Planetary Choices

Community-based Economics —A Conversation with Dagan Cohen

• Center for New Critical Politics and Governance • Season 1 • Episode 8

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Dagan Cohen, founder and creative director of CHANGENCY, as well as leader of the Amsterdam Donut Coalition, discusses his work of integrating art and design into societal changes with Hagen Schulz-Forberg and James Quilligan. They also cover the efforts of the open network of the Amsterdam Donut Coalition, how to implement The Doughnut Economics Model by Kate Raworth into the Amsterdam municipality, all while emphasizing the importance of imagination and community in addressing ecological, economic and social challenges.

Academic Reference:

Dagan Cohen, Hagen Schulz-Forberg, James Quilligan; Community-based economics—A conversation with Dagan Cohen. Global Perspectives 10 March 2025; 6 (1): 147094. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/gp.2025.147094

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This podcast was created and produced by the Research Center for New Critical Politics and Governance (CPG).

To watch the video version of this episode, please visit the link below:
https://cas.au.dk/en/cpg/podcast/mapping-the-planetary

Hagen:

Welcome to Planetary Choices. Today, our guest is Dagan Cohen. Dagan is the founder and creative director of Changency. A creative agency for societal change, that connects front-runners in the public and private sectors with artists and designers to collaborate on solutions for urgent social and ecological issues. Dagan is also a leader of the Amsterdam Donut Coalition, an open network of people and organizations, who utilize The Donut Economics Model of Kate Raworth in Amsterdam and its metropolitan area. Amsterdam is one of the first cities to officially adopt the Donut Economics Model as a tool for transformational change. Dagan, welcome to Planetary Choices.

Dagan:

Oh, thank you for having me. I'm delighted.

Hagen:

As always, James is also here. We're co-hosting this and we're very excited to talk to you. Hi, James.

James:

Hello. Welcome.

Hagen:

Dagan, maybe you could share with us a little bit your background to just get into the topic. So how did you come to develop Changency?

Dagan:

