Mental Models of Sustainability: The Degrowth Doughnut Model

Mladen Domazet and Andro Rilovic, Institute for Political Ecology, Zagreb, Croatia
Branko Ancic, Institute for Social Research in Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia
Brannon Andersen and Logan Richardson, Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Furman University, Greenville, SC,
United States
Marija Brajdic Vukovic, Institute for Social Research in Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia
Lilian Pungas, Institute for Political Ecology, Zagreb, Croatia
Tomislav Medak, Centre for Postdigital Cultures, Coventry University, Coventry, United Kingdom
© 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Planet Earth as a Mosaic of Anthromes 276

Safe and Just Operating Space (SJS) Between Planetary Biophysical Boundaries and Sociometabolic Development Thresholds 277
The Degrowth Doughnut: Specifying a Safe and Just Operating Space for a Historic Conceptual and Metabolic Transformation 279
Segments, Themes, and Indicators 281
Safe and Just Operating Space in Biophysical, Socio-Economic and Cultural Quantification 282
Application of the Model 284
References 285

Abstract

Due to the concern that achieving human wellbeing through material development is “costing the Earth,” a mental model
was developed to show in a single image the aspiration of social foundations of development to be achieved and biospheric
boundaries not to be crossed. Anthromes analysis, combined with the cultural imperative of maintenance of global
sustainability through coordinated transformation of social metabolism and its environmental impact, makes nation states
the immediately available units of sustainability modeling. 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 a and organizational impact. To visualize the
scale and the possible pathways for the transformation of national and global sociometabolic practices in the 21st century
within the “degrowth doughnut” includes the boundaries and thresholds in three domains: cultural, socioeconomic, and
biophysical. This way it aims to avoid the conceptually paralyzing trade-off between exclusively biophysical boundaries and
exclusively social thresholds of the other 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 nations’ sustainability potentials. The aim of the model and its visual tool is to inform their populations
about the direction and scale of the change strategies that they could adopt to contribute to the global effort of maintaining
the planetary population within the safe and just operating space of the doughnut under known advantages and constraints
of the 21st century.

Planet Earth as a Mosaic of Anthromes

Human influence on the terrestrial biosphere is so pervasive (Barnosky et al., 2012; Kastner et al., 2015; Kolbert, 2014; Steffen et al.,
2004; Vitousek et al., 1997; Wilkinson and McElroy, 2007) that the present has been proposed as an entirely new geological epoch,
the Anthropocene (Crutzen and Stoermer, 2000). Criticism of the equalizing effect of this term on all human communities
(Bonneuil and Fressoz, 2016; Moore, 2016) warns that this influence is not effected equally by all humans bases on their biological
and ecological essence, but through human cultural and political institutions (Wainwright and Mann, 2018) with inherent inequal-
ities of benefits and burdens. Anthromes, or “anthropogenic biomes,” present a view of the terrestrial biosphere that takes into
account the “sustained direct human interaction with ecosystems” (Ellis and Ramankutty, 2008), providing an alternative global
framework for ecological understanding of the terrestrial biosphere as it exists today. The anthromes provide a patchwork of varying
intensities of human interaction with the biosphere and denote inequalities in historic and present modifications to the biomes.
However, they remain silent about the sustainability of these modifications and their connections to other parts of the patchwork
through human culturally constructed institutions.
Anthromes framework recognizes vast differences in human presence in different anthrome types, forming heterogeneous land-
scape mosaics. This heterogeneity stems primarily from anthropogenic motivations for landscape modification, conditioned by
natural geophysical variations of terrestrial biomes. For example, urban activity or agricultural production, in and of themselves,
say nothing about the purpose, benefits, and possible future developments of said ecosystem interactions. The anthropogenic moti-
vations, on the other hand, stem from the human cultural constructs that are socio-economic activity and socio-culturally diffused
aspirations and values. Strategies for the utilization and modification of the biosphere are, from a planetary perspective, most
readily expressed through internationally recognized states (Cudworth et al., 2007).

276 Encyclopedia of the World's Biomes, Volume 5 https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-409548-9.12143-8

 Mental Models of Sustainability: The Degrowth Doughnut Model 277

Anthromes analysis combined with the cultural imperative of maintaining global sustainability makes states the anthromic units
of sustainability modeling. Sovereign states become pieces of a heterogeneous global mosaic, and they combine landscape biophys-
ical conditions and the anthropogenic enhancement and re-creation of the said landscape. Furthermore, their social reproduction
practices (Bhattacharya, 2017) included in the degrowth doughnut add further understanding of the particular units’ contribution
to global (un)sustainability. A better understanding of the sustainability potentials and challenges of these states lays the ground-
work for an eventual (constructive) understanding of the anthropogenic biomes that will guide interactions between humanity and
nature towards preservation, diversity and fecundity rather than extinction. Having taken the political and economic state as a provi-
sional unit of analysis, including ecosystem interactions and social development strategies, the degrowth doughnut model presents
a holistic framework in which to view its fair sustainability potential.

