Upstream - A World Out Of Balance Introducing Doughnut 30 W Andrew Fanning

Episode Date: January 11, 2026

Patreon: www.patreon.com/upstreampodcast Mazlo: https://donate.mazloweb.com/donate/xsKGfZHZFXvoNMzVKaSvH In this episode we're joined by Andrew Fanning for a conversation about doughnuts…no, not that kind of doughnut. We're talking about Kate Raworth's famous Doughnut from Doughnut Economics.  Andrew Fanning is an ecological economist exploring how to move our interconnected societies towards the goal of meeting the needs of all people within the means of the living planet. He is particularly interested in finding ways to visualise progress towards this goal in data. Andrew is Research & Data Analysis Lead at Doughnut Economics Action Lab, where he co-creates metrics and research-related tools that make visible the core concepts of Doughnut Economics, and convenes spaces to connect scholars putting these concepts into action. His research has been published in leading journals, such as Nature and Lancet Planetary Health, and he leads the ongoing development of an interactive website entitled 'A good life for all within planetary boundaries', which makes indicators tracking the social shortfall and ecological overshoot of countries visible and widely accessible. In this conversation, we get the latest progress report about our global economic system through Doughnut 3.0, we explore how environmental degradation and social deprivation differs among countries in the imperial core and the periphery, and we hear about ways communities are responding to Doughnut Economics to bring local and global economies into greater balance. Further resources: Andrew Fanning "Doughnut of social and planetary boundaries monitors a world out of balance,"  by Andrew L. Fanning & Kate Raworth  Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist, by Kate Raworth Doughnut Economics Action Lab  California Doughnut Economics Coalition  California Doughnut Snapshot Report Beyond GDP Life Reimagined Doughnut game! Related episodes: Doughnut Economics with Kate Raworth Documentary #9: Debunking the Myth of Homo Economicus Slow Down or Die w/ Timothée Parrique How Degrowth Will Save the World with Jason Hickel [UNLOCKED] How the North Plunders the South w/ Jason Hickel Intermission music: "Green in the Valley" by Nicole Lawrence Upstream is entirely listener funded. No ads, no promotions, no grants—just Patreon subscriptions and listener donations. We couldn't keep this project going without your support. Subscribe to our Patreon for bi-weekly bonus episodes, access to our entire back catalog of Patreon episodes, and for Upstream stickers and bumper stickers at certain subscription tiers. Through your support you'll be helping us keep Upstream sustainable and helping to keep this whole project going—socialist political education podcasts are not easy to fund so thank you in advance for the crucial support. patreon.com/upstreampodcast For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Instagram and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

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thought you knew about the world around you. I'm Robert Raymond. And I'm Della Duncan. Global capitalism is leading us into significant ecological overshoot and extreme social deprivation. We know this for many reasons, one of which is the excellent framework of donut economics developed by renegade economist Kate Rayworth, which measures how our global economy is doing at meeting human needs and staying within our planetary boundaries. Andrew Fanning, along with Kate Rayworth, have recently released the Donut 3.0, outlining data from the last 20-plus years that support the conclusion that capitalism is still leaving billions of people in deprivation while pushing Earth beyond its safe limits.

Andrew Fanning is the data analysis and research lead at the Donut Economics Action Lab, and a visiting research fellow in the Sustainability Research Institute. He's also the co-author with Kate Rayworth of Donut of Social and Planetary Boundaries Monitor as a World Out of Balance, published in Nature in October 2025. And now here's Della, in conversation with Andrew Fannie. Welcome, Andrew, to Upstream. So happy to be in conversation with you. Thank you.

We usually start with having our guests. introduce themselves. So if you wouldn't mind, please introduce yourself and also share how you got involved with donut economics. So I was actually, I have a background trained in mainstream or conventional economics, but also quite involved really during my undergrad and increasing into my master's in international development studies, which is type of a kind of quite critical social science, whereas for those, I'm sure your listeners are aware, mainstream or conventional economics is not so much of a critical social science. So when I was going through my studies,

essentially I was in my sixth year of my formal economics training when I discovered the field of ecological economics. This would have been sometime around 2010. And this field, I will never forget. I wanted to take a course in environmental economics, which was a field of the more conventional economics that was not even being

offered at the graduate level in my department just to give an indication of how important environmental issues were or seemed to be. And I looked around and I found this course being offered by the Faculty of Management called Resource and Environmental Economics or Management or something like that. And basically it was this course in ecological economics. And it was an epiphany for me because there was these concepts which have been around for decades that were criticizing the dominant neoclassical model and all of that stuff that I had had no awareness of whatsoever. And I remember, of course, a lot of the critique in ecological economics

is focused on this big question of scale. Like, how big can the economy be with respect to the finite Earth system within which we're embedded? And so this was a question that I had never really considered very much in a conventional economics background. I'll never forget all the students in the course who came from more natural sciences and more engineering-type backgrounds

who were just sort of nodding their heads along. I was the only kind of mainstream economist. And of course, it makes sense if you haven't been trained in economics that you can't have infinite growth on a finite planet forever. Like, well, that's just not even possible. And so I started doing,

I recognized that this was a field that really answered, a lot of the questions that I was having trouble with in international development studies and economics, which is that it grounded the analysis in the real world, which is actually what was starting to really get me interested. And so fast forward several years, I was able to start a PhD in 2013 at the University of Cadiz in Spain, which is where I'm currently located. But I found a co-supervisor with Dan O'Neill at the University of Leeds. And we got interested in how could we create indicators that track the sustainability of resource use and human well-being and their relations.

And right around this time, you know, Kate Rayworth's first Oxfam discussion paper came out in 2012, which put together these core concepts that had a huge influence on me on the planetary boundaries framework on the one's hand, as well as how can we meet social needs on the other. So we started working on a study in 2015 that looked at whether any countries are meeting the basic needs of their residents at a level of resource use that could be sustainably extended to all people using this donut framework. So that was really kind of my entry to it from an academic level. That study ended up being published a couple years later. And I remember one of our co-authors, Will Lamb, he was the one who actually developed the National Donut visualizations. And he did it

using an online visualization tool called D3.js. It's a JavaScript library to work online. And I remember emailing him and saying, this is amazing that you can do this and that it's interactive and we can select countries and that, you know, it wasn't quite ready to be released for public consumption, but if we put in that work, we can make these results widely accessible and that you should really do this. And I remember him being like, that's a huge task and I'm actually fully employed. And so Dan and I applied for some funding, which ended up hiring me to develop this webpage idea. which I didn't know any web development at the time.