Well, first of all, I think that the name Change and Agency, you know, are combined. So you can say every message or premise is actually in one word. And that name popped up already, I think in 2018 in my mind, that I thought, "Well, if I were to start a new organization I would call it Changency." But what really triggered me to start it, was actually one thought that popped into my mind in, I guess 2023, end of 2022. Which is, "Maybe, the biggest crisis of our time, is the crisis of imagination." And yeah well, what I mean is that it is very kind of turbulent and uncertain times where multiple crises collide. We are hardly capable to imagine a hopeful and sustainable future. In fact, we lack a vision of the future we actually want. A future we can all work together towards. And that trigger.. And I've been talking to a lot of people what they see as the biggest crisis and nobody will say it's the crisis of imagination. But what people do agree on, is that in those times of polycrisis, a lack of imagination, or of a hopeful perspective is really lacking. And I have a background in the visual arts, so I was trained as an artist. I studied Retail Academy in Amsterdam, and I especially dove into what was called then kind of environmental art and design. So art for the public spaces and art to kind of, uhm, challenge people for a reaction. So, not in the white temple of the arts, like museums. So I was always interested in kind of interacting, creating a space for art for people to respond, to be part of. So I worked as a visual artist for many years, but always not especially, you know, a craftsperson. So I was really kind of educated as a conceptual artist, I did performances, installations, yeah, interventions in the public space. I did that for many years and worked together with many other artists and disciplines with dancers and with other performers. But you know, as an artist you're always kind of struggling to make a decent living. And in the Netherlands, you know, you can apply for certain subsidies, or you may sell something, but if you work conceptually in installations, it's quite hard to sell, unless you're part of maybe, you know, ten artists that really can make a proper living out of their work. So you do all kinds of odd jobs and somehow, through a project, I got in touch with people from the advertising world that were interested in that concept. And I kind of, well, not by chance, but also because I was interested in this idea of advertising as a creative way to reach many people. And so, I had actually quite a career in the advertising world and worked for many agencies, creative agencies. Especially on the digital domain, but working for really, for big brands; for beers, for insurance companies, for banks and all that. And it was a lot of fun, but I had a certain point after, you know, years, I was also creative director of those agencies. But at a certain point, I thought, "why am I doing the best I can and gathering creative people around, you know, brands and products and services?" I don't think that we are better off with having them. And so for me, it was a point that I thought, maybe it's enough. And so, I started, and I was then very much interested in, actually that was in 2012, when I decided to quit my job and become more of an independent entrepreneur and creative entrepreneur. And I was especially interested in digital culture as you know, the big social networks started, I felt like, hey, it's not only about the commercial potential of internet and social media, but it's also a huge cultural change. Which I called, kind of the democratic creativity. All of a sudden, because of higher bandwidth, because of platforms as Facebook and YouTube especially, all of a sudden, a lot of people had access to express themselves creatively. And I saw a huge eruption of creativity coming from all kinds of places, not specifically only the professional creative sector. And I had a startup, actually two startups, related to digital culture. And uhm, but as digital culture also, and YouTube became very commercial, I also felt, wow, you know, the culture is kind of dying, and everything becomes algorithmical driven and commercially utilized. And so, I would say that I'm now in my fourth transition as a creative maker or thinker, you know, art as a first stage and believing in the power of art, then advertising, then digital culture. And now I'm in this stage that I think it's really about the creativity for change and how can the knowledge that I gained and in, you know, communication, in marketing and advertising and also, you know, my network with artists, how can I kind of combine them? And how can I make them, you know, to use of the public, public service for a more sustainable and fair world. And then I worked for about seven years for an organization called "What Design Can Do," which is an Amsterdam based international, you know, platform online and offline, to promote design to change in a way, but kind of really celebrating the art and the designer as an initiator. And over seven years, I was the head of R&D - research and development, I ran quite a lot of design challenges, worldwide design challenges, around you know, big societal topics. But after seven years, maybe seven years each, you know, it was time to kind of deepen, uhm, my commitment to the public cause and decided that, you know, although this organization was really great, it was also in a way autonomous. And I thought that collaborating with policymakers, so you can work on, really the challenges that are in policy defined as important, that there is goal setting for it, that I kind of should get artists and designers at the table. Because my feeling was that, you know, we live in times of big transitions. Transitions are mostly, when people talk about transitions, it's about technology. The technology that is needed or the, you know, the funds, the money that is needed for the energy transition, for the circular transition. And I really felt, hey, it's also, it's not just technological, but it's really cultural and social. We need social and cultural innovation. So we need to have arts and designs involved in really, the big policy led transition pathways. And that's actually the moment that I started Changency. So, it's not something that is only top-down. So, policy is an important factor, but I think that civil society is a hugely important factor in those transitions and they should be part of, you know, the interventions and also the policies, the focus points. So this idea of collective imagination, or change is really at the core of what we do.

James:

That's a really fascinating background and I think you've really characterized, uhm, the transition over the last 20-25 years that we've all experienced, but not at the level that you have, you've actually become an activist within this transition in stages. I'd like to drill down more on your, uhm, how you organize your, you would have what I would call a network agency.

Dagan:

Uh-huh.

James:

So then, how, you must have a core team.

Dagan:

Yeah.

James:

And then I believe you have a foundation board. And then you have all the partners. Could you speak a little bit about how that's structured and how it actually operates in practice?

Dagan:

Yeah, sure. So, you know, now that Changency is operating actively for two years, I'm also starting to look back now and how actually our projects start, what is the core, how they start and how we then organize around it. So, what I really see now is that, uhm, we are really focusing on sector wide transition challenges. So we don't have a client that said, "I have a problem, can you have a kind of, creative solution for that?" Yes, it is based on, let's say a transition goal, but it's mostly kind of sector wide. And everything, in a way, starts with a conversation. So somehow, I get into conversation with somebody who's leading a project or a certain mission and then gradually, it kind of develops into a project but it starts with a conversation, mostly about "Hey what do you mean that we need to work with arts and designers?" What is then the strategy behind it? So, to give you a few examples, we did two quite big projects around energy transition and I got into conversation with the person who led the local energy strategy for the province of North Holland, which is the biggest province. And they, you know, Netherlands has a goal to have, obviously in the transition to completely renewable energy sources, a goal that in 2030, like seventy percent of all energy sources need to be renewable and then in 2050, kind of a hundred percent. What does that mean, is that, every province or you can say, yeah, what you call a province has, depending on its size and the kind of landscape situation, has a goal to kind of, how do you say, generate a certain amount, a quadrant of renewable energy through wind and solar. And so, I had with him a conversation about the role of design and creativity in that process. And we did kind of some research, kind of preliminary research, that showed, that the energy transition is mostly seen as really a technical challenge and a very financial challenge. So how can we generate, in a relatively short time, so much renewable energy, how are we going to fix this? And if you look then at, kind of how it's perceived, there's a lot of negative sentiment around, was at that time, I'm talking about 2020-21, when we started this conversation. A lot of negative sentiment, which is really around this idea, "not in their backyard." "I don't want to see wind turbines in my landscape." There is, "they make sound", "maybe it's not good for your health", "I don't want to see solar panels on landscapes." So there was kind of, and "who's going to pay for it?" and "am I getting the bill as a citizen?" So our entry point was creating a new narrative about energy transition, that it's not only about, how are we going to fix it, but hey, we can do it like that. So we combined a lot of questions that people were asking themselves and gave the answer to that, from examples in the practice. So we made portraits of all kinds of people, who kind of embraced this transition. That have solar panels on the roof of their house, that had benefits from a lower energy bill. We showed innovations that were not - they were aesthetically much more pleasing. So this result, those conversations about the role of design and communication led to, really defining a new narrative, a new story, which was then a campaign that started to be a campaign for North Holland. But it was also a campaign without a, how do you say, sender or a main client, because we created the kind of toolkit that everybody could use. And if you have a project that fits in this, you know, as a showcase, how it does work and how it's growing in the Netherlands, then you can use our tools. You can make a video, kind of set clips for videos, templates, for all kinds of stuff and it then, gradually became a nationwide campaign that was adopted by the Ministry of Economic Affairs and clients. So it started the conversation. And I also see that, that starting point is for us, a lot of times, it's kind of challenging the prevailing narrative.

Hagen:

Mhm.

Dagan:

And then, how you then work towards that new narrative that also kind of defies the clichés, the norm as it is now, is always through co-creation. But with these professionals involved to steer that co-creation process, to make it into attractive solutions that are appealing, that inspire, that activate. And another recent example, the latest project we did was, actually before the summer in June. And that was a collaboration with the Amsterdam Fashion Insitute (AMFI) and the University of Applied Sciences of Amsterdam. And again, this started with a conversation I had with the director of the Amsterdam Fashion Institute, which also started with this nearly one line, which was, that I kind of drew from our conversation. And we said, "The problem of fashion lies in the words fashion itself, because our urge, our need to be in fashion and to stay in fashion, drives a kind of endless cycle of production and consumption. So how can we develop a new narrative, that kind of celebrates the value of clothes in our lives, but without you being part of a very destructive industry?" And now, the project itself was what we call a story lab, that took a whole day going through different phases, which the end result is really fashion future scenarios. But the people involved were people from the whole production cycle, of the whole industry. So we had researchers, we had producers, we had farmers, we had designers, we had influencers. And through the network of AMFI that knows the whole fashion world. I know some people in the fashion world, but obviously they had access to a big network. We had a lot of pioneers involved. So the thing they had in common, in a way, every one of them were pioneers, but on different scales. We had also big companies like Patagonia and Zeman, which is very big in the Netherlands, retailers, but everybody that kind of understand, and that's fascinating about, for me, about the fashion world. And from a few years ago, I already started, I think it's good to work on fashion, because, you know, transitions that are really close to your body are very personal. There's nothing more personal like the things that you wear and why you wear them, what you want to express with it. Or the things you eat, or the things you surround yourself with, so I feel that it's important to combine it with, you know, in brackets, "lifestyle", because that's very close to people. Otherwise, it becomes very abstract. So yeah, at the end, what I always strive for is to have an output. You know, that it is the process important and the process needs to be very inclusive and creative, but the output should be very exciting. And so we have, kind of, eight future scenarios now on the table and now we're looking at the next phase. So how are we going to go doing more story labs throughout the country? Or, you know, in Europe? Or are we all going to work on some of the most promising scenarios out there.