Safe and Just Operating Space (SJS) Between Planetary Biophysical Boundaries and Sociometabolic Development Thresholds
In the concern that achieving human wellbeing through material development is “costing the Earth,” a mental model was developed
of the tradeoff between the social thresholds to be achieved and the biospheric boundaries not to be crossed (Raworth, 2012). On
the inner side of the ring, below the social foundation, lie the shortfalls in providing for average human wellbeing. On the outer
side, above the ecological ceiling, lie the excesses of pressure, overshoots, on the planetary life and regenerative systems. Between the
two sets of boundaries is the doughnut shaped ecologically safe and socially just abstract space for humanity in the 21st century
(Raworth, 2017). Perhaps without meaning to, the SJS model provided a visualization of the efficiency of human development
(affected also by its outreach, or whom the development was to extend to), whereas we shall be presenting the sufficiency of
degrowth strategies below.
The biophysical boundaries aspect originates from the planetary boundaries visualization quantifying civilization’s impacts on
the overall planetary biosphere within a finite circular limit (Rockström et al., 2009; Steffen et al., 2015). These connect to the
regions’, nations’, and communities’ unequal contributions to the impacts (and the unequal extraction of the associated benefits)
through the estimation of the footprint indicators for different biophysical processes associated with various socio-economic prac-
tices (Hoekstra and Wiedmann, 2014). The first step in the construction of the doughnut model, both as a mental model of human
interaction with the biosphere and as a visualization, is to combine the boundaries and footprint approaches through the down-
scaling and calculation of the impacts of socioeconomic activities in national anthromic mosaics (O’Neill et al., 2018).
There are, of course, a variety of ways that the downscaling of planetary boundaries to a unit of nation state can be performed. By,
for example, understanding regional environmental limits and the sustainability aspirations of its human population or by distrib-
uting a share of each planetary boundary among the states based on some allocation formula. One such allocation formula, simple
enough to understand and without discrepancies between climatic specificities, resource availability, and historically differentiated
responsibilities (Baer, 2013; Shue, 1999), is the per capita biophysical boundary approach, distributing shares based on current
population. The aforementioned discrepancies with the allocation formula, and others like them, are important for resource
management and fair responsibility apportionment (O’Neill et al., 2018). However, for the initial conceptualization of a new
model and the simplicity of its broad application across orders of magnitude, a straightforward per capita downscaling of bound-
aries is justified.
As the challenge for a reflective global human population in the 21st century is to meet its needs within the biophysical means of
the planet, boundaries along the outer rim are supplemented by the desirable social foundations to be distributed along the inner
rim, thus converting the circle of boundaries into a doughnut ring made up of two belts of social foundations and biophysical
boundaries (Fig. 2). Again, the definition of the threshold associated with any given foundation, its selection, and its measurement
can follow different methodologies, from human needs theory to the politically set Sustainable Development Goals to social and
cultural policies associated with degrowth of material throughput (Doyal and Gough, 1991; Kallis, 2018; Raworth, 2017).
Downscaling the fairshare burden of planetary resource use and pollution, and equitable development attainment gives
a national doughnut visualization (Fig. 3; O’Neill et al., 2018). One such iteration for individual states presents 11 social objectives
(or “foundations”) alongside the nine scaled-down planetary boundaries. A single graphical image quantifies the level of biophys-
ical resource use associated with meeting residents’ basic needs. This model modifies the original planetary boundaries structure
(Fig. 1) to include ecological footprint and material footprint on the outer rim, along with nine needs satisfiers (nutrition, sanita-
tion, income, access to electricity, education, social support, income equality, quality of democratic institutions, and employment)
and two measures of human wellbeing (self-reported life satisfaction and healthy life expectancy) (Fig. 3; O’Neill et al., 2018).
Even in this framework, no direct causal link is implied between the level of resource use and social outcomes, focusing instead
on conceptualization of interdependence between social outcomes and “healthy, functioning ecosystems and the resources they
provide” (O’Neill et al., 2018) that is deliberately agnostic about specifics of causality (see Einstein on “principle theory approach”
below). The comparative analysis resulting from the model’s application to over 150 nation states suggests that the sociometabolic
practices providing for human wellbeing (development) must be fundamentally restructured to enable basic needs to be met while
leaving a much lower material footprint. This work specifically calls for two to six times greater efficiency in universally reaching
thresholds for life satisfaction, healthy life expectancy, secondary education, quality of democratic institutions, social support,
and income equality (O’Neill et al., 2018). In strategic terms, these statements become a call for sufficiency by recognizing that over-
consumption burdens societies with both social and environmental problems as a result of a cultural focus on the pursuit of GDP
growth as the key measure of progress (O’Neill et al., 2018). At present, based on the dominant development practices, societies
have been given an either-or choice of meeting selected social thresholds by exceeding fairshare of environmental ceilings or failing
278 Mental Models of Sustainability: The Degrowth Doughnut Model

