carbon 12:05 Easter and if you look at the 12:07 sustainable budget that we could use on 12:10 nitrogen right now onethird of that 12:12 sustainable budget is being used to grow 12:15 animal feed to produce meat for Europe 12:18 so it's immediately clear that if we 12:20 want to come back within the planet's 12:22 boundaries we need to transform the 12:24 consumption choices and the patterns and 12:26 the production patterns of the world's 12:28 highest resource using populations in 12:31 every country in the world I'm really 12:34 struck by the traction this diagram has 12:36 had I drew it first time a year ago and 12:40 it's been taken up in a lot of debates 12:42 and I'm asking myself why and I think 12:45 there are three good reasons firstly I 12:47 think the framing of planetary 12:48 boundaries is a very very powerful one 12:50 it makes the complexity of Earth system 12:53 science accessible to non-scientists and 12:56 helps us to see the planet as a whole as 12:58 a system of interlocking processes that 13:01 we depend upon for our 13:03 well-being secondly by putting that 13:05 social foundation in the heart of it it 13:07 brings into one simple picture the world 13:10 of development and the world of 13:11 environment and it helps to end the 13:14 false dichotomy that we fac that either 13:17 you're for development and ending 13:18 poverty or you're for protecting the 13:20 environment and these are separate 13:21 concerns but they're not separate 13:23 concerns because we depend upon the 13:24 environment and this state of the planet 13:26 for all of our well-being and thirdly I 13:29 think people are interested in it 13:30 because it gives us a chance to rethink 13:33 Economic Development instead of starting 13:35 with economic growth we start with the 13:38 fundamentals of what we care about 13:39 everybody meeting their human rights 13:41 living within the means of this planet 13:43 and then we ask what kind of economic 13:45 system would help to take us there and I 13:48 think there are some changes that we 13:49 clearly need to make to the way that we 13:51 plan Economic Development the first one 13:54 would be we need to bring a far more 13:56 diverse group of people into economic 13:58 decision making we need to listen to 14:00 scientists much more in terms of them 14:03 telling us where those boundaries are 14:04 and how close we are secondly we need to 14:07 bring as well as a diverse group of 14:09 thinkers we need to bring in diverse 14:10 metrics so not just talking about 14:13 economic development in terms of 14:14 monetary metrics but talking natural 14:16 metrics we've become used to talking 14:18 about tons of carbon it's we hear it on 14:20 the radio it's in the papers but we need 14:22 to diversify and understand more of the 14:24 planet's metrics because these are the 14:25 metrics that we live by and also the 14:28 social metrics that how how humanity is 14:30 doing thinking much more at the center 14:33 of our economic thinking are we meeting 14:35 the human rights of all and are we 14:37 ensuring that we're doing this without 14:38 extraordinary inequalities in our 14:41 societies and thirdly I think it gives 14:43 us a chance to rethink what is economic 14:45 development we've always assumed it was 14:47 economic growth GDP growth now we're 14:50 facing a much more fundamental question 14:52 of is growth compatible with living in 14:55 this safe and just space and many people 14:57 argue it is some people argue that we 14:59 need economic growth in order to 15:01 generate the investment and create the 15:03 new technologies that will help take us 15:04 there others will say the opposite 15:06 they'll say we clearly need to move 15:08 Beyond GDP growth in order to get here 15:12 one thing I think is definitely true 15:14 because that debate is still out there 15:16 and unresolved one thing is true we need 15:18 to widen our concept of what economic 15:20 development is far beyond growth alone 15:23 so we need to think about investing in 15:24 the wealth that sustains us the human 15:27 wealth the natural wealth and the social 15:29 wealth because it's from these that 15:31 everything that we generate in our 15:33 economy 15:35 flows imagine if an image like this a 15:38 vision like this was actually put at the 15:39 heart of decision- making and the way we 15:42 thought about going forward with our 15:44 economies imagine if we could each sit 15:46 at a table with planter and social 15:49 boundaries and think where's my life at 15:51 in relation to this what can I do in my 15:53 own life that would make sure that my 15:56 actions what I buy how I consume what I 15:59 eat how I vote how I travel how I power 16:02 my 16:03 home am I making sure that I'm 16:05 respecting people's human rights in that 16:06 process and keeping down my footprint on 16:09 the 16:09 planet what if companies sat around a 16:12 table and put their product at the 16:13 middle of that table and ask themselves 16:15 where is this product in terms of 16:17 planter and social boundaries how can we 16:19 bring our products and our supply chains 16:21 into the space that we can be proud of saying these are 21st century products because they're helping take the 21st century where we need to go and what if the world's governments with apologies to do Strange Love what if the world's governments sat around a conference table and said how can we collectively bring Humanity into this space well amazingly enough they're actually taking on that challenge right now because the world's governments are facing the the opportunity to come up with a set of global development goals that will both ensure human rights are met and environmental sustainability and the question is will they be able to grasp the scale of this challenge will they be able to leave behind short-term 17:00 national interests that we're so often locked in and look for the long-term the collective and the global interest that we have to pursue can they do it on a scale commensurate with the urgency of the challenge we face can they in fact turn it into an opportunity to bring us into this safe and just space for Humanity because if they could that would really give us something worth aiming our economies at thank you very much indeed

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