Hagen:

Let me get in here with another question for another project. It sounds like even though we've touched upon many of the questions that we have in mind, also in the, as our conversation unfolds, which is our dissipation. Sounds very democratic, engaging the civil society. Even though it sounds also as if you need to have a, you know, a very peculiar address book, so you can call the right people to start the network. So how can that be opened up, I wonder? You know, once you start the network and then you need to create the momentum for others to come in. But let me ask you about a specific project that I found fascinating, which is, as I was preparing here, which is called "The Europe Challenge."

Dagan:

Oh, yeah.

Hagen:

There's also how to like this, or some others, but "The Europe Challenge" sounds, well, the EU needs to be challenged, and it sounds like many people are rather critical, some are hopeful, some don't care about the EU anymore. Let's just say, to challenge Europe is a good idea. What is this all about? How would they create it? And what impact did they have?

Dagan:

Yeah, no, I'm glad that you asked that because it's really one of my favorite projects. And we work, we are kind of a delivery partner, or we do a certain part of that Europe Challenge together with the European Culture Foundation, which is a Amsterdam-based foundation, but works Europe-wide, they exist 50 years. They were set up to kind of invoke a positive sentiment about Europe and being part of Europe. That's why they started through culture and art, try to get a sense of involvement and a sense of belonging for people living in Europe. So this specific project is aimed at libraries. And they pose the questions to European libraries. It's an open call. That's why it's called the Europe Challenge. It's an open call aimed at libraries and their local communities. So, to come up with a initiative, a plan, that they want to execute in their library and has also the potential to be, maybe replicated elsewhere in other libraries, to tackle a local challenge that's specifically for the area which the library is based. Why did the European Culture Foundation choose libraries as a domain to work with, or to look at developing further? Because they have one thing in common. They are public spaces that you can enter for free. Yeah, if you want to lend a book or a DVD, or whatever, yeah, you pay a subscription. But as a space, it's an open space and in countries where also democracy is under pressure, it's one of the few placesthat it kind of is a safe space. So the main goal of this challenge, is to kind of foster libraries as democratic places and to see how they can be a place for communities, maybe different communities, to gather around, to feel safe and free to be themselves. And so it's really about ideas to utilize the library as a, so it's not about books, yeah, it's a place of knowledge, but it's really much more about the space, the open space of the library, open for everyone together and come together and plans for that. So we are now, next week (September 2025) I have the kickoff of the third edition of this Europe Challenge and it's now even bigger. So there are now sixty libraries involved. They have been selected. So there was an open call and as the project was a pilot, first of nine libraries, then there was a challenge, the first one that we got involved with, with thirty-two. Last year it was fifty-two and now it's sixty libraries. And really, from big libraries, you know, in Berlin, to very small libraries in rural villages of Spain, Eastern Europe, Ukraine, and so they apply for this challenge. They receive a fund through the European Culture Foundation of ten-thousand Euro, per project. And then they get support in developing the idea from different experts and disciplines. And we, as Changency and myself, a kind of a main facilitator for that part, we do three modules. One is about prototyping. So how to make your initiative tangible, what’s the methodology of a proven, yet exciting way, to do prototyping, testing, validating, et cetera. That's one module. The other one is about, really about storytelling and really getting your idea across in a compelling way through writing a manifesto, through working on a communication strategy, but also visualizations. And for instance, one of the things that we did last year, we’re doing again, is that we also have a masterclass on AI visualization, because most people do not have the means to hire a professional designer or photographer, but with the right guidance, they can still make quite good, you know, visual compelling images of their initiative in AI. So we have a really, very experienced AI artist working on that. And the last module we do is about pitching. So, but we do that with a very experienced pitch coach organization. So it's really people to, not only write and visualize it, but to feel comfortable in their bodies, standing on the stage and present their idea. So, you know, to deliver their ultimate three minutes pitch. So this is our role and there are some other experts on other subjects.