So a huge shout out to Coursera, the massive open online courses, that those platforms that are available, which taught me web development to make it work well enough at least. And I guess my very, very fond memory is I recall running across the University of Leeds campus at one point to meet Kate Rayworth for the very first time

in order for me to show her a draft version of our interactive web page that we had been developed. thing based on these results. So I guess that's my entry point to the donut economics movement, if you want to call it that, or at least the movement within a much broader movement pushing for this change. Thank you. And I love how you have then, you know, developed your relationship further in your relationship with Kate. And you recently published an article in the journal Nature titled, Donut of Social and Planetary Boundaries, monitors a world out of balance. And this is

Donut 3.0. And it's really going to be the focus of today because we have actually had Kate Rayworth on our show as well as her husband, Roman. And so we have focused on Donut Economics, but I'm so happy to have this conversation about taking it into the now and what's the latest and the updates. So thank you for sharing that story. And also about how you came from a mainstream economist background to being a fellow renegade economist, which I love. So I know you lightly mentioned donut economics in your intro, but let's slow it down and please introduce donut economics as if it were to someone very unfamiliar with the idea, because there may be folks who need a refresher or who really don't know much about it. So how would you introduce donut economics?

Yeah, I mean, this is a great question. A challenge that I faced off in if I'm at more social gatherings and my partner will just be like, what are you talking about? But it's always a challenging question. But for me, I guess Donate Economics, it's really about aiming for a world in the 21st century that meets the needs of all people within the means of the living planet. It's very consciously focused on a goal and then asking what kind of economic thinking would be in service to that goal. So, of course, the core concepts were laid out in a book that Kate wrote that you spoke with her just before, around when it was published back in 2017. And that book is called Donate Economics, Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st Century Economist,

which I, of course, highly recommend to all of your listeners. And so if I had to choose, I would say there are two great contributions from the book. So first, it brings together insights from many, many heterodox traditions in economics. There's ecological economics, feminist economics, complexity economics, institutional economics, and others, which have, of course, decades of critique against, the dominant neoclassical school that has become hegemonic all across the world's universities and business schools. So Donut Economics diagnoses these seven core ways that neoclassical economic thinking that we've inherited from the 20th century, like I won't go through all of them now, but examples are like we tend to see the economy as a self-contained perpetual motion machine,

or that humans are innately selfish or competitive. And Donut Economics then uses this array of plural and heterodox insights to propose alternatives that are fit for the 21st century challenges that we face. Like, you know, in a world where we're living, where far too many people are falling short of meeting their essential needs, while humanity is simultaneously destabilizing our delicately balanced planetary home. So we know ecological economists have long emphasized that perpetual motion is physically impossible, that markets cannot be self-contained

because nothing just keeps moving around and around in circle all by itself. And then we know complexity economics gives us tools to see the economy as a system which is embedded within a society, which is in turn part of and fully dependent upon our beautiful and living planet. And yes, people can be selfish and competitive, but we know also that they can be highly cooperative, they can be altruistic and care deeply for one another. As feminist economists have especially shown,

while emphasizing the power dynamics that get erased when we imagine that a person acts without any dependence on others or the rest of the living world. So that's one part of donut economics that I think is very, very powerful and useful. But apart from the great storytelling and the synthesis, the second big contribution that has had a huge impact on me is to highlight the important role of visualizations and images in shaping how we think about the economy.

So for each of those seven ways, Kate unearths the story and the power behind a core diagram that neoclassical economics essentially summarizes and slips some assumed ways of thinking about how the economy works into our visual cortex, into the back of our brain, in a way that, you know, words and equations, cannot land in quite the same way. Now, an example is, of course, the familiar X of supply and demand

that anyone who has taken an introductory economics course will likely have seen. But of course, this seemingly innocuous image masks a whole lot of assumptions about how the economy relates to one another, what it is. So, for example, it puts the market right up at the front, it puts price as the center, the idea that there is an equilibrium.

All of these things are assumptions about how an economy works that are kind of glossed over. So I found this focus on images and diagrams particularly and how they affect our thinking to be a fascinating area of learning and questions and experimentation into the art and the science of data visualization that I was kind of already on that journey. And then, yeah, I guess the stars kind of aligned

around the end of 2019 as Kate had just, co-founded Donate Economics Action Lab, and I just finished a postdoc, which led to a dream role that it currently hold at Donate Economics Action Lab, leading research and co-creating metrics that make the concepts of Donate Economics visible in data. Thank you. Thank you for that. Yeah, I'll just, yeah, uplift a few things you're saying. So, you know, what is Donate Economics?

It is a global movement. And like you said, it's a community. And it's largely on this Donate Economics Action Lab, but it's really, actualized in many different communities around and we'll touch on that. And it is also this really methodological interrogation and challenging of mainstream economic thinking. Like you said, what are the seven ways we can think like a 21st century economist and the ways that we need to unlearn what mainstream economics has told us about how an economy works, our relationship with the more than human world and human nature and more, right? It's also a very high leverage point

in systems change, it's changing the goal of the system, as you mentioned. So it's really saying, what is the goal of our current neoliberal capitalist growth industrial economy? And then what ought to be the goal, right? And the goal ought to be human and planetary health or well-being. Right. So it's really changing that goal there. So it's all of these things. And I love that you brought in the major contributions of done economics. And you're absolutely right. The image component is one of them. And so let's go into the classic image, the donut, as it would be called. So I'd love for you to introduce what is the donut. What does that mean when we say that? This is a podcast, so we don't have the visualization, so please paint it for us. And then walk us through

donut 1.0, 2.0, and now donut 3.0 that you and Kate have just recently released in this article. Sure. Thank you. So the donut, the donuts, the donut of social and planetary boundaries, is its full name, often commonly referred to as the donut, is a visual framework. As the name suggests, it happens to look like a donut, but we always make the joke that this is the only one that happens to be healthy for you, because really it's about changing the way that we see the world. So it sets out two core concepts, and it uses two concentric rings in order to do so. So the first concept is that we should aim to avoid critical human deprivation.

And that's shown by, if we imagine, an inner ring of a donut and a social foundation within which nobody should fall below. And then the second core concept is that we should avoid critical planetary degradation. And that you could imagine the further concentric ring on the outside, which can be thought of as an ecological ceiling. And the donut ends up becoming defining essentially the minimal conditions of a socially just an ecologically safe space just by conceptually putting those things together. So by definition, if you're falling short of the social foundation, then we have critical

human deprivation, which is not what we want. And if we are overshooting the ecological ceiling, then we have critical planetary degradation, which also we, we of course do not want. So together, the donut illustrates this goal that I mentioned at the beginning, that we want to meet the needs of all, have no critical human deprivation, within the donut. in the means of the living planet or not causing any planetary degradation. So that is the core conceptual framework. Donut 1.0 is the very first iteration of this framework, which Kate published as an Oxfam discussion paper in 2012.

