In April 2020, during the depths of the COVID-19 lockdown, the City of Amsterdam provided a much-needed surge of hope worldwide by publicly embracing the Doughnut as a tool to guide their social and economic recovery from the pandemic.
This announcement came as a milestone in the ongoing engagement with the Doughnut by Dutch officials and changemakers, especially following the translation of Doughnut Economics: 7 ways to think like a 21st century economist in early 2018.Momentum picked up in Amsterdam during a series of workshops run in collaboration with DEAL’s locally based partners Circle Economy in 2019, where city officials came together to design one of the city’s most ambitious initiatives: Amsterdam’s strategy to be 100% circular by 2050.
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The Amsterdam City Doughnut was the first public presentation of the ‘City Portrait’ approach to downscaling the global Doughnut to the city scale. The aim of this approach is to provide a holistic snapshot of the city’s many complex interconnections with the world in which it is embedded, by considering its local aspirations – to be thriving people in a thriving place – and global responsibilities, both social and ecological.
By introducing Doughnut-thinking into policymaking, coupled with the self-organising and dynamic uptake of the Doughnut by the city’s civil society through the Amsterdam Doughnut Coalition, Amsterdam has provided an inspirational and pioneering starting point for turning Doughnut Economics into 21st century transformative action.
Charles Shier
Nanaimo, British Columbia, Canada
Research, investigating the work being done by other cities engaged in applying Donut Economics methodology