West Cork Doughnut Economy Network – Inaugural Event
Inaugural event of the West Cork Doughnut Economy Network,
Thursday 24 February at 8pm on Zoom.
Facilitated by Moze Jacobs and Alice Glendenning
If you are interested in attending please email info@transitontownkinsale.org for the zoom link.
The Network took form in April 2020. It was inspired by the book, “Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist” by Kate Raworth, a UK economist who is proposing an alternative economic model.
As a regional network, we are focused on connecting people and groups across West Cork, who are (or want to be) involved in pro-active change toward a healthier environment, thriving local communities, and economies that serve those communities. Among others, through the distribution of information and tools, conversations, and shared learning with each other in order to find common ground when it comes to “the shape” of far-reaching changes.
After all, following the pandemic there is still the climate crisis… the biodiversity crisis…
Plus, growing inequality and an economy that has as its main goal, “eternal economic growth” to benefit the financial markets.
Yet, there is also good news: it appears that more and more people are waking up to this reality.
Individuals and groups are looking at ways to reduce their carbon footprint and help restore the damage to nature.
Some of these actions are already having a ripple effect.
However, in the face of overwhelming odds, we need to do more, and do it faster. Above all we need to WORK TOGETHER.
Interaction through all sorts of collaborations will enable a faster circulation of ideas and blueprints that can help turn our world around and recast it as a place where people and nature can thrive.
At the core of Doughnut Economics is a growth diagram. Its essence is a green circular band that represents a ‘safe and just space for humanity’. That’s the goal. But it can only be reached if we deal, collectively, with both the shortfall and the overshoot. In the figure, they are pictured in flaming red colours, signalling danger.
As Kate Raworth explains,
“The hole in the middle reveals the proportion of people falling short on life’s essentials, such as food, water, healthcare and political freedom of expression – and a big part of humanity’s challenge is to get everyone out of that hole. At the same time, however, we cannot afford to be overshooting the Doughnut’s outer crust if we are to safeguard Earth’s life-giving systems, such as a stable climate, healthy oceans and a protective ozone layer, on which all our wellbeing fundamentally depends.”
This diagram can measure how a particular place is doing when it comes to ‘household management’ (= the original meaning of the word economics).
Kate Raworth has done far more than ‘just’ develop an alternative economic theory. She is running pilots in three major cities (Portland, Philadelphia, Amsterdam) and has set up DEAL (the Doughnut Economics Action Lab) to support groups from around the world that are creating their own version of the doughnut. A specific version that aims to strengthen the local economies, ecologies, communities. And to improve wellbeing…
Information on doughnut economics & some tools
https://www.kateraworth.com/doughnut/
https://doughnuteconomics.org/ (DEAL)
for Ireland, see https://doughnuteconomics.org/news/14 (President backs doughnut economics)
and https://doughnuteconomics.org/stories/109 about IDEN (Irish Doughnut Economics Network)
https://doughnuteconomics.org/Creating-City-Portraits-Methodology.pdf
International press
https://time.com/5930093/amsterdam-doughnut-economics/
https://www.thenational.scot/news/19088119.amsterdam-home-capitalism—ideas-turn-head/
West Cork
https://westcorkpeople.ie/environment/west-cork-bites-into-the-doughnut/
https://westcorkpeople.ie/environment/to-know-or-not-to-know-food-matters/
https://westcorkpeople.ie/environment/repairing-the-hole-in-the-middle/
https://westcorkpeople.ie/environment/whats-in-a-tree/