Fig. 1 9 (11) planetary boundaries circular visualization. From J. Lokrantz/Azote based on Steffen, W., Richardson, K., Rockström, J. et al. (2015).
Planetary boundaries: Guiding human development on a changing planet. Science 347 (6223). 2015 Planetary Boundaries illustration.

to meet the social thresholds by staying beneath them. The SJS framework (Raworth, 2017; O’Neill et al., 2018) with doughnut-
shaped visualization of people’s basic needs along the inner threshold and the planetary boundaries along the outer rim concep-
tually locks in this unpalatable choice in treating development and destruction as a necessary strategic trade-off.
The model invites a projection of a desirable future: not exceeding boundaries and not falling short on thresholds. Regional
pathways towards this goal can then be developed, incorporating specific cultural adaptations. A broad enough set of indicators
will reflect the different contexts in which a given society connects with its immediate and planetary biomes. In economics, qualms
about the appropriate theory of value upon which the prices of goods and services in the market should be determined (e.g.,
whether it is by the labor invested in them or the energy embodied in them) provide a useful conceptual parallel. Rather than
settling on a single theory of value through which all worth will be reduced to a market price, we need value-articulating conceptual
frameworks and associated processes by which the significance of incommensurable and quantified indicators can be deliberated
and compared (Kallis, 2018). This implies that indicators should be qualitatively different, while still permitting clear quantification
and boundary/threshold downscaling, and variegated to present a widely understandable model of the multidimensional charac-
teristics of the Earth system, of which humanity is just one component.
The aforementioned analysis of the current situation in 150 nation states (O’Neill et al., 2018) indicates that no long-term
balance between material and energy growth aspirations (as the physical costs of development) and infrastructural and socio-
structural development attainments can be maintained using the existing conceptualization of development and the awareness
of planetary constraints. The doughnut model, thus, warns that the current thermoindustrial social metabolism, predicated on
a growth paradigm, cannot continue, because of the unsustainability and injustice of exceeding biophysical limits and achieving
social thresholds. The majority of current states provide empirical counterexamples to Western modernity’s sustainable
 Mental Models of Sustainability: The Degrowth Doughnut Model 279

reproduction model of converting energy and material throughput (which are eventually bounded on a planetary scale) into social
complexity (which should be fairly available to all if available to any). Those with “good enough” development attainment
(achieving social foundations) excessively burden the shared planetary biome, while those who leave no burden exhibit a serious
shortfall in social foundations. Any deliberate lowering of expectations of development attainment in order to causally lower its
burden on the planetary biome is portrayed as a great individual and social sacrifice (Kish and Quilley, 2017), while individual
nations’ partial sacrifices are seen as ineffective globally and the existing “sacrifice distribution” between nation states is seen as
unjust. Moreover, historical development of indicators in the classical SJS framework (above) has been to grow from 0 or some
minimal base to present day values, conceptually expecting the desirable future dynamic to be a simple reversaldless footprint,
less development attainment.
Science today suggests that the only feasible way of keeping the average global temperature below its critical tipping point (Stef-
fen et al., 2018) is to actively reduce energy demand and its associated material throughput in the global economy (Alfredsson et al.,
2018; Grubler et al., 2018), so as to have a greater technological likelihood of successfully transitioning to renewable energy sources
(Hickel, 2019). The associated throughput reduction also promises to directly reduce some of the biogeochemical pressures and
transgressions upon the planetary boundaries. Economists conclude that, given available technologies for the conversion of
incoming (and short-term stored) solar energy into human wellbeing, this throughput reduction will reduce aggregate economic
activity, which is at present most vividly distilled in the measure of GDP. Degrowth thinkers argue that rather than directly causing
the reduction of aggregate and average human development along with the additional frustration of aspirations for social wellbeing
and emancipation, a planned reduction of this throughput in high-income nations will maintain an abundance of wellbeing
through a fairer distribution of available resources, the expansion of public goods, and the associated deconstruction of the cultural
components of the growth imperative itself (D’Alisa et al., 2014; Hickel, 2019; Kallis, 2018; Latouche, 2014). This is the conceptual
underpinning of the degrowth doughnut visualization presented here.