And it was in the run-up to the Sustainable Development Goals RioPlus20 conference, which was essentially where countries were coming together to propose what should go into these Sustainable Development Goals, which are being negotiated at the time. And Donut 1.0, the social foundation, Kate actually worked out methodologically. She looked at these country submissions of what different countries were saying were important, and she actually took all of the terms that were broad dimensions that were mentioned in more than 50% of the country submissions. That was her method that she approached, and she ended up setting out these

core dimensions of the social foundation based on that, which of course included things like food, water, and education, and sanitation, and equality, and gender equality, and political boys, and others. And for the ecological ceiling, that was informed fully by the planetary boundaries framework, the very first version, which was published by Yuan Rockstrom, led by Joanne Rockstrom and other leading Earth system researchers in in 2009 and they identified these nine critical earth system processes that govern the stability of the of the incredibly warm and accommodating state of our planet that we've enjoyed for the past 11,000 years in the holocene. So Kate put those two things together and published a discussion paper which essentially was

donut 1.0 for each of the dimensions she was able to attach to the best extent possible available data showing what the degrees of shortfall were socially, and of course the planetary boundaries framework provides the level of overshoot. Donut 2.0, Fast Forward, was published in 2017, and it essentially accompanied Kate's book, which served as a good point to update the work

because the Sustainable Development Goals had actually been agreed upon, and we're now entered into force. And so Kate actually has a wonderful story that we've heard that apparently the donut was on the table during those negotiations of the Sustainable Development Goals, and then, of course, in the second version of the donut, those goals then informed much more explicitly. So instead of having to rely on the 50% stated type of approach she did

in Donut 1.0, she could just actively, used the explicitly agreed upon goals of the social priorities of the sustainable development goals. And also the planetary boundaries framework had been updated also in 2015. So it was a good time to take stock and to update, which I think is a core principle of the donut itself in the sense that it's accepting of the notion that boundaries and our understanding of them can actually evolve over time. And the donut, I think it's really important for the, for me, in that it is accepting of that evolution. And that can occur, of course, both socially as norms change or as data becomes more

available, as well as in the planetary boundaries framework as better, you know, planetary science and understanding improves. So Donut 3.0 had a very similar ambition in the sense that time had passed. It took Kate and I considerably longer to do this update than we actually thought that it would take us. So we published it in October of 2025, but we actually started the analysis in September of 2022. So it took us almost three years, which surprises me and her and I think everybody. But it's maybe also a reflection that we were aiming to really increase not so much the core concepts, but the underlying data that was under the hood, if you will. So we were aiming to make that

into a process that we could transform it to just an annual snapshot in a single year, there was an ambition to make it a much more, much more of a monitor, so that we could actually monitor trends over the 21st century. And so we were looking for indicators that went back in time, ideally, from at least 2000. And another piece was that we also wanted to publish this in the scientific peer-reviewed literature, because we felt that there were some advances that we could make, once again, building on top of a recent update to the planetary boundary science, which occurred in 2023, but also building on advances in social monitoring

and increasingly on methods of downscaling the donut in a way that takes into account cross-country differences and other work that I've been involved in. And so that essentially is what the broad picture of donut 1.0 in 2012, Donut 2.0 in 2017, and now Donat 3.0 in 2025, which we aim to now update annually moving forward so that we don't have to go through these long processes and so that it can stay a kind of a real-time monitor or as real-time as we can make it, monitoring the social and ecological trends that we see. Thank you.

Yeah, my friend and colleague Indy Rishi Singh, he says, the donut is a kind of a health checkup, right? And it's a way of, say, of sensing into our planet, into Gaia or the world. How are we doing, right? How are we doing in terms of social needs being met in terms of human thriving, right, or deprivation? And then how are we doing in our more than human world, in our ecosystems, our watersheds, right, our bioregions? How is the health of our planet as a whole? And so it's this checkup, right, and really can indicate. And we can feel into it. Right, even without knowing the data that we have so much social deprivation and that we are really, in a lot of overshoot, we are really pushing on the capacity of our more than human world, our ecological systems. And yet this really just reveals how it is that we are really doing on these key indicators.

And so, you know, you mentioned that Donut 3.0 and this article really helps us understand what's happened over time. So please share, you know, from 2000 to 2002, which is when you see. started this process. What did you find about the trends of social deprivation globally? What has happened? Tell us the story. Yeah, sure, sure. And I guess I should also mention, given that your listeners can't actually see the donut, but hopefully they can somewhat picture it in their mind. And that really that impact of combining the social and ecological, I think the visual impact of that diagram has had, as you were saying, about your colleague, Indy, and on many others we've heard that the holistic framing of combining the two in a single image

is kind of where a lot of the power lies. So for Donut 3.0, revealing the global trends from the social aspect, sure, we looked at trends across 20 social indicators with available time series data. And we find generally that humanity as a whole has made progress towards achieving the donut's social foundation, though this improvement has been modest, given that we're actually measuring critical human deprivation, that we don't want any red or any shortfall in the whole of the donut.

But we do see some improvements, which is caused for, it could be worse, because the largest social improvements are for internet connectivity, health services, coverage, and child survival, safe sanitation, and clean indoor fuels, with something like 24 to 56% of humanity, like a quarter to half of all humanity, escaping shortfall in these areas over the 22-year period that we looked at. So, I mean, those are some big advances.

At the same time, there are other indicators that show little, improvement over the period, such as for undernourishment, for youth employment, unsafe drinking water, social support, and especially perceptions of corruption, which haven't moved much well, food security and population living under autocratic regimes have worsened over the period. So that's certainly not good news. Overall, our median results, they suggest an improving trend in the social side from around 47% of humanity falling short in 2000 to 35% in 2022. But of course, current trends would need to accelerate five-fold we find in order to eliminate

critical human deprivation by 2030, which is, of course, the target year for the sustainable development goals. So some improvement, but much, much more could be done. And what about ecological overshoot? How are we doing there? Here, the news is a bit more concerning, to be honest. So we looked at 10 planetary boundary indicators with available time series data, and it may not be surprising to your listeners.

