If you can understand that infinite growth of GDP on a finite planet is a really terrible metric for countries to be using to measure progress, then you might wonder why almost all of the do.
The short answer is that we started sort of by accident, it became popular, and we've never found a better way.
In 2018 I was lucky enough to host Kate Raworth for a keynote about the concepts from her book entitled: Doughnut Economics.
I can't do it justice in 250 words, but in her book Kate proposes that we start to view progress as a system of shortfall and overshoot on the most important things, such as human welfare and environmental impact. Using a simple diagram of a donut, her team works with countries to chart where they are good, where they are bad, and what needs to be done.
As she was explaining it to the audience and in the Q&A, we also uncovered that not only countries, but cities and even companies have been starting to use the model to measure their progress.
If you want to make better impact, I cannot recommend highly enough that you read the book - but if you're more of a video person here's the archive from our night in Assen: https://tinyurl.com/4nfp4csx
The short answer is that we started sort of by accident, it became popular, and we've never found a better way.
In 2018 I was lucky enough to host Kate Raworth for a keynote about the concepts from her book entitled: Doughnut Economics.
I can't do it justice in 250 words, but in her book Kate proposes that we start to view progress as a system of shortfall and overshoot on the most important things, such as human welfare and environmental impact. Using a simple diagram of a donut, her team works with countries to chart where they are good, where they are bad, and what needs to be done.
As she was explaining it to the audience and in the Q&A, we also uncovered that not only countries, but cities and even companies have been starting to use the model to measure their progress.
If you want to make better impact, I cannot recommend highly enough that you read the book - but if you're more of a video person here's the archive from our night in Assen: https://tinyurl.com/4nfp4csx