James:

I think you've just outlined an example of what you've become pretty well known for, which is your innovative social designs. So I would expect that many of our viewers would understand that you’re a person who has started out in the visual arts and doing networking to make social commentary and also improves society through betterment. But you've begun to theorize about it but also apply the active work that you're doing to build that out. And it's really very, very interesting. You know, I was reading some background about you, that you have talked about scaled public communications and movement branding and some of these kinds of ideas. Could you just comment on that a little bit, about how you have transformed your vision of the arts and communications, into something even larger than that, that is actually working in the social space?

Dagan:

Yeah, I think, you know, when I went to the art school, I wanted to become a painter, and a famous painter. But then even the first year went to this quite, you know, Rietveld Academy is known for its quite activistic and radical, really radical and forward approach. And as I started there, painting was declared dead. They said, painting, Jesus, I mean that's so old fashioned. You know, because there was a whole array of new instruments at your disposal as an artist. You know, video, photography, land art, performance art. And instead of saying, "oh shit, the thing that I was prone to be, or wanted to be is kind of suppressed.” I immediately embraced that change, so I think that embracing change has been a kind of a red line, walking through everything I do. But, you know, to kind of react on your comment, you know, the artistic genius is mostly seen as this hyper individual with capabilities and talent and perseverance and you know, and having, you know, selling your art, because it's your signature, you are the artist. Then you come into the commercial world and- or you are paid very handsomely, because everything you make is owned by the brand, the company. Then even in the, you know, design world, communication design especially, you have, uhm, a union for graphic designers will protect the intellectual prop-the intellectual rights of the, for instance, the graphic designer or everything that he designed for a brand. Now we have also, the rise in creative comments and open source. So I changed my mind on that, and that's why, you know, Changency is a foundation, therefore I found myself and, you know, people I work with very much more open in creating methods, toolkits, visual languages, that are in a way, open to be adapted by others. And yeah, and I think this development is now really important, because if you want to empower change you need to be, you know, redistributing those means and not claim it and ask money for it. Of course, you need money to develop something. You might ask money to guide people through it, which is, you know, also in the open-source world and all the source software it can be free, but the consultancy or the advice to implement things that can be paid for, that is fair. So I think that everybody that is, you know, really interested in creating a bigger movement, it always has to be distributed. It has to be distributed over many people that can be part of it, that contribute to it, adapt it, et cetera. So yeah, from being egocentric, I guess I became more egocentric and all about, yeah, it sounds corny, about sharing, but I really mean is that, what you have to offer, do that for the public good and, you know, yeah..

Hagen:

That's a great —sounds good to me. I mean, so that's a great conviction to have. Maybe more should have it. Let's get to the Doughnut, shall we Dagan?

Dagan:

Yeah. Yeah, sure.

Hagen:

So, all of this fascinating background and all of the experience and knowledge, now, you also apply to Doughnut Economics somehow, or to the Doughnut model and how to live it and implement it in Amsterdam, within the ecological limits of a big city. So could you describe to us and our listeners and viewers, to our audience, how this model is used in Amsterdam, more broad strokes, you know, housing, health, education, or in how, you’ve come to live with, how you embrace it with your special approach to things.

Dagan:

Yeah, yeah, that’s, so I have to explain how it comes, that I'm kind of leading two organizations at the same time, but there are just such a great interconnection. First of all, what got me excited about Doughnut Economics was when I was introduced to Kate in 2018.

Hagen:

Who was it? Sorry.