As you mentioned, you can kind of feel the deprivations and the shortfalls of our current system and that we're not operating within boundaries. But we found that humanity's collective burden on the planet has generally worsened since the early 2000s. And actually, I have to say, if you read the scientific paper that we published this in, published in the journal Nature, it may come across the writing as quite distant and matter of fact, but I actually have to say that writing up these global ecological results almost had a kind of overview effect for me, that it was the first analysis I've been involved in that was taking this global perspective and looking at trends over time, that I found it really,

really hard to get through. Like, it can feel very overwhelming to see how far we are off course here and just completely moving in the wrong direction. With the notable exception of ozone layer depletion, which is roughly stable over the period as far as we find, but none of the other indicators were moving in the right direction. Six of them were increasing their extent of overshoot by up to 150% further beyond the ecological ceiling. Since 2000, and that includes the indicators for climate change,

for chemical pollution, nutrient pollution, and others. The ocean acidification indicator, we found in our study, it was still below its boundary in 2022, but more than three quarters of the gap below the boundary in 2000 was closed over the period that we analyzed, leaving just 5% of its safe space remaining with respect to the Holocene baseline and closing quickly. And actually, the week before we published our analysis, the Planetary Health Check Initiative, who update the planetary boundary science on an annual basis now,

they announced that the world had officially crossed the ocean acidification boundary. So it's now seven of the nine planetary boundaries have been transgressed. So overall, our medium results find these fairly rapid rates of degradation, especially when we think of the geological time scale of the Earth system. And these would need to halt immediately and reverse course towards ecological, regeneration nearly twice as fast as the rates that we've been seeing for degradation in order to get back within planetary boundaries by 2050, which is, of course, the target year for many net zero climate targets. And there's a broad push to achieve climate targets, at least, by that

date. Thank you. And I, you know, I appreciate that you bring in the grief or that even though it can feel very cold or calculated or academic, this is our home. and this is our planet and these are real people and, you know, other than human beings who are really suffering. And so to really feel into what is what does this data actually mean is really important. And yeah, so just to say what I'm hearing, we've made very modest improvements in terms of the social deprivation or the meaning of human needs in some ways. And then we've really transgressed or really we're really pushing on or overshooting the bounds of our ecological system. and particularly our global ecological system. And one point that you make in the article, which is so important, is that the donut that we're

talking about is really an amalgamation or, you know, a summary of all human and all ecology. It's at that the largest scale that we can offer. And yet there is not one single experience of humanity, right? And we know this particularly, you know, who is most impact. by, let's say, climate change and human deprivation and legacies of colonialism and imperialism, all of that. And so one real offering in this paper is breaking down the donut by the poorest countries, the poorest 40% of countries, the middle 40% and the richest 20%. So talk to us about why did you do that? Because I see the importance, but really tell us why that was a critical component of this article.

And what did you find when you broke it down? Yeah, this is really, really important. This was an important piece to add to the analysis because, I mean, we know that these global aggregate measures, they mask huge inequalities across, well, both within countries as well as between them. And so ideally we had wanted to address the disparities of the entire population so that we could talk about

the whole population that was falling short versus the top 1% of the global population versus the poorest 40%. But that data was just simply not available in a manner that we could fit within the scope of this article. So that's future work, very much needed. But what we were able to do

was break apart by the, as you said, the poorest 40% of countries, the middle 40% of countries, and the richest 20% of countries. Now, this is a way of taking into account cross-country inequalities, of course, but it misses, I just really need to emphasize that it misses huge amounts of disparities of inequalities within countries. But even still, it allowed us to very, very clearly demonstrate that the contribution to global ecological overshoot is overwhelmingly disproportionately

being supplied by the richest, and the suffering of social shortfalls are overwhelmingly disproportionately being felt by the poorest. And vice versa when it comes to those who are responsible for ecological overshoot, of course, are not the poorest, and those who are not falling short are the richest.

So what this analysis allowed to show, essentially those two sides of the coin, which is what the donut kind of allows us to do. And I mean, to look at the numbers, we find our median results show that the richest 20% are home to actually less than 15% of the global population, and yet they are responsible for more than 40% of the median levels of overshoot across the indicators that we looked at. Some of them were as high as 75%, especially climate change, I think, was around 50, and biodiversity footprints were up to, yeah, more than 50%, at least. And similarly, in the poorest 40% of countries, we found that they held actually a similar

share of the population, I think it's around 42% of the global population, and yet they're suffering on a median level is more than 60%. And some of those indicators were up to 99%. The poorest are the only ones experiencing social shortfall based on the access to electricity metric that we used, for example. Or internet connectivity, there's just tiny slivers in the richest, whereas all of the shortfall being felt in the poorest. And those findings, I think, are just really, really important. It gets back to what I mentioned at the beginning, that these aren't necessarily new results, but being able to visualize them and show them side by side, I think it's an important contribution

of the paper, I think. Absolutely. And so just to paint that picture for those who want to imagine this, and we will link to the article, of course, so people can actually see them. But in the poorest 40%, we have a lot of red in the social elements. We have a lot of social deprivation and very little ecological overshoot, very little of the poorest 40% pushing on the planetary boundaries. the middle 40% we have some red in the middle and some red on the outside, but it's the highest

20%, the richest 20% countries that we have very little social deprivation and dramatic ecological overshoot. And so just to kind of give folks a visualization of what that looks like. And then an element of this is, you know, the word poorest, richest, and I know that there's so many great conversations are from, you know, international. economics and ecological economics and, you know, Marxist economics that would really say, you know, it's really the over-exploited, right, not the poorest, it's like the over-exploited, the extracted, right, the global majority, and then the imperial core, really, is the richest 20%. So there's something about the diagrams that we can't show, which is the relationship between

them, that the ecological overshoot and also the meeting of the human needs for the wealthiest or the Imperial Corps is coming at the expense of those who are the global majority or, you know, the periphery, is it, is also called. So talk to us a little bit about like how do we reconcile or how can we also add to this analysis, the dynamic between the countries of what's happening in the donut. Yeah, that's a great question. And it's one of our best attempts to visualize those disparities. Unfortunately, because of the nature of data availability, right now, we've still shown donuts for separate nations. We effectively treat each country as its own little unit of analysis, which we do take

into account what are called consumption-based environmental footprints, so that we do take into account that the environmental burdens of consumption in one country could be actually felt in another, if that makes any sense. So these metrics essentially correct for offshoring of environmental burdens to other countries. We have those for the environmental footprint measures, like the carbon footprint, like the nitrogen, phosphorus, and so on. All of the ecological footprint indicators of those country clusters actually take into account that relationship, which is a step towards taking into account that, you know, that you

You know, those who are consuming goods and services actually should be responsible for the environmental burdens that are incurred from them, no matter where in the world, those should take place. And that, in my view, is a fundamental part, and it has to be included in these metrics, in my view. That being said, it still doesn't take into account, of course, the levels of appropriation, the whole huge literature around unequal exchange, unequal, ecological, exchange, the relationships between countries and how that's determined, colonial legacies, as you already mentioned. So what we end up doing, we have this diagram that effectively puts as many donuts as you can imagine on a chart for separate nations. And I think it's useful to think of how these broad trajectories can arise across core groups, where essentially, as shown by the poorest 40%, the middle 40%, and the richest 20%.

