Like all the best ideas, her doughnut model seems so simple and obvious that you wonder why you didn’t think of it yourself. As George Monbiot, reviewing the book in The Guardian, has remarked: Her attempt at an answer is encapsulated in a diagram that looks just like a doughnut (hence the name), which brilliantly brings together developmental and environmental issues – often seen as being in opposition to each other – into a single, accessible picture. How can we ensure that every human being has the resources they need to meet their human rights – but that collectively we do it within the means of this planet? Her basic question, which she succinctly posits in a talk given in 2014 at the Royal Society of Arts is: She has also been a senior researcher at Oxfam and a co-author of the United Nations Human Development Report. Her impressive CV includes academic posts in Oxford and Cambridge, as well as stints ‘in the field’ in Zanzibar. Its author, Dr Kate Raworth, is an economist, ecologist, social activist and – above all – a humanitarian, who has a vision that encompasses all these disciplines. But it accompanied me on several journeys around the Mediterranean in the six months since it was published in the UK last spring, and kept me enthralled through heat waves and sandstorms. Doughnut Economics may not be everybody’s idea of a good holiday read.
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