The donut economy is coming to Barcelona

On July 29, we reached the annual limit of the Earth’s ability to support the load generated by the human race. Thursday July 29 was Earth Overcapacity Day (Earth Crossing Day) from the year 2021. By the end of the year, we are already living at the expense of future generations who will have to suffer for our actions. This is an account developed by Global Footprint Network. This is a global account and if we look at it by country, we will find that Qatar ends the year on February 9; Luxembourgish at 15; United States, March 14, as Canada; Spain, May 25. In 2010, the world date came a month later and in 1990 on December 7. This type of calculation has been made and disclosed for years, with various purposes. We have to analyze what we are doing to change it. We need to disseminate and raise awareness. These figures are very worrying. It is proven that we would need two and a half planets if everyone lived like in Spain. It would be 5 if we did like us.

The very day of the overcapacity on the ground, the Barcelona city hall made an announcement: it will analyze the reality of the city from the economy proposal. Donuts. The press conference doesn’t seem to get much attention, and it can be followed live on YouTube and closed without questions. but economy Donuts It is based on a fundamental change in the pillars and dominant ideas of the economy and the thinking of our societies. Economy Donuts It confronts us with what it means to prosper in the 21st century.

During the days of the Círculo de Economía in June, marked by the amnesty in the media, Mayor Colau really insisted that the economy had to be sustainable for it to be considered as progress. There is a scientific consensus on the environmental crisis we are going through, but there is no consensus in the business world on sustainability. There is little consensus that in most economics schools their students leave without studying anything relevant. There are a few exceptions, one of them is Enrique Tello and his group from the University of Barcelona, ​​who promoted the project to be developed from Barcelona.

Kate Raworth, economist and professor at the University of Oxford, associated with Oxfam, the United Nations Development Program, is behind the proposal for a Donuts, translated his work into Spanish as Donut Economy (Bedus 2018). An author and some ideas that have continued to grow in recent years and which are linked to a new common sense under construction, even if the previous idea is still dominant. Economy Donuts He has a very clear proposition: prosperity in the 21st century involves meeting social needs within ecological limits, and this has little to do with the idea of ​​economic growth that has come to dominate and dominate. to dominate. We cannot transcend environmental limits (climate change, pollution, ocean acidification, etc.) as we are doing now, nor can we fail to meet the needs of the inhabitants of our societies (food, health, education, income, work, housing ., gender. equality, social equality…). Where the idea came from Donuts. the Donuts Health is the goal, we need our societies not to fall into the central hole by not being able to meet their needs and not being able to go beyond the outer limit Donuts As we do and we reach the environmental crisis.

It remains to be seen what will come out of this agreement and this project involving Barcelona City Hall, the Tello group and the Raworth Donut Economics Action Laboratory. The objective is for Barcelona, ​​as Amsterdam did recently, to analyze the city’s position in terms of social deficits and planetary borders. You need to diagnose Donuts For Barcelona in what we let down through the central hole and in what we cross the border. The work developed and the results obtained must be put to the service of the city to identify scenarios that collectively allow progress in prosperity that cannot exist without the consolidation of social and environmental needs. Something that hasn’t been done yet, in this city and not in others. There is no progress and no growth that does not meet the needs of life on this planet.