And we could imagine those in the poorest 40%, if our aim is to get into the donut, then how could they rise up and into that space following a trajectory that has never been followed before, because all previous nations have tended to rise up as their levels of income and associated resource use tend to increase, but then they end up swooshing right past. And similarly for the middle 40%, or the middle-income countries,

how could they then reorient their economies? They tend, as you mentioned, they tend to be falling short by less, overshooting by less. So it's less of an extreme, but also facing a double-wiming of having to achieve both at the same time. But how could they reorient and get into the donut? Once again, it's a trajectory that hasn't been followed before.

and then critically the core, the richest 20%, how can these countries just radically reduce their levels of resource use, taking into account how they're offshoring from others in order to get into the donut without undermining or ideally improving levels of social well-being at the same time. So I tend to think of these three broad trajectories within countries, but then critically, I imagine another arrow just linking all three groups and rebalancing. where you're calling for a rebalancing of the global system, which takes into account,

you know, just you've already mentioned the histories, colonial legacies, there could be many, many ways to rebalance the global system from return of stolen land to reparations for slavery and for appropriation of the atmosphere. Of course, changing unequal global trade and finance rules, which reinforced that unequal exchange that we were talking about earlier, how do we take into account the impacts of climate change

which are overwhelmingly scheduled to be, well, which are hitting and are likely to continue hitting hardest and first those who are marginalized or those who are poorest, both within and across countries, across marginalized communities. So we're not able yet to show

the inequalities inherent within the extractive system that we have at a global scale, but we can certainly use these diagrams and these frameworks to gesture towards the importance of those issues, which to me is kind of the importance of using data to make visible the concepts that we know are important, even if we don't yet have the perfect data that can do it. You're listening to an upstream conversation with Andrew Fanning. We'll be right back.

That was Green in the Valley by Nicole Lerner. Lawrence. Now back to our conversation with Andrew Fannie. Thank you for that. Yes, and especially that list of the ways that we could help the most exploited or most extracted from countries, meet social needs and stay within the ecological boundaries. You had a great list there. I'll add, you know, debt jubilee or debt forgiveness because that's a real huge component of this. And then for the richest 20%, and I know you know this, but I'll just add it, degrowth, right? That's where our recent conversation with Timothy Parique and Jason Hickle's work would really offer how to bring down the ecological pressure of an economy while meeting those

human needs. And all of that, one way to describe this is democratically planned economies, right? That would be a way in any case to be able to do this work. And of course, the donut and the donuts help reveal how we're doing and can give us over time the monitoring of how we're doing in this. I'll also add one contribution of donut economics is not just the snapshot in time of how an economy is doing, but these reflective questions that also come with the donut, which are not only how is our economy doing at meeting our human needs and how is our economy doing at respecting our ecological boundaries, but then it also asks in donut economics, how can this place help the people of all the planet thrive and how can this place help the ecological systems of our

entire planet thrive? That's so important, right? And as I work on, for example, a San Francisco donut, a California donut, and a San Jose donut, which are three that I'm personally involved with, we have to ask that. Because as Kate says, 21st century economics is planetary home management. our systems are so interconnected. So how we meet our needs in San Francisco or California or San Jose is so connected to the meeting of the human needs and the respect of the ecological bounds of places and people around the world. So they are very connected. We must consider that. And speaking of interconnections, I'm wondering, did you identify in your research any indicators that point to best opportunities for multi-solving? Meaning, if, we all focused on one, because the indicators are also connected. So was there anything if we all focused on one or, you know, key leverage points within the donut that would really turn things around? Did you find anything like that in your research? So in this latest research, we have, we didn't actually look at at the type of leverage points. And this was for a, for an, well, not an

ethical, more of a, the philosophical grounding within the donut is that we kind of argue that all of the different dimensions should be seen as plural and non-substitutable. And so also within the scope of the analysis, we just didn't actually look at the types of, you know, if we implement this one, then it looks like it could have the greatest gains. An earlier study that I was involved in, led by my colleague Dan O'Neill, was published in 2018 looking at about 150 national donuts. And in that study, we actually did look at the relationship between each social and biophysical, social ecological indicator pair. And that means that we were actually interested in saying, okay, here we can see a very strong relationship or not such a strong relationship in terms of social outcomes of education or sanitation with respect to resource use like carbon emissions or nitrogen footprint. on. And that actually did allow us to see which indicators, based on this cross-country analysis,

appear to have more of a relationship than others. But that was essentially as far as, as far as my own research at this big global scale has been able to look at. So I want to go into, you know, what is the meaning of Donut 3.0 and this article. And here's Jason Hickles' take on what Donut 3.0 tells us. He says, it shows once again that capitalism is an extremely inefficient system, characterized by high levels of aggregate production to the point of driving ecological breakdown, even while masses of humanity remain deprived of basic needs. So, yeah, this sense that, like you said, there's been modest improvements.

And, I mean, I think about all the people, you know, I'm like a right livelihood coach, I'm connected with all these people who are part of movements around the world to support ecological and social. And so to hear, we've only made these modest improvements. People have dedicated their lives and so much time and attention towards addressing these issues. And we have to celebrate those wins. But we're doing it in this nonprofit industrial complex. And we're doing this in this current economy that is just, it's really harming us and the planet. And that we're really pushing on the ecological breakdown.

So this really does reveal something about capitalism. Maybe it's not new to us, but it's very, very clear for that. I think it also reveals something about GDP. So I'd like to ask you about that. What does this tell us about GDP growth and, you know, kind of another attack on GDP as our metric or indicator of success? So tell us, yes, what is the meaning of Donut 3.0, your main finding here. What does it mean? And how are people responding to it?

Yeah, great question. So I mean, with respect to the quote from Jason, I think that it's bang on. That's what we're effectively looking at are, of course, these very, very giant global trends. And given that we live in this giant global capitalist economic system, that we shouldn't be surprised to see these results coming out for all the reasons that he articulates much better than me in terms of, you know, that the capitalist economic system is not actually aiming, it doesn't have a goal to meet everyone's basic needs, and nor does it particularly care about destroying our living planet because it feeds off both of those things, because its purpose is, of course, to provide accumulation and profit and additional capital to those who wield it. And so I fully agree with that.

