Doughnut economics approach to climate crisis

“The climate crisis requires radical and urgent action at all levels of society, and universities are ideally positioned to lead such action but are largely failing to do so. At the same time, many academic scientists find their work impeded by bureaucracy, excessive competitiveness, and a loss of academic freedom.” That’s how Anne Urai, from Leiden University, and Clare Kelly, from Trinity College Dublin, open their eLife paper in which they suggest seven new approaches for rethinking how we should do science and operate universities differently. It’s based on the concept of “Doughnut Economics” put forward by Kate Raworth. Speaking with Chris Smith, Clare first…

Clare - Raworth's model, she says that what the economy should aim for is not boundless growth, but instead to be within a donut. So the donut is made out of this inner and outer ring, where the inner ring is a set of social foundations for human wellbeing, the things that we all need, water, food, education, democratic voice, peace. And the outer ring is the ecological boundaries for our planet that we, we cannot overshoot, like climate change and biodiversity loss. And so we adapted Raworth's model to academia. So we imagine, again, a, a social foundation, the things that academics all need in order to thrive: good, safe jobs, academic freedom, and human and planetary ceilings that we shouldn't exceed, fixation on metrics, and emphasis on individualism and competition. And then of course our planetary boundaries.

Chris - And how did you identify those, Anne, in the first place? That list of things that were going to be the parameters, the inner and the outer margins of your doughnut. I think, if we were planetary scientists, we talk about the "goldilock's zone" where the earth sits relative to the sun, wouldn't we?

Anne - Yeah. It was a bit of an iterative process. The ones that we came up with, some of which Clare already mentioned, are by no means fixed or exhaustive, but we think that they represent generally kind of established sense of what a university should be for, and how they can thrive.

Chris - Take us through some of the key ones, Clare, and how they fit this model.

Clare - The way we approach the doughnut was, we address what we identify as practices within academia that relate to where we are with regard to both the inner - the social foundation - and the ceiling. We talk about changing the goal that rather than understanding the purpose of universities as to kind of generate more and more and more so students as graduates, and more papers, more funding and so on. We talk about how if we can realign our focus towards getting back in the academic doughnut and changing our goals and values and attitudes to respect both our human and planetary boundaries and to establish that foundation that we all need in order for academia to thrive, then we will be in a much better place. And you know, importantly, we, we, we kind of, one of the reasons we, we started thinking about all of this is because both Anna and I were coming from a place where we're both neuroscientists, but we were both increasingly thinking and teaching and working on the climate crisis and really struck by this kind of inertia and what was come, what comes across almost as a lack of concern amongst our institutions and even our colleagues. And recognising that everybody's just so hurried and bogged down in, in the business of the modern university in the business that churning out the more and more and more all the time, hitting our metrics and KPIs, that people simply have no headspace or no energy to think about an act on the climate and biodiversity crisis is the greatest challenge of our time.

Chris - Is this not kind of pulling the rug, Anne, from under the present university business model; because universities are all now based on how many papers people have published, how much grant money is flowing in, how many students paying fees are coming through the door. And if we try to reverse that, then we make it very, very difficult for the practice to continue.

Anne - Yeah, you've just identified exactly right. One of the goals of this piece was to take a step back and to think whether these practices that you're describing are really what the university is for and whether that serves our students the society we're in our planet, our communities, and also academics themselves. So we think that there are many aspects of the way universities currently work that could be reformed for the better. And we also highlights several practices like developments in open science, for instance, that are really alre already leading the way and pointing in a, a direction where universities can be healthier, kinder, and more respectful of the people on the planet.

Chris - Have you shown this, Clare, to anybody who runs a university; taken this to a senior person and said, this is what we would view as the ideal way of running a university academically and economically. How does that sit with you?

Clare - <Laugh>, believe it or not, I've, I've actually had a conversation with our provost, the head of our university, Trinity College, Dublin. Her name is Linda Doyle. And she's an incredibly progressive provost because she was already thinking about these very same ideas even before we wrote our paper. So she's very keen to adapt the idea of Raworth's doughnut to the university and to focus on how we can ensure this social foundation and to work within planetary boundaries. Things can't change overnight. But one of the first steps as we wrote in our paper is visualising and thinking about how we can do things differently. And so I'm really happy to say our provost is, is thinking about that and is grappling with some of those logistical challenges and, and sure, you know, to do with funding streams that pose a real difficulty to making these changes. So for example, the Irish government does not fund our universities anywhere near our running costs - Trinity gets 40% of its running costs, for example, from the Irish government. And so part of what we need to do is campaign for governments to properly fund third level institutions.

Chris - Yeah, I guess that's, that's sort of what I was hinting at with my point that it's incongruous with the present way that universities are funded and run. Also, Anne, many universities are multidisciplinary. They have arts as well as sciences, but climate change action and coming up with ways to address climate change is often regarded as a scientific problem. So how do we make sure that everyone at the university is included in the scope of what you are proposing rather than just being a problem for the scientists?

Anne - I think there is, in the climate movement more generally in increasing awareness of exactly this point, that the problems, but also the solutions have been seen as only technological. Whereas really the rethinking of not only our university microcosm, but how we structure society really requires a lot of creativity and requires artists and social scientists to play their part as well. And that's something that I think is very positive in the last few years, that the conversation has really shifted from only focusing on those technological solutions to including everyone. And I think the university can lead by example, you know, housing all those different people together already kickstarting these interdisciplinary collaborations, which other groups of society can can then hopefully be inspired by

Chris - Claire?

Clare - I think one of the key messages of our piece is that we can't, as academics just wait around for other people to sort this out. So we have to, to play a role. And of course, I mean, it's important to say there's loads of incredible climate scientists and, and researchers out there who are doing amazing work already. So our paper isn't necessarily aimed at those, it's, it's really aimed at the rest of us who have always felt that this isn't our, our responsibility. It's not something we can do. I don't know anything about it. But the problem is so big and, and it's so universal. It's so global that we have huge responsibility to take time, to educate ourselves, to talk with others, to share our concerns, and to take up some of the challenges that we mentioned in the paper to try and dismantle some of these barriers to academics taking action.