13: A picture is worth a thousand words: visualising the SDG challenges

The PBL, Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, created a paper on the importance of international cooperation for the SDG's called People and the Earth (2017). The paper investigates issues such as human dependency on resources, exploration of necessary partnerships and finance   for consequences, all clearly visualised. Papers like this one need to be shared not only among policy makers and scientists, but also among designers and producers. For it has far-reaching consequences for our work. As Marcus Fairs, founder of Dezeen and curator of this year's Dutch Design Week in Eindhoven recently stated in an interview: "It is no longer about good conceptual ideas and exhibitions; we need to make our hands dirty and really do it."

I also admire Kate Raworth, Oxford economist and former Oxfam employee, because of her idea of the doughnut economy. She developed a way to visualise the change needed. Economy in the 21st century can't be any longer about a ascending line from left to right in which our linear economic growth is expressed. According to Raworth we cannot continue to regard growth like that, we need to  rethink towards a balanced circular concept of growth. Now circular economy is something widely regarded as the necessary step to take, but her theory and ideas will be indisputably important in our journey to actually do it. I will get back to that later, but here's already her wonderfully simple idea of the doughnut. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mkg2XMTWV4g