I would say that how are people responding to this is essentially along with very, very similar reaction to me, I feel. That it's sort of like we are witnessing these very, very rapid rates of degradation, this modest improvements in social performance, and critically, where we tied very clearly into the paper is that all of this is taking place alongside, if you look at global rates of GDP growth, that the economy, the global economy has actually more than doubled over this period. And yet, we are still falling far, far short, even though we have more productive capacity than we have ever had before in order to meet people's needs, it's still very, very slowly

happening while ecological breakdown occurs even faster. So we painted that picture within the paper, and I feel like it's generally, resonated quite a lot with people. I haven't heard much criticism yet in terms of the core findings, which we of course aim to make them as robust and as transparent and as widely accessible as possible. So a part of me is actually hoping that somebody kind of has something substantive to find, because then of course we can learn from it and move on and improve. But to date, the couple critiques that I have seen have not been particularly serious. Well, there you go, an invitation for folks to read the article and get back to Andrew with

any questions and critiques about the findings. So you mentioned GDP. So GDP over the past, you said 2000 to 2022, has doubled. Okay. And then we also talked about what the donut has shown. And I know that in this movement that we're both a part of called the post-growth movement, it's also post-capitalist movement, you know, one of the deepest intentions or aspirations is to rid ourselves as GDP. Like we all are very well aware that GDP as an indicator or metric of success is not helpful. It's actually toxic because it's not measuring what's truly important to us. And very harmful things can actually increase GDP, such as an oil spill or war, for example, genocide. So where are we at with this work really contributing, really pushing to rid

countries and global institutions of using GDP as the metric? Are we there? Are people abandoning GDP? Do you see movement there? Or what are the most effective ways to get that national and supernational action to rid ourselves of this indicator and to replace it with indicators that actually demonstrate how an economy is doing at providing the social needs and staying within our ecological bounds? Yeah, that's a great question. So in the paper, we outline these three broad changes that we believe needs to take place that the donut supports in terms of moving to a post-growth world. That's in terms of the conception that the donut makes visually apparent the goal, right, that we should be aiming to meet the needs of all within the means of the living

planet, so as a concept, as a goal, that provides some directionality. It also helps in terms of the metrics, as you mentioned, so, I mean, or as you're asking, that what types of indicators should we include? Well, I would argue that we should be tracking metrics that actively aim to track our performance with respect to where we want to go. So many, many indicators do not do that. They will be a metric that tends to just move over time. if it's a monitor, but it lacks that desired state

or a comparison of where we want to be in many cases. And what ends up filling that gap is we end up comparing ourselves to the best. And this is where our Nordic countries always tend to come bubbling up to the top because they have very, very good social performance. And they've been relatively successful in decoupling levels of resource use and carbon emissions and so on. But if you actually compare those levels of levels, of decoupling to what's absolutely required in order to get back within planetary boundaries,

then those countries come out among some of the worst in terms of ecological overshoot. Not saying that the social gains that have been achieved in many of the society, Norway, Sweden, Finland are not something to strive for, but it's just that the levels of resource use associated with those social outcomes could not be extended to all people. And so they're not role models in that sense. So I think having metrics that make that visible and clear is important. And finally, the directionality so that we can actually see which way are we moving towards.

And those types of numbers that I briefly mentioned where we need to accelerate five-fold our levels of improvement in order to actually avoid critical human deprivation. So I think the donut helps in that respect, but it does so as part of a much broader movement, the post-growth movement, as you say. So just going back to one of the comments you had at the beginning, we actually have a principle of working at Donut Economics Action Lab that's don't be the movement, join the movement. So we're not aiming to be a donut movement alongside many, many others. We're actually aiming to be a part of the broader post-growth movement, which is working in many, many different ways, as you mentioned, de-growth, for example. That framing, I think, is really,

really important and relevant, especially when you're starting from a wealthy, high-income country starting point, which is where I'm currently sitting in Spain. You're sitting in the United States. That's where we are starting from. But the donor aims to have a more universal appeal. So we want to be able to speak to low-income, middle-income, high-income. Yeah, so I would say that that's a little bit of a difference between the different approaches. But I think that it's just really important to all be working together in this broad system because to answer your question, I still feel that GDP as an economic indicator of success at the national scale is still highly dominant. There's a big movement, though, that I take some hope from some in that the publication

of our study was actually accompanied by remarkable editorial by nature, the editors of nature, who have an article called NGDP mania. And within it, they really reference our results quite a lot, but they critically tie it to this UN high-level expert group on Beyond GDP, which is currently convening and putting together guidelines and a framework within the UN system for what Beyond GDP metrics could look like. And the editors of nature actually encourage researchers. You can find the editorial.

they link to the UN group's website, which is actively calling for researchers to engage with this process. And so for any ecological economists or post-growth researchers who are out there and want to get organized to throw in some insights, that might be an approach to make sure that this way of thinking,

this paradigm becomes more relevant in their discussions because other parts of the Beyond GDP debate I feel are less confrontational to the question of growth. It's more about, you know, GDP technically is, as you were saying, it's counting oil spills when it shouldn't, but it doesn't really get to the core growth mentality that's inherent in the kind of extractive and capitalist system, for example, that I know you've explored with many, many others.

So I think we need to be on guard within that process to advocate for these concepts and ideas as well. So you mentioned downscaling the donut. And so Donut 3.0, as you mentioned, is this global scale. How are we doing this health checkup of our global scale, all humans, all humanity, and also our global ecological systems. But there is this movement to downscale the donut, to really bring it to local levels. And there are country-level donuts, as you mentioned.

There's also even city-level donuts. And I mentioned that I'm connected with a few of them, a donut for San Jose, a donut for San Francisco, and a donut for California. I'm really grateful to be part of teams who are really leading that and offering that. And so, you know, this question is, how do we leverage Donut 3.0 to increase the action or the systems change at the local, the community, the municipal level? And even Donut economics can come into the enterprises, the businesses, the nonprofits, because what we didn't mention is you have the snapshot of the donut and then there's this question of how do we get within the donut, right? How do we get within the safe and just space for humanity? And that is regenerative and circular and solidarity economics. And that really comes to

enterprises, organizations, you know, businesses, institutions, efforts, etc. So tell us a little bit about the proliferation of the local level of donuts that you're seeing. What are you celebrating? because this literally changes each week. If I looked last week to this week, there's several more Donutin initiatives than there were last week. So tell us about ones you're familiar with, you're excited about, and also how do we leverage donut 3.0 at the local level to create this change we're seeking. Yeah, great question. And this is an area that gives me a lot of energy, actually.

