The blogpost in the url below is by an economist who has authored the book, Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think like a Twenty-first Century Economist. Doughnut economics is new to me but, broadly speaking, is a framework that allows for the analysis of a country's economy to determine the extent to which it is sustainable:
"In essence, national doughnuts aim to reflect the extent to which a country is meeting its people's essential needs while at the same time ensuring that its use of Earth's resources remains within its share of the planet's biophysical boundaries."
In particular, the author of the newsletter, Kate Raworth, wants to highlight what she terms "pioneering national doughnut analysis" from the University of Leeds in the UK, which compares the performance of the G20 countries (and many more) relative to each other using the framework:
"Using the best-available, internationally comparable data, they scaled the global concept of the Doughnut down to the national level for over 150 countries (only including those for which there were sufficient data – as a result, Saudi Arabia is unfortunately missing from this G20 analysis. The EU28 group is also not available for this analysis). … The methodology for these national doughnuts is a work in progress, of course, but the indicators and data underlying them are improving year-on-year, and when taken as an overview of 150 countries, the initial analysis reveals some valuable 21st century insights."
The key results, at least the ones I found most interesting, plot the G20 countries in terms of how they are performing relative to the theoretical doughnut (i.e., which countries are operating more or less sustainably than the other G20 countries). You can see the graphical representation of this here:
The resulting 2x2 has four quadrants:
- A. "Countries that are barely crossing any planetary boundaries, but are falling very far short on meeting people's needs, including G20 members India and Indonesia,"
- B. "Many middle-income, 'emerging' economies – including G20 members like Brazil, Russia, China, Argentina and South Africa – are both falling short on social needs while already crossing biophysical boundaries,"
- C. "Today's high-income countries – including G20 members like the US, UK, France, Germany and the EU 28 itself – cannot be called developed, given that their resource consumption is greatly overshooting Earth's boundaries and, in the process, undermining prospects for all other countries," and
- D. "No country is yet in sweet-spot cluster D (for Doughnut!)."
In light of this, Raworth asks whether it is possible for any country to get there ("so how many years until some are there, and which will make it there first?"). While I think it is possible, in theory; I worry that, in practice (given human nature), it might not be possible.
Take care
David
David Chandler
© Sage Publications, 2020
Instructor Teaching and Student Study Site: https://study.sagepub.com/chandler5e
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Doing the Doughnut at the G20
By Kate Raworth
December 1, 2018
