The Amsterdam Doughnut: moving towards “strong sustainable consumption” policy?

Abstract

Scholars in sustainable consumption increasingly highlight the limitations of "weak sustainable consumption" approaches to overcome the challenges of the current environmental crisis. While efforts to enable cleaner production and circular flows of materials are necessary and important, progress in environmental efficiency tends to deviate attention away from a more critical challenge: advancing sufficiency. In order to deliver "absolute" improvements, reducing production and consumption levels (an explicit focus on "strong sustainable consumption") is needed. However, international and national environmental policies tend to avoid such measures. The literature points out that resistance from businesses and citizens and fear of losing geopolitical power or income from consumption taxes are major obstacles for such policies to emerge. In this context, this paper examines the case of the "Amsterdam Doughnut", the measures aimed at reducing consumption of electronics, textiles and furniture included in the "Amsterdam Circular 2020-2025 Strategy", and the relation to product lifetimes. Interviews with key actors involved in the integration of Kate Raworth's Doughnut Economy model into the city strategy were conducted, and official documents were reviewed. The paper discusses to what extent these efforts can be characterized as a "strong sustainable consumption" policy, and aspects that may have helped to overcome the resistance mentioned above, contributing to ongoing debate about the implementation of sufficiency principles.

From Circular Economy to Circular Society

“…Our findings for Amsterdam are largely in line with those of previous research in the area. For instance, Maldini (2021), found that, while Amsterdam Circular 2020-2025 Strategy's discourse is quite holistic and progressive, its implementation is "incipient and limited" as it does not include any explicit measures and targets to reduce citizens' overconsumption in a socially equitable manner. Cramer (2020aCramer ( , 2020b) analysed Amsterdam's previous CE programme (implemented from 2015 to 2019), concluding that it only brings about preliminary progress towards CE as it fails to challenge sector behaviours or product chains.…”

“…The policies of these cities thus don't live up to the socially progressive vision they set for themselves. Amsterdam is often presented as a pioneer and an example of best practice in the urban CE transition and Circular Glasgow was a finalist of the Circulars Award of the World Economic Forum (Cuomo et al, 2020;Maldini, 2021;Williams, 2021). Both cities have thus built up a strong reputation as CE innovators which further enhances the competitiveness of their CE business sector while taking limited tangible actions to fundamentally transform their production and consumption systems.…”