So one of the reasons why my role is such a privilege is because one part of it is to lead these kind of global research and creating metrics. and I would say just to respond to the first question about leveraging donut 3.0 results, my first gut reaction is we aimed to, by publishing this in one of the most high impact journals that we could publish in, we were aiming to give some legitimacy to the donut economics concepts themselves, but also the broader post-growth movement that we are a part of. So that I feel is an important piece of the analysis in terms of publishing it in nature that is worth recognizing. So I think just leveraging it in that sense is difficult, well, more difficult to discount or to kind of throw away or posh-tosh or, you know, that's not real science. That's just a visualization tool type of thing.

But when it comes to downscaling stuff, another part of my role is really to offer. for technical support and serve as a kind of strategic friend who can be called upon by initiatives worldwide that are picking up the data-led tools that we offer at Donut Economics Action Lab. And so there's been a lot of interest at city scale. And this was really kicked off by the city of Amsterdam, who published the very first public version of what we call the Amsterdam city portrait. And it's a city portrait or the donut portrait methodology. And it's a little bit this methodology, it's a bit different from the kind of cross-country donut comparisons that we show in Donut 3.0, for example, and it's for two reasons that you kind of spoke to a second ago. So,

first, a donut portrait, it aims to be as locally relevant as possible when you're selecting indicators and targets, because it's meant to serve as a tool to inform discussion or deliberation on really how can we find entry points for action in a place. So it gives up comparability across places so that you can no longer compare poorest 40% to richest 20% or whatever, but it does so in order to zoom in on these locally relevant issues and indicators. And the other reason that I find it quite useful if you want to use it as a tool for action is that it takes a more holistic ambition to downscaling the donut by recognizing that there's more to creating a thriving place than just meeting the basic needs of residents

at a level of resource use that respects planetary boundaries. Like, you know, planetary boundaries are kind of this abstract concept that aren't well connected to our places. So locally, we know it's not just about meeting the basic needs of residence, but it's also about working with and within the natural cycles of our local ecosystems within which our places are embedded. And lots of the big national scale or country class, scale analyses, are not able to take into account those local ecosystem characteristics.

So that's a core part that we emphasize with the portrait methodology. And globally, as you were already mentioned, it's not only about consuming a level of resources that could be extended to all people without destabilizing Earth systems. It's also crucially about respecting, thinking about who are the people who are picking the food and assembling the goods and shipping them and carrying them to our doors and how are the workers and the communities who are we are connected to, how are they doing? And are we respecting their health and their well-being? So those are what the portrait methodology aims to bring out that Amsterdam trialed in 2020. And I think it's just such a demonstration of the power

of peer-to-peer inspiration that within months, neighboring European cities got in touch with Donate Economics Action Lab, Brussels Capital Region, Copenhagen filed a motion. I think it's just a core example of how the importance of precedent and the, just those first movers, allow others who are like you, like that person, to say, oh, well, if they can do it, I can do it. And we immediately had interest from Brussels, from Copenhagen, Barcelona got started, Glasgow, as you were mentioning it, then very, very quickly spiraled into, there's now more than 100. There's 50 local governments that are publicly engaging

with the strategies and concepts of donut economics in their policies and so on. And another 50 odd who are actively exploring the concepts, if not, even if we can't publicly say that it's integrated into this policy or so on. So I think there's lots and lots and lots going on. I was quite involved with the California Donut snapshot, which I really, really enjoyed.

It was led by Alizza and Julian Kraus-Polk, who were the ones that I'm mostly engaged with. And again, my role is essentially, if I can support with some common challenges that I've come across or that I've seen others come across, that we can support in your process of selecting indicators and targets, there's a little bit of ensuring that the concepts of donut economics are correctly kind of communicated and so on.

but really it's I've just been, it's a pleasure to engage with really, really inspired and active folks who are working just all around the world. So I've just really, really enjoyed that aspect of my work. And there are now more than 30 places that have picked up the data-led tools and actively created these portrait type of approaches in various ways. Just last week, we published a donut data portraits indicator library, which this This is one of these things are, it's an ongoing tension, right? Because how can you aim to have a tool that's locally relevant that people can use?

So we don't want to prescribe specific indicators, even if we, you know, we prescribe the broad set. We all know that food and health and education and these are important dimensions, but the ways that we track progress within those, you know, the world of food is a whole massive, massive system. Same with health, same with energy. Same way, so what indicators to use to track that? In the portrait, we argue that the indicators that would be most relevant, which would be those that most resonate with the possibility to generate meaningful action. And so that's just a really, really inspiring part of our work, but I'm not able to kind of say,

oh, you should pick up this indicator that's available in your municipality because I don't have access to all the municipalities in the world. So it's just a really interesting part of people in their places, looking for those locally relevant sources, but at the same time, this indicator library tool that I just mentioned, it aims to make much more visible the choices that other initiatives have taken

by showing what are the indicators, what are the targets across these, even if they're not locally relevant for your place, it can be relevant to see, well, Barcelona did that, and Seattle did this, and Vermont did that, and Amsterdam did,

and so that's kind of the spirit of the tool, which so far we've been hearing has been really, really useful because the counterside if we don't provide something is that every place essentially has to kind of reinvent the wheel or reach out to everyone on a one-by-one type of approach, which is not as effective, given how strapped lots of people are in terms of time and resources and so on. Yeah, one thing I've noticed about downscaling the donut is there's diversity and unity, right? There's unity in that it's all the donut portraits, similar questions, and it's the same, roughly the same image, although there are really cool variations in the image as well, and also how to offer it, right? There's the Regen Melbourne has a very cool interactive component and actually includes stories, which I really love, that piece of it. But yeah, so there's unity and then there's also diversity. And yeah, just to give folks a sense, this process of creating a snapshot or a portrait at a local level, it's a really beautiful process because it also, it asks, you know, what does it mean for us to have the people of this place thrive?

And what does it mean to have this need met? And you also have to get into enoughness, right? Like, what is enoughness, right? Is, are we okay with some homelessness or do we need like 100% of people having access to safe and supportive housing. And so you ask these questions and then you're also right that you get into placed-based and culture-based ways of looking at this too. What does it mean for San Francisco to have a thriving ecosystem? And so it's these really beautiful questions and thank you for all those tools. So, you know, as we come to the end of our conversation and we think about our invitations for listeners going forward, so one of them is, you know, this donut economics Action Lab website. Really want to uplift. Deal.org is a really wonderful place to just, you know, join.