Dagan:

To Kate Raworth, we were, I was introduced to Kate Raworth in 2018, because she was having an event in Amsterdam, a workshop. I had in the same space, the kind of, yeah, pitch presentation, kind of facilitating pitch presentation of winners, of one of one of the challenges I did. And we were introduced by a mutual friend and somebody already said, ”Dagan you should meet Kate sometime.” And so by chance, we were in the same space, and we both finished our workshops, or events. And we just met and we were talking an hour long, about imagination and about design. And I said to her, you know, that the reason that I was triggered by the Doughnut Model, because it's based on a visual. There’s this one image, this one symbol.

Hagen:

Yes.

Dagan:

That says it all and it sounds simple, you know, the Doughnut. But if you look, you will go through Google Image Search and you type in 'economics', 'economy’. What you will get, the image you will get all over the place is one graph, which is an arrow going up, with sometimes kind of a bump in it, because, you know, that kind of ingrains the economy in growth. So if you look comic books, you see a presentation, a graph in a comic book or a movie, there is somebody pointing at a visual of this arrow going up. So that is the cliché. And that's the clic-it's not even a cliché, it’s so ingrained in our culture, how we look at economy. If you don't have growth, you don't actually are not doing well, you will go down. And so she challenged that model and came up with a new one. So, you know, we had a conversation about redesigning things and so she really used the word design a lot. You know, in fact, and hopefully your listeners and viewers know that the Doughnut stands for the outer ring, it’s about ecological ceiling. So we should not overshoot, you know, our planetary boundaries. So the planetary boundaries is the outer circle and current economic activities. Current economic activities are about exploiting natural resources, polluting air, land and water and so that's the ecological boundaries. The inner circle stands for the social foundation. So nobody should fall in the hole. And the social foundation is very close to human rights, the right that every person has to education, or access to education, to clean water, to proper housing, to decent income. So it's not something that was invented by Kate. Kate combined to the ecological ceiling, or the planetary boundaries were already, you know, you probably know the name of Rockström, who was the first one to identify those nine planetary boundaries. And we have this firmly idea about, you know, social justice and social foundation. And she combined it to, made a synthesis of that. So in its simplicity, it’s very imaginative as well.

James:

Could you comment on how Doughnut Economics has led to policy action and-

Dagan:

Yeah.

James:

-urban planning and community innovation, in Amsterdam and the metropolitan area?

Dagan:

So the original book was published in English in 2017. In 2018, it was translated in many countries and Amsterdam was one of the first countries to completely fall in love with this book. It appealed to kind of the innovative, creative, innovative spirit of the city. And two things started at the same time. So we had, from civic society, but knowledge institutes - people in neighborhoods were kind of interested in it and were trying to figure out how does it then work in practice? How do we work towards these neighborhoods that are inspired by the Doughnut, that are social and ecological safe? At the same time, we had, and that time Amsterdam Donut Coalition started. So it started at the end of 2019 as a bottom-up movement, connecting all the people who are inspired, were interested, wanted to meet each other, exchange ideas, exchange maybe first plans and work towards making - put it in practice. So that was one movement bottom-up and that was the Amsterdam Donut Coalition which really had already in early March 2020, already had a platform in place, many members, a lot of online meetings, because it was Corona so we could not meet each other live. So there were already nearly a thousand people kind of being involved in this movement. At the same time, we had, at the city of Amsterdam, we had an elder person, elder woman, from the Department of Space and Sustainability, as it's called in Dutch, the Dutch translation for it. And she was from the Green Party and she also read that book and she thought, ”Can we use this model as basis for our circular strategy?” And then she invited Kate to talk about it and other people got involved, the circular economy as a consultancy, but also bio mimicry to make a city portrait. So how does Amsterdam as a city, uhm, perform, you might say, against those ecological, nine ecological indicators, where does it overshoot? Where is there a shortfall on the social foundation? Basically make an analysis, they call it a city portrait or a city selfie. And that was quite a project, worked a long time on that. So, the Doughnuts’ visual with the overshoot and the shortfall, there is one, the one in the book, is a global one. And obviously it's being updated all the time, but you can make it also on a city level. And we also, with the Amsterdam Donut Coalition, also it's sometimes built on a neighborhood level to kind of put a neighborhood in how it performs against those indicators. So that was really a big project. Said, okay, we want to use that as a basis for economic, for a circular strategy. The first city portrait was made. And it was, she was really actively pushing it towards circular building, uh, land use and all that. And so it became popular at the same time. The Doughnut Economy is about three things. It’s about circularity, it's about economy, and it's about social justice. Ideally, if you want it implemented in a city as an integrated approach, as the Doughnut model is a holistic integrated approach, that’s very hard. Because every city has its own departments, they have their own goals, and it's very hard to get a consensus on all those three. But as a starting point, to put that as a basis, as a foundation for a circular strategy, that, yeah, that went very well. And as you know, Amsterdam was one of the first cities to really, I wouldn't say implement it, but work with it on a policy level. But funnily enough, or as it happens, at that time, the Amsterdam Donut Coalition did not have a close working relationship with the municipality. So where we knew of each other, it was that some civil servants, were also on a personal basis, part of the Amsterdam Donut Coalition, attended our meetings, made a profile on the website, but there was no structural collaboration between the Donut Coalition and the municipality of Amsterdam. Our collaboration started when we initiated a yearly festival, the Amsterdam Donut Days, which we started in 2021, and then since then did every year, And that, because as a festival showcase what's happening in the city and you show it widely, what’s happening in neighborhoods, what is happening in the University of Applied Arts of Sciences, what’s happening in the municipality. So we would offer everybody a stage. We had pitch presentations, we had workshops and then slowly, the municipality got involved by sponsoring this festival, and gradually they really became a full partner, supporting us also financially. And the roots, the collaboration between the Amsterdam Donut Coalition and the University of Applied Arts, was right from the start. Actually, the launch of The Amsterdam Donut Coalition was on the premises of the Amsterdam University of Applied Arts. And there's an extra reason for that, because since Kate Raworth is a professor of practice at that university, has been from 21 until this year. This is her last year of her tenure. And so that collaboration, so you can say, hey, we now have actually the ideal, we have civil society, let’s say the community-based initiative that as Amsterdam Donut Coalition we really, our main goal is really to strengthen the position and the network of those local civic iniatives. Then we have the University of Applied Sciences very much involved. They have a center of expertise, which is called Center of Economic Transformation. So they have their own professors, they develop strategies on economic transformation. And last year, they also started a Master's of Economic Transformation. So it's really embedded now in education. And then the third, having the municipality as a player really involved makes it kind of the perfect triangle. And then of course, if you look at the triple helix, or the quadruple helix that you wanna call it, we also work with companies and try to inspire companies to look at the way their business is organized, through the lens of the Doughnut and through regenerative and distributive concepts. So yeah, after five years, you know this is the first year, we're celebrating our first-year anniversary this year, as Amsterdam Donut Coalition. And now it's really getting mature, because of the partnerships we have citywide.

Hagen:

That’s true, that's very impressive and it gets, we will follow it as well. I started to also make —give students the kind of the task to research this and particularly when we talk about planetary ideas, sometimes they sound a little abstract, but then I can always say "look at Amsterdam, they're doing it." And then you can study it. I'd like to ask you a question about these democratic bottom-up qualities that you talked about. I’d like to call them democratic maybe. Then you describe, you have so many members and you have more and more, you gain traction, you gain partners on the public front who also fund you and companies. But I'd be interested in, is anybody capturing your projects, or does anybody come with projects to you, that are not thought out by you or by the coalition center, so to say, have these ideas sprawled? People come, hey I'd like to do that, and then they just are, also part of the coalition. So can they come to you with their own ideas?

Dagan:

Oh, absolutely, absolutely. I mean, we had this long discussion a couple years ago. How do we define a Donut Initiative? You know, what is a Donut Project, or a Donut Initiative? So