#BTColumn – Applying the Doughnut

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by this author are their own and do not represent the official position of the Barbados Today.

by Professor Robin Mahon

Is the ‘Doughnut economics’ concept of ‘a safe and just space for humanity’ more than just a great way of communicating ideas about sustainability? Can it actually be applied?

It can, and it has been applied to Barbados in a preliminary analysis that we will share with readers. But first, let us have a look at some other places where it has been used.

Recently, in ‘Doughnut anyone? Thriving without growth in Barbados’ in Barbados TODAY, we explored ‘Doughnut economics’.

Inside the Doughnut’s hole is the space where we are falling short of an acceptable social foundation in areas such as education, housing, health service, access to water and food, social equity, and more.

Outside the Doughnut is the space where we are overshooting ecological limits in areas such as water consumption, biodiversity loss, land use conversion,
chemical pollution and of course, climate change.

Inside the Doughnut – below the ecological ceiling and above the social foundation – is the ‘safe and just space for humanity’ that we all seek to create for ourselves and future generations.

The Doughnut idea has caught the fancy of many. An early concern was that it was developed for the global level.

For the ecological ceiling, the Doughnut adopts the set of nine planetary boundaries proposed by Earth-system scientists to avoid climate and ecological breakdown at a global level.

For it to be useful at the country or even city level, these boundaries must be scaled down to ones that are nationally or locally meaningful, without losing sight of the fact that we live in an interconnected global village.

Of course, in this global village Barbados is a very small player and we probably need to be more concerned about how the actions of others affect us, than about how our actions affect them. But we are not powerless.

Using our own voice, and the collective voice of like-minded countries, we can and do make a difference on the international stage. So the planetary boundaries are indeed of concern to us.

Using global data, researchers at the University of Leeds in the UK have quantified national Doughnuts for more than 150 countries. However, few small island states like Barbados were included because data were lacking.

What is really needed is for countries to develop the application themselves, through either government or interested stakeholder groups whose thinking can complement and influence that of the government.

This has been happening. Costa Rica has been developing its Doughnut led by Eduard Müller Castro, a Costa Rican environmentalist, scientist, activist and founder of the University for International Cooperation.

In South Africa, one of the major lessons learned by applying the Doughnut was that one size does not fit all. Different issues were prominent in different provinces. So, the indicators that make up the Doughnut must be tailored to the important issues of the place for which it is being developed.

Most exciting is that cities have been downscaling the Doughnut using a holistic way of envisioning a safe and just space for humanity through the creation of so-called ‘city portraits’. This has already been done in Portland, Philadelphia, and Amsterdam.

The starting point of the Doughnut city portrait has been the four questions in the graphic shown, which combine two domains (social and ecological) and two scales (local and global).

Together, these four questions aim to identify what it means for a city or nation to meet local aspirations – to be thriving people in a thriving place – while respecting the wellbeing of all people and the health of the living planet.

Starting with the social aspect, the local–social question asks whether Barbadians are healthy, connected, enabled, and empowered – issues which have rightly occupied a lot of our attention here and should continue to do so. The global–social question has received less attention.

It involves concerns such as where most of our imported goods come from and whether they have been produced in a socially responsible way.

Both consumers, and those who import, can be engaged to ensure that our high standard of living is not contributing to economic hardship and social injustice for people elsewhere.

On the ecological side, we see much less attention on the local–ecological question, which relates to the ecological boundaries of our island nation.

The 2017 draft Physical Development Plan implies a lot in this regard, but is still not explicit in terms of limits to the negative impacts of development on our ecosystems. We need to go there, and we need to engage a full cross section of our best minds in doing so.

In 1997, Barbados established a Sustainable Development Commission, which produced the Barbados Sustainable Development Policy in 2004. Such a process should not have been a one-off activity.

It needs to be ongoing, and the Policy needs updating periodically so that we can all be on the same page. Reestablishing such a body, this time with a much wider inclusion of civil society, would be one way of tackling the questions on the table.

However, civil society does not have to wait for the government to do so. It can take the lead.

The next installment of this series on Doughnut Economics for Barbados will look at the Barbados Doughnut developed by the Doughnut Economics Action Lab using globally available data and see if we think we could do a better job here at home.

Robin Mahon is Professor Emeritus Centre for Resource Management and Environmental Studies (CERMES) at University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus, St. Michael, Barbados