The Degrowth Doughnut: Specifying a Safe and Just Operating Space for a Historic Conceptual and Metabolic
Transformation

The mental model of a safe and just operating space for national and regional anthromic mosaics in a waste and resource con-
strained 21st century is a visual tool for the conceptual arrangement of an alternative approach that does not prescribe a causal-
mechanical model of how to achieve their sustainability. It relies on a visionary understanding in the physical sciences that in crises
of paradigms a “principle theory approach” can offer a breakout from a conceptual impasse (Einstein, 1919). This type of explan-
atory model does not speculate as to the detailed mechanism (think: gears, pulleys and pistons) through which observable variables
are connected in the object of its study, but establishes principled and often obvious generalizations about these variables’ change
constraints (think: rules, principles, flows) based on self-evident rationalizations of the experiences and axiomatic relationships in
the conceptual structure. In our case this means not aggregating causal interactions between selected indicators into projections of
future strategies, but constraining the overall abstract space of their possible changes. This is defined by easily understandable prin-
ciples of the evolution of planetary boundaries, sustainability, democracy, or energy and materials flows. In other words, how far
can biophysical changes and social structures go to stay fair and sustainable without specifying at the outset how each of them
reflects upon the others. This kind of explanatory conceptualization is in line with a mounting call for solution-oriented transdis-
ciplinary modes of rationalization for human-ecosystems interactions that can achieve global sustainability.
The degrowth doughnut recognizes that contemporary and future national anthromic mosaics’ sustainability connects their
biophysical manifolds, socio-economic structures, and cultural attitudes and values in a complex interaction. It deliberately shies
away from specifying the causal-mechanical connection between their elements to adhere to the principle methodology and permit
a sufficient multiplicity of local and temporal variations in their dynamics. It is constrained by a principled commitment to main-
taining whole anthromes within a safe and just operating space. As cautioned generally for doughnut models, “caution must be
exercised in considering causative links between the different variables because interactions within and between a social foundation
and environment ceiling are likely to be complex, nonlinear and difficult to confirm” (Dearing et al., 2014, p. 233).
Degrowth doughnuts lay the conceptual and analytical groundwork for a paradigm change as barometers of sustainability for
policy traction and further strategic empirical studies. The visualization contains biophysical, socio-economic, and cultural
segments bearing visual quantification of performance with respect to the scaled-down safe and just operating space conceptdthe
green circular belt of the doughnut. It respects the imperative of the original doughnut (Fig. 2) to visualize necessary changes to
current socio-metabolic processes through known excesses and shortfalls which must be reduced, allowing us to progressively elim-
inate the red bars shown leaking out of the green belt. The red bars along both the inner and outer edges of the doughnut indicate
that the current complex interactions between the human population and the local or global biosphere are achieving excesses and
shortfalls (quantified by the size of the red bars). It does not imply that any shortcoming in achieving the goals of the inner-ring
elicits a cost upon the outer-ring, a trade-off of benefits and burdens.
Biophysically, socio-economically and culturally the degrowth doughnut visualization recognizes that states face excesses that go
beyond their fair share of the planetary boundaries and societal discontent, and shortfalls in providing for a fulfilling human life
and ecological stability. In the manner of scientific principle theories (Brown and Pooley, 2001) the visualization postulates which
key aspects of those practices and descriptions must feature in the transition between the present and the desired future state of the
system, between paradigms, quantifying these key aspects for the purpose of a comparative visual representation. For example,
280 Mental Models of Sustainability: The Degrowth Doughnut Model

Fig. 2 Doughnut model visualization for the planetary biospheredouter boundary for ecological ceiling and inner boundary for social foundations.
From Raworth, K. (2017). Doughnut economics: Seven ways to think like a 21st-century economist. London: Random House. Figure on p. 51:
Doughnut modeldplanetary.

Fig. 3 Doughnut model of safe and just operating space scaled down to nation states (A) United States and (B) Sri Lankadtradeoff between
biophysical boundaries and social thresholds. Blue wedges show social performance relative to the social threshold (blue circle), whereas green
wedges show resource use relative to the biophysical boundary (green circle). The blue wedges start at the centre of the plot (which represents the
worst score achieved by any country), whereas the green wedges start at the outer edge of the blue circle (which represents zero resource use). From
O’Neill, D. W., Fanning, A. L., Lamb, W. F., Steinberger, J. K. (2018). A good life for all within planetary boundaries. Nature Sustainability 1, 88-95,
Figure 3: Doughnut modeldNational (including explanatory caption).
 Mental Models of Sustainability: The Degrowth Doughnut Model 281