It's free, but you create a profile to just be connected with all these conversations. You can access these tools. There's tools for businesses. There's these indicator tools. There's these ways to meet up with people who are looking at policy and beyond GDP and your even local community. So joining that live community is a really beautiful invitation. Also to see if anyone's already looking at creating a donut for your area, right? Because it's possible a group is already convening on this. And if not, might you be someone to bring this? And I also want to add, there's different pathways to adopting the donut. You mentioned governmental adoption of the donut, such as in Amsterdam, but then there's also, as we're doing in California, more grassroots

level, more community-based approaches to bringing the donut to life or letting the donut rise. So I want to add that as an invitation. Another invitation is you mentioned that you worked with the California Donut Economics Coalition, and thank you for your help on that. So we will link to our snapshot for California and the different community groups that we're offering in case anyone wants to get involved there. And then you also mentioned, you know, read the article, this. Donut 3.0 article. Again, it's titled, Donut of Social and Planetary Boundaries,

monitors a world out of balance, and read it and engage with Andrew and the deal team about any criticisms, critiques, right? It's alive. It's an ongoing investigation. So what words or what ideas or what themes might they consider in future iterations? What questions might be really important from where you are in the world? And I would particularly, I secretly add, share it with someone who may be pro-capitalist or pro-GDP. Because that's really a gift of this work is that it's understandable in, like you said, a scientific, rigorous way that capitalism is not serving us, right? And that over this time, things are not getting better in tech, things are getting worse,

and they're not improving it the way that we need them to improve. So this is a useful talking point or starting point with someone who may be pro-capitalist or pro-GDP. And then I'll also just add, wow, research opportunities. If you are an academic or a researcher or, you know, any of this, like there's so much, even that you just said, Andrew, that we can continue. So many inquiries that we can dive deeper in and we can, you know, continue to contribute to this body of work. And then that research can really contribute to the systems change. So those are some invitations that I will add coming from what you said, Andrew. But I'd love to hear your closing invitations for the listeners. And also I'll add, are there any leading inquiries that you have

or even tensions? Because I love thinking about what's not working well or what are you still trying to figure out or what's the rub or the critique that maybe you're working to solve for you or for the community. So anything you'd like to say by way of invitations, questions or tensions, and any closing words for our listeners? Sure. Thanks. Thanks. So I guess if we think from just a more conventional researchy type hat where we can say, you know, what's a question that we could have that we could explore in greater detail or make visible or that type? A big one that keeps coming up that we still haven't found really a way to crack yet is the question of whether and how to include the more than human world within the social foundation of the donut. So I mean, it's the

goal that the donut visualizes is how can we meet the needs of all people within the means of the living planet. But of course, what are people, right? Like all the indicators that we show are related to human beings. But if we think of people with a broader sense that don't necessarily just have to be human beings, then what are the types of indicators that can make that come alive? Just really quick, I think about the health of pollinators or the health of the soil or the health of our waters, just to give you examples. Right. Right. So not to see that, so much as a boundary that human beings must stay within, otherwise we will, you know, trigger a collapse of our civilization, which is, you know, not cool. But at the same time, like, how do we

recognize the needs of non-human, more than human species within that concept of shortfall, not just overshoot, if that makes sense? So that's a big open one for me that I just love talking to people about or trying to get our heads around. Well, at the same time, a core challenge for all of these when it comes to the donut is that it is a visual framework. So how do we balance the additional complexity of bringing in, potentially bringing in new concepts into the framework while keeping it visually intuitive

and appealing and just recognizing, you know, I'm constantly recognizing at what point is should we just have a different tool? Like maybe the donut is not the right tool for this task. We should invent a different tool or something. Like that question of how, whether you start pulling something too far outside of what it's meant to do. I guess that's a concern,

particularly for the visual aspect, because anyone who has played around with visuals, you can very, very quickly add some element that you think displays this concept, but actually nobody gets it. Like it just loses the intuitiveness, which of course is very, very important. I also really want to similarly think about how to visualize those interconnections that we were talking about, interconnections and inequalities within and between nations. So that scatterplot chart I was mentioning earlier

where we're just showing countries as isolated entities on a chart, How can we start layering in the interconnections within them? I can see something. But again, how do we do that without it becoming just a spaghetti plot of confusion and chaos, which it is, but that's not what we want to show. And I guess other final invitations for your listeners. So you really covered a huge amount of the things that I was going to mention. I guess I would invite your listeners to take action.

If you're interested in Donut Economics, as you mentioned, Donate Economics Action Lab, we exist to essentially support people who are inspired by the concepts and want to put them into practice. And so we create tools that are all available in the commons. Please pick them up, use them, adapt them, critically share back your stories so that they can inspire others. We know that's hopefully coming back to that peer-to-peer inspiration that to me is possibly one of the only forces that might be strong enough to actually change the trajectory of this massive mega system that we're living within, as well as if you're not so much interested in

donor economics, then really it's just to take action in some way. And I know that many, many people do. And the definition of action can be, for me, is incredibly broad. It can be about convening spaces. It could be about talking to your neighbors. It could be about doing an analysis or making a chart or, of course, going on the street and protesting. and the many, many different ways that people can take action, I think everyone is needed right now. And I would invite listeners to beware of the, you know, the pernicious, positive effect of growth framing

that's all around us I've found. And actually, I think it was Jorgos Kalis, who shared this maybe in writings or in something. I can't even remember anymore. It's been so long I've been doing it. But I've taken it as a habit to whenever I see the word growth, as related to the economy and so on, I just transform that word in my mind to engulf everything.

The words engulf everything or its derivative. So it actually leads to some quite ridiculous translations when you think of a newspaper article that's like, the economy engulfed everything by 2% this year. Or like it's just a way for me to avoid that sense that growth is something to be known. normalized, that it's actually not, and that we need to, as you were saying, have the sense of enoughness when it comes to the economy whenever we're talking about it. What's it for?

Who's it for? Why? Those types of questions. You've been listening to an upstream conversation with Andrew Fannie, data analysis and research lead at Donut Economics Action Lab, and a visiting research fellow in the Sustainability Research Institute. He's also the co-author along with Kate Rayworth of Donut of Social and Planetary Boundaries Monitor's a World Out of Balance, published in Nature in October 2025. Please check the show notes for links to any of the resources mentioned in this episode. Thank you to Nicole Lawrence for the intermission music. Upstream theme music was composed by me, Robbie.

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