
Rethinking Prosperity for People and Planet
Doughnut Economics offers a practical framework for balancing social needs and environmental limits. Learn how your organisation can use it to improve responsibility and transparency in business practices.
In the 21st century, businesses and communities face complex challenges: climate change, social inequality, and growing pressure on natural resources. These realities call for new ways of understanding progress and prosperity; ways that take both human wellbeing and environmental responsibility into account.
Doughnut Economics, developed by Oxford economist Kate Raworth in 2012, provides one such framework. It encourages organisations to operate within clear social and environmental boundaries, promoting long-term value without overstating their impact or making unsubstantiated claims.

What is Doughnut Economics?
Doughnut Economics visualises a “safe and just space for humanity”, shaped as a ring or doughnut defined by two sets of boundaries:
- Inner ring (Social Foundation): Represents essential human needs such as healthcare, education, equality, income, housing, and community.
- Outer ring (Ecological Ceiling): Represents the environmental thresholds humanity should stay within to maintain the critical natural systems
including climate stability, biodiversity,
clean air, and water resources.
The area between these two boundaries, the doughnut itself, symbolises the space where human activity can take place without exceeding planetary limits or neglecting social wellbeing.
This approach is not a certification or label; it is a conceptual tool designed to support more informed, evidence-based decisions.
Why it matters
Traditional economic thinking often focuses narrowly on GDP growth, while overlooking wider social and environmental consequences.
Doughnut Economics helps shift this focus by offering a way to evaluate progress more comprehensively by balancing economic outcomes with social fairness and responsible resource management.
How Doughnut Economics works
The framework brings together two core dimensions of responsible progress:
- The Social Foundation
Based on the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the inner ring identifies 12 key social dimensions that contribute to wellbeing:
- Access to food and clean water
- Health and education
- Income and employment opportunities
- Equality and justice
- Housing, energy, and connectivity
- Peace and participation
Ensuring these needs are met supports fair and inclusive development.
- The Ecological Ceiling
The outer ring is confined by the nine Planetary Boundaries, developed by Stockholm Resilience Centre defining the critical Earth system processes which are vital to sustain human life on Earth, such as:
- Climate regulation
- Biodiversity and ecosystems
- Freshwater and ocean health
- Land use and soil fertility
- Pollution and chemical balance
Operating within 9 boundaries helps companies and organisations set a target for environmental impacts and the safe use of natural resources.
Together, the two rings form a framework for balanced decision-making that integrates both human and ecological considerations.
Examples in practice
Several cities and organisations are exploring the doughnut framework as a planning and reporting tool.
Amsterdam was among the first to adapt Doughnut Economics for urban development in 2020, using it to guide housing, transport, and resource strategies that aim to reduce environmental pressure and support equitable access to essential services.
Across Europe, some businesses are integrating doughnut principles into their operations by:
- Applying circular economy practices to minimise waste and resource use
- Supporting regenerative initiatives that help restore natural systems
- Improving traceability and fairness in supply chains
Implications for our Målbar LCA users
For readers of Maalbar.dk, the doughnut framework can serve as a primary guide to evaluating corporate and community responsibility.
Ask yourself:
- Do our activities contribute positively to social wellbeing?
- Are we monitoring and managing our environmental footprint responsibly?
- Can we document and verify the effects of our initiatives?
The doughnut model encourages businesses to map their impacts clearly and not to claim perfection, but to work transparently within measurable limits.
Documentation of staying within planetary boundaries
In Målbar we use the EU PEF method for calculating LCA. This method has a clear link with planetary boundaries so that results can be translated.
This mean that by calculating the impact of products in our Målbar LCA one achieves results which can be compared with the safe operating spaced calculated from planetary boundaries. This is a great motivation for performing LCA’s on products because they can be used to determine whether the product is absolute sustainable or not.
It is important to start the work of collecting data for the calculations as early as possible as this is often the most time-consuming exercise.
If the reader aims for documentation of staying below the planetary boundaries then they need to calculate the Absolute Sustainability of their products or company. This absolute sustainability method is developed by the Centre for Absolute Sustainability at the Danish Technical University.
It uses the results of an LCA to compare with the limits of the planetary boundaries and see if they fall within the safe operating space.
Doughnut Economics is not a marketing label, but a structured way to think about responsible prosperity balancing human wellbeing with respect for environmental boundaries.
Readers interested in exploring practical approaches to responsible business and impact measurement can reach out to our Head of Community Impact, Iben Garland Sonne.