climate change is currently characterized by excesses in per capita carbon dioxide emissions, and by shortfalls in terrestrial forest
coverage that acts as a sink for emissions. Reducing both the excesses and shortfalls would contribute to a scaled-down safe oper-
ating space. This marks a conceptual departure from the visualization of biophysical elements as only the boundaries not to be
exceeded and socio-economic elements as only the thresholds to be attained. In such a conceptual structure a zero-sum trade-off
is invited, and confirmed through the empirical comparison of existing national anthromes (O’Neill et al., 2018), between planetary
ecological stability and human socio-economic development. Such an exclusive trade-off, with empirical support, blocks even the
conceptualization of what the needs satisfaction within known planetary boundaries could look like.
Most importantly, a democracy-representing SJS supplements the biophysical and socio-economic segments with a cultural
sector, thus recognizing that the attitudes and values prevalent within a given society are inextricably connected to the potential
of the given anthrome’s human population to adopt reproduction practices (Bhattacharya, 2017) that radically reduce the loading
of the externalities of socio-economic practices onto the biosphere and that enhance known restorative properties. Metaphorically,
the doughnut visualization can be likened to a human individual seeking a healthy life balance; people try to stay within the green
belt of a healthy and morally fulfilling operating space through a supportive habitat and the healthy operation of the mind and
body. A mental model is a diagnostic chart which can serve as a strategic departure point rather than a mechanical prescription
of actions for a healthy and meaningful life explained through the details of causal interactions between diagnostic indicators. While
acknowledging that this interaction exists, the doughnut chooses to remain temporarily agnostic about its details allowing room for
contextual specificities within a paradigm shift in envisioning a just and sustainable state.
Understanding that excesses and shortfalls exist in all three segments of nations’ reproductive practices allows us to use compar-
isons between different nation states (which are a mosaic of functional anthromes with some overlap) to inform their populations
of the possible change strategies that operate within a fair share of the total planetary population’s safe and just operating space. The
implied argument is that anthromes’ human populations can learn from each other and can make contributions through their
actions towards overall planetary stability by developing autonomous mechanisms for reaching biophysical, socio-economic,
and cultural aspirations without the unjust burdening of the planetary biosphere. The model implicitly assumes global human
cooperation and mutual understanding with localized responsibility for reproduction practices. National doughnut models aim
to keep the planetary load manageable and democratically accessible. A circular visualization of finite size deliberately avoids select-
ing some aspects as “more central,” treating for example carbon dioxide emissions, human life expectancy, household debt, and
mutual distrust in societies as coequally important. It also prevents a limitless addition of indicators along the ring that would result
in the cognitive reaction of conceptually systematizing them into a hierarchy of causal drivers and consequences. It deliberately
frames the complexity of the issue within the simple-enough constraints of a safe and just operating space that can resonate
with non-experts as well.

Segments, Themes, and Indicators

Ideally, our mental models should be oriented by a set of indicators reflecting the different contexts in which human society is
embedded in the anthromes. This does not mean an overburdening myriad of indicators, but a set that is qualitatively different
and variegated to depict the complex multidimensional characteristics of the states’ anthrome mosaics. Currently, our mental
models are guided by the quasi-imposed limited set of concepts, the economic circulation modeling, which severely limits our
knowledge horizon (Maria Pulselli et al., 2016). Our strategies to address the ecological and injustice crises of this century are
then skewed toward greater consideration of economic output factors at the expense of physical relationship between humanity
and non-human nature, and our social relationships between humans within and between communities and states. The symbiosis
between the economy, environment, culture and politics must be taken into account in our mental models, strategizing for an inte-
grated system as a whole rather than single parts in isolation from each other. As Maria Pulselli et al. (2016) have advocated that the
systemic analysis unites global pressures with local actions, the mental model of the degrowth doughnut should bridge the gap
between the “scientific need” for a global systemic transformation and the “governance need” for local action and policy implemen-
tation (Maria Pulselli et al., 2016, p. 228).
The principles guiding this conceptual framework include the (i) limited space with constrained properties of an absolutely finite
biophysical infrastructure of the planet, (ii) emergence of properties in a “black-box” complex system, (iii) long-term consequences
of the short-term transgression of tipping points, (iv) extrapolation of causes and drivers from the tracking of symptoms,
(v) inclusion of life-cycle thinking into stocks and flows comparisons, (vi) history of human development as the “common intan-
gible heritage” on a shared planet, and (vii) localized strategic action with fair share of global impact (Maria Pulselli et al., 2016, p.
231).
The degrowth doughnut mental model, as an analytical tool and a visual representation, incorporates these principles to provide
a paradigm of democratically “de-growing” the energy and matter throughput of the global economic system and of re-orienting
societies’ metabolisms toward provisioning to meet the needs of people’s well-being by distributing shared wealth through different
allocation of resources and ecosystem restoration. Below the degrowth doughnut’s foundation lie the shortfalls in democratic acti-
vation and wellbeing, education, health, equality, sustainable reproduction and planetary protection. Beyond its outer boundary lie
the overshoots of pressure on Earth’s life-supporting systems, of resource extraction, exhausting work and junk nutrition, of selfish
and uncooperative popular value sets. Between these two boundaries lies the progressive but caring safe and just operating space for
humanity in the 21st century metabolic and cultural transformation. The boundaries and the thresholds have broadly cultural,
socio-economic and biophysical segments in which sets of indicators are grouped.
282 Mental Models of Sustainability: The Degrowth Doughnut Model

Fig. 4 Degrowth doughnut concepts used to derive the scaled-down quantified visualizations. Boundaries and thresholds exist in all three segments
(biophysical, socio-economic and cultural). From Institute for Political Ecology, www.ipe.hr.

