Tommaso Luzzati is the speaker of the talk “Economy vs nature: an unsolvable conflict? Empirical evidence framed within the ‘Doughnut Economics’ approach”, presented on the 18th of September for the MDM Keynote Speaker Series 2023.
From an abstract viewpoint, it is easy to understand that social and economic systems are embedded in and depend on natural systems. However, the different time scales at which the three systems operate make it difficult to see the hierarchical interdependencies in practice. This difficulty has contributed to the development of an economic system that is self-defeating in the long run, as it destroys the basis on which it rests. Rather recently, the “doughnut economics” approach has been developed to operationalize the need to respect environmental limits and attain decent levels of human needs satisfaction. This talk will first highlight that the way sustainable development is understood betrays the original definition of the Brundtland report, then introduce the “doughnut economics,” and finally present the results of recent research conducted with a colleague of mine, showing that, even when adopting very loose criteria, no country “lives within the doughnut.”
