Doughnut Economics
Kate Raworth’s framework for a safe and just space: above the social foundation, below the ecological ceiling, in the ring between deprivation and overshoot.
The Idea
Draw two rings. The inner ring is a social foundation: twelve dimensions of minimum human dignity — food, water, energy, housing, health, education, income, political voice, social equity, gender equality, peace, access to networks. Falling below any of these is deprivation. The outer ring is an ecological ceiling: nine planetary boundaries whose crossing threatens Earth-system stability — climate, biodiversity, ocean chemistry, nitrogen flows, land conversion, freshwater use, ozone, aerosol loading, chemical pollution.
The space between — the doughnut — is where human activity needs to be. Not because growth is inherently wrong, but because growth that crosses the ecological ceiling is not success, and austerity that keeps people below the social floor is not success. Success is the ring.
The framework reframes the question. Instead of “how fast is the economy growing?”, it asks: are we above the floor? Are we below the ceiling? By those measures, almost all current economies are simultaneously in deprivation on several social dimensions and in overshoot on several ecological ones. The conventional metric, GDP growth, measures neither.
Origins
Raworth introduced the framework in a 2012 Oxfam Discussion Paper, “A Safe and Just Space for Humanity,” and developed it fully in Doughnut Economics (2017). The ecological ceiling synthesizes the planetary boundaries work of Johan Rockström and colleagues (2009). The social foundation synthesizes the minimum commitments underlying the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
Amsterdam formally adopted the Doughnut as a planning framework in 2020 — the first major city to do so. The Doughnut Economics Action Lab (DEAL) has since worked with dozens of cities and regions to develop localized versions.
The Tension
The planetary boundaries are global, but people act locally. Whether a single household has crossed the ecological ceiling depends entirely on how you draw the accounting boundary. Include embedded emissions from hardware, inputs, shipping, internet infrastructure, and the picture changes considerably. The framework is most legible at city or regional scale; at household scale, it risks either false comfort (small and local, so the ceiling doesn’t apply) or paralyzing guilt (everything is connected to global systems no household can control).
Raworth has also been criticized for underspecifying the mechanism. The framework says be in the doughnut but doesn’t say how to get there for the billion people below the social floor. The diagnosis is sharp; the prescription is unfinished.
Connections
- Kate Raworth — the originator
- Elinor Ostrom — commons governance for distributing within shared limits
- seventh-generation — responsibility across time as well as space; the ceiling extended forward
- reciprocity-with-land — stewardship as operating within what the land can sustain
- appropriate-technology — technology that operates within ecological means
- commons — shared ecological resources require shared governance frameworks
Further Reading
- Raworth, Kate. Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist (2017)
- Rockström, Johan et al. “A Safe Operating Space for Humanity.” Nature, 2009.
- Doughnut Economics Action Lab: doughnuteconomics.org