Within the cultural segment, three themes are quantified through excesses and shortfalls: planetary-minded environmentalism,
democratic potential for desirable socio-metabolic change, and perception of human wellbeing. The indicators track popular atti-
tudes whose overshoots and shortfalls in a nation support a reluctance to engage in democratic activation for reducing the human
impact upon local and global biospheres. They also quantify excessive frustration and apathy obstructing design and implementa-
tion of the novel social reproduction mechanisms necessary for metabolic change, as well as shortfalls in positive support for
degrowth-oriented policies (van den Bergh et al., 2019). It is important for an integrated mental model to keep track of the existing
and future life-satisfaction through average self-reported wellbeing (health and satisfaction). Perceptions, though subjective, are
important to track as they are the final outcome of the democratically supported metabolic practices among rational reflective
members of the human community. They logically connect to the socio-economic segment of the model, to its theme of democratic
infrastructure (Fig. 4).
Four themes are included within the socio-economic segment: health, democratic infrastructure, material security of individuals,
and material and energy flows of the whole society. Indicators in the theme of material security deliberately do not include
a measure of average personal or national income, a cornerstone of current economistic tracking of social metabolism which moti-
vates further commodification of public wealth. Current metabolic practices expose citizens to overwork and debt, motivating the
externalization of the associated costs by imposing them upon the rest of society and the biosphere (Rosnick and Weisbrot, 2007)
while historic attainments in productivity and automation allow for less time to be spent on paid work and for more time to be
dedicated to other forms of care and restoration. Conceptually the closest concept to the biophysical segment of indicators is
the theme of energy and materials use (Fig. 4), including indicators of per capita energy use, national material footprint and share
of renewables within final energy consumption.
The biophysical segment of the doughnut conceptually joins the original circle of planetary boundaries (Fig. 1) with the desir-
able thresholds of climate change stabilization and ecosystem restoration. It carries with it the themes of human food production
(agriculture), biodiversity protection, and climate change (Fig. 4). These are the three crucial biophysical themes for every anthrome
to consider in this century.

Safe and Just Operating Space in Biophysical, Socio-Economic and Cultural Quantification
On the overall doughnut we therefore find external rim boundaries in climate change drivers, pollution, extraction, energy and
materials flows, work and debt burdens, inequalities, poor nutrition, the perceived failures of democratic institutions and social
cohesion, as well as popular opposition towards action for the preservation of planetary ecological stability. Like the planetary over-
loading of ecosystems with pollutants and of the atmosphere with climate change-driving greenhouse gases (Fig. 1; Rockström et al.,
 Mental Models of Sustainability: The Degrowth Doughnut Model 283

Fig. 5 Degrowth doughnut visualization with 33 indicators for a realistic small European state. Cultural: CP, corruption perception; JD, job
dissatisfaction; FWD, frustration with democracy in country; D, distrust; A, anthropocentrism; CI, climate change indifference; HP, health perception;
FP, flourishing perception; DS, degrowth support; GE, global environmentalism; RP, renewable energy prioritizing. Socio-economic: EU, energy use;
MU, material use; O, overwork; DIR, debt income ratio; GII, gender inequality; FF, fatty food; RE, renewable energy %; SE, social equality; E, education;
VT, voter turnout; H, healthy life expectancy. Biophysical: LUC, land use change; C, CO2; BN, biodiversity neglect; NU, nitrogen use; PU, phosphorus
use; FU, freshwater use; FA, forested area; CFR, climate change flood resilience; PW, protected wilderness area; SQ, soil quality; OF, organic farming
area. From Institute for Political Ecology, www.ipe.hr.

