engleski

Mental models of sustainability: the degrowth doughnut

In this century humans must meet their needs equitably within the biophysical means of the planet. A downscaling of planetary boundaries and social wellbeing foundations (thresholds) to national level through calculations of the impacts and attainments of nation states’ socioeconomic activities makes the doughnut model a conceptual tool bringing sustainability closer to political and educational impact. To visualize the scale and the possible pathways for the transformation of national and global sociometabolic practices in the 21st century the novel ‘degrowth doughnut’ includes both boundaries and thresholds in three domains: cultural, socioeconomic, and biophysical. It acknowledges that while biophysical impacts can be quantified against downscaled known planetary boundaries, there are also thresholds of necessary biophysical restoration that nations should be or are contributing to. Likewise, in socioeconomic and cultural attainments and impacts it quantifies the downscaled boundaries and thresholds related to democratically supported transformation and metabolic downsizing, based on a variety of degrowth-related initiatives. The doughnut visualization presents the relationship between social metabolism and its environmental impact for over 160 nation states taken as readily familiar units of analysis, as well as keepers of heritage and international actors in global development strategies. This way the ‘degrowth doughnut’ aims to avoid the conceptually paralyzing trade-off between exclusively biophysical boundaries and exclusively social thresholds of the well-known doughnut models. Understanding that excesses and shortfalls of current and foreseeable socio-metabolic practices exist in cultural, socioeconomic, and biophysical aspects of nations’ social metabolism allows us to build on advantages of different nations’ sustainability potentials through straightforward comparative analysis. The aim of the model and its visual tool is to provide knowledge about the direction and scale of the 21st century socio-metabolic transformation, and to allow autonomous development pathways exploration in interdisciplinary education.

degrowth, doughnut, indicators, principle theories, social metabolism, sustainabiltiy

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