#046 Celebrating Doughnut Day!
A Kate Raworth keynote on creating an economy for the 21st century
Kate Raworth’s internationally acclaimed idea of Doughnut Economics has been widely influential amongst sustainable development thinkers, progressive businesses and political activists, and she has presented it to audiences ranging from the UN General Assembly to the Occupy movement. The Guardian even named her as “one of the top ten tweeters on economic transformation”. And last Tuesday Kate tweeted pictures of the world’s first City Doughnut Day in Philadelphia, advising they are “plotting a tool so we can share it widely.”
The world’s first City Doughnut Day in Philadelphia. Pic: Kate Raworth’s tweet.
“I think we need an economy that lets go of this obsession of which direction GDP’s going in. It’s the wrong measure. So why are we obsessed about whether it’s going up or down? We need to create an economy that can allow it to adapt to the far bigger principles that we now can see, regenerative and distributive design.”
Kate’s best-selling book ‘Doughnut Economics: 7 ways to think like a 21stcentury economist’ continues to provide perhaps the most promising framework for achieving an economy fit for this century; along with the simple yet profound visual symbol and metaphor for going about the change in how we think and organise ourselves. So to celebrate Doughnut Day, and on the back of where our last episode left off, it seemed like a good time to feature Kate on this podcast again. All the more in light of our live conversation event the day before Doughnut Day, launching Katherine Trebeck’s ‘Economics of Arrival’, for which Kate wrote the foreword.
It’s also a week out from the next National New Economy Network conference here in Perth, Australia, and it was at the 2nd of these national conferences where this 20-minute keynote address by Kate was given. It features Kate beaming in on the big screen with her customary power pack delivery, on how the economy has come to work the way it does, and how to reorient it towards what we need and want in an economy today.
It’s followed by Q&A with the capacity audience of around 300 people at Brisbane’s South Bank, hosted by Network co-founder Dr Michelle Maloney.
So how are we to create an economy that is ‘distributive and regenerative by design’? And how can we become less concerned about the growth of our economy, and more concerned about improving it?
Get more:
Hear Kate in conversation with Anthony in episode 3.
Kate and her team are in the process of setting-up the Doughnut Economics Action Lab (DEAL) ‘in order to connect and empower those who want to turn the ideas of Doughnut Economics into transformative practice to create a world that thrives'.
4th New Economy Network Australia conference in Perth, 4-7 October 2019 – as a podcast listener, use the code RPBP19 when registering to access the super early bird rate of $180 for the entire weekend program (and see you there!).
Music:
Economic Man vs Humanity, a collaboration between Kate Raworth, puppet designer Emma Powel and song writer Simon Panrucker (you can see the film clip here).
Let Them Know, by the Public Opinion Afro Orchestra.