2009), all these cultural, socio-economic and biophysical factors present excessive burdens on states’ fair share of the transforma-
tional 21st century social metabolism. They simultaneously hasten the push towards ecosystems collapse and disable societies’
cooperation to avert it. Crossing these boundaries moves the states out of a safe and just operating space.
The inner rim lists thresholds for ecosystem restoration, sustainable food and energy provision, social equity, democratic partic-
ipation, human health, wellbeing, and pro-environmental activation. Shortfalls in reaching these thresholds, like the shortfalls in
reaching the goals of development in nature-society doughnut visualizations (Fig. 2), signal insufficiencies in the existing conver-
sion of work and resources into human flourishing and ecosystem stability. The degrowth doughnut’s inner ringdits restorative
foundationdsets out the basics of 21st century just and sustainable life on which no society should be reneging. The red bars quan-
tify shortfalls within the present organization of an ever-increasing throughput driven by fossil fuels, indicators of what a democratic
and just operating space for the climate and extinction constrained 21st century anthromes must strengthen and preserve.
Upon facing the doughnut’s themes and indicators, the rationally trained mind gropes for causal mechanisms to be extracted out
of the structure: what are the greatest “bads” driving the greatest “goods” and what causal interactions exist between them. Here it is
worth bearing in mind Einstein’s injunction against premature constructive theory developments (Howard, 2017). Such urges,
though understandable, lie in the eye of the reader and are intended by the structure of the doughnut. There is a myriad of logical
and empirical connections between the different themes placed around the ring of the doughnut, as well as between the different
indicators chosen to quantify them through a globally comparative array. A future sustainability science paradigm should, indeed,
determine what these connections are (in particular if there are any feedback loops which drive nonlinear behavior), and seek to
discover a fair and effective way to influence their evolutionary dynamics. As a principle theory tool, the doughnut offers a blueprint
to transcend the trade-off between development and devastation, to transcend the conceptual paralysis resulting from a lack of
mechanism connecting planetary sustainability with the 20th century development. Democratically addressing climate change
and biodiversity loss, while providing for people’s wellbeing, decent health, nutrition, and material security through a fair and
sustainable volume of material and energy flows will all be a part of the safe and just operating space for a redesigned societal repro-
duction in the 21st century.
In that sense the themes are conceptually more important than the indicators chosen, though the latter must have a realistically
broad coverage of different nations or a link to suitably interchangeable proxies to allow for broad enough comparison and
284 Mental Models of Sustainability: The Degrowth Doughnut Model

longitudinal temporal tracking from readily available databases. Moreover, while the available comprehensive global statistics are
collected on the national scale, most of the themes are open to scaling down to the level of specific metabolically integrated areas
rather than politically delineated anthrome mosaics. Likewise, due to changes in energy production and global metabolic flows in
the future some indicators could lose significance or sensibility. But an adherence to the principle of seeking a safe and just operating
space by scaling down, in a fair way, from known global limits and potentials through concepts of climate stabilization, wellbeing,
care for the planet, and fair distribution of its resources, will yield comparable doughnut visualizations.
The usual objection to the quantification of variables within highly complex interactions beyond a simple causal-mechanical
model is that it is the quality and not the quantity of the characteristics and phenomena associated with the variables that is really
important. This becomes especially pertinent when transdisciplinary assessments, like the doughnut, combine well-known quan-
titative indicators like carbon and nitrogen pollution with less familiar ones like neglect of biodiversity protection, healthy life
expectancy of human population, debt to income ratio of households, or average level of satisfaction of survey respondents
with their current job. In the first instance the quality versus quantity objection applies to all indicators, and is usually already
addressed within the entrenched scientific disciplines where these indicators are most often used. Indicators do indeed provide
descriptions, explanations, and predictions within the standard conceptual frameworks of those disciplines. Their broader discur-
sive acceptance then stems from the popular visibility of respective disciplinary narratives. For example, even the most readily used
national carbon emissions data in popular presentation are actually opaque to the debate about short-cycle carbon emissions, the
debate about necessary and luxury emissions, and the debate about emissions created outside the specific territory through trade
and intercontinental transport.
In the second instance, the quality versus quantity objection renders the transformative role that the principle theory approaches
play within scientific paradigms impossible. The tracking of categorical differences in orders of magnitude and coarse-grained trends
are the conceptual instruments for reasoning about the possible and impossible changes under constraining principles. This is what
allows for workable explanations across a range of otherwise confusing and seemingly disparate phenomena, with a temporary
suspension of attention to fine qualitative differences between their constituent elements. A degrowth doughnut is a visual model
motivated by the call for a redesign of socio-metabolic interactions to avoid the worst exemplars of environmental degradation and
the breakdown of complex modern societies; it is not the fixed mechanism of the causal links between drivers of environmental
change and (for example) subjective experiences of poverty.
The consequential objection refers to a strategic action based on the assessments presented in national doughnut visualizations,
namely that it is possible to implement courses of action that will reduce the named excesses and shortfalls within the doughnut
without seriously improving the quality of life and sustainability of societies and the ecosystems they are in interaction with. In
other words, a sort of malicious defeatist short-circuiting of the doughnut themes and indicators without effecting a serious change.
This amounts to the objection that the themes and indicators are not well chosen, do not push the right buttons, or even that such
indicators cannot be chosen at all because the problem is unfathomable. While short-circuiting is, indeed, a logical possibility, the
diverse and widespread nature of the indicators is designed to spot this practice precisely by not fetishizing the crucial few and by
maintaining agnosticism about the causal chains between them.
While the questions and samples in the surveys might be engineered to register lower levels of distrust and anthropocentrism,
along with higher levels of environmentalism, social equality, and voter participation, a simultaneous action to manipulate the
social survey results on a global scale together with reduction in soil erosion of agricultural land and reduction of fresh water
and energy use will take at least as much coordinated intellectual and social effort as genuinely attempting to transition to an alter-
native modernity that will be sustainable by doughnut measures. This answers the final question of the use of the doughnut for
anthromes that have no excesses or shortfalls to begin with, or that are capable of removing excesses and shortfalls relatively
soon. Such societies and the biomes they inhabit are best positioned to redesign notions of progress and sustainability for the
planet; in other words, doughnuts are not designed to be eternal ideological crutches, and the sooner they become uninformative
and obsolete because of an end to the practices which fall outside of the safe and just operating space for humanity, the better.

Application of the Model

The doughnut representation with its quantified boundaries and thresholds reminds us that boundary transgressions related to
biophysical processes, social justice, and societal commitments to sustainability are already occurring. Shortfalls also already exist
in terms of ecosystem restoration, democratic governance, carbon neutral energy provision, and popular support for socio-
metabolic transformations that contribute a fair share towards global sustainability. Continuing along the same path by focusing
on economic growth as the foundation for an industrial socio-metabolic mechanism to process resources into wellbeing is now
creating more problems than it solves. Growth is a maladaptive strategy towards achieving a just sustainability in this century
(D’Alisa and Kallis, 2016).
The example doughnut for a peripheral European state in Fig. 5 (based on publicly available data) presents no shortfalls in the
average popular perception of personal mental and physical wellbeing (HP, FP) or in the prevalence of values compatible with
orientation to new metabolic regimes and globally environmentally beneficial practices (DS, GE, RP). This is the state’s cultural
potential on which to build transformative strategies. It is, however, hindered by a slight majority of anthropocentrism and
a predominantly negative perception of society’s current democratic potential and social cohesion (FWD, D).
 Mental Models of Sustainability: The Degrowth Doughnut Model 285

Building institutions through which collective action on degrowth transition can be fostered to turn its cultural potential into
action, together with increasing voter turnout (a shortfall in the socio-economic segment) to enhance representativeness of the exist-
ing and new democratic institutions, could lead to desirable outcomes. Mild job dissatisfaction (JD) and overwork (O) present a call
for a different organization of work for the economic provision of necessities and wellbeing. At the same time, shortfalls in social
equality (SE) and excesses in household debt (DIR) speak to potential instruments for the redistribution of social surplus in the
eventual redesign of economy or for public instruction as to the existing burdens of current economic practices.
Gender inequality (GI) must be further reduced to strengthen democratic governance potential, while mean expected educa-
tional attainment (E) for contemporary youths is yet another positive area on which there is potential to build. Energy and material
flows (in terms of their effect on the planetary boundaries) are already comparatively low and should be maintained, building on
the public support for renewable energy provision (RP), which currently exhibits a great shortfall from the perspective of the neces-
sary decarbonization (RE). Carbon emissions and land use change as drivers of climate change need to fall back within the safe
operating space, but forest coverage is already optimal. Immediate action is needed in the area of flood protection (CFR) to prepare
for increased precipitation already locked-in under climate change. While neglect of biodiversity protection is not excessive, more
areas need to be set aside for natural habitats with minimized human impact. Feeding the population with local quality nutrition is
a priority, not just because of the excessive loading of the biosphere with artificial fertilizers, but because of the excessive content of
lipids in the national diet, poor soil quality, and insufficient organic farming areas (which also carry biodiversity benefits).
Overall, this is a national territory, a political unit governing several anthromes whose primary tasks are securing healthy local
nutrition for its population and strengthening its democratic infrastructure for a communal and democratic determination of
context-specific sustainability goals. It already has the technological instruments for sufficient social reproduction, which must shift
towards renewable energy. Agriculture and renewable energy transformations will help to reduce its contribution to the loading of
the planetary biosphere with pollutants, which is something its population is supportive of but also impotent in acting upon
because of frustration with the existing democratic infrastructure. Meanwhile, poverty, unsatisfactory work, and debt burden
make the existing model of social surplus distribution unsatisfactory despite the fact that its volume (almost) avoids exceeding
its fair share of planetary safe operating space. In comparison to other national anthromes with greater biophysical and socioeco-
nomic boundary transgressions and existing cultural shortfalls, this state has a more institutional and less material infrastructural
change to make.
The doughnut model presents a visual tool for quantifying deviations of social reproduction of the politically determined
anthromic mosaics from the safe and just operating space bounded by biophysical, socioeconomic and cultural downscaled indi-
cator values. The doughnut ring contains outer boundaries in climate change drivers, chemical pollution, extraction of renewable
limited resources, energy and materials flow, work, debt, gender inequality, overload of insufficient nutrition, residents’ perception
of democratic institutional failures, social disintegration, and popular opposition towards acting on the preservation of planetary
ecological stabilitydcurrent possible excesses of social metabolism and dominant culture. Its inner boundaries consist of ecosystem
restoration, sustainable food and energy production, equality, democratic participation, health, popular perception of personal
wellbeing, and pro-environmental valuesdcurrent possible shortfalls. The model provides a base for guiding strategies of urgent
and radical socio-metabolic transformation that human polities must put in practice to achieve a just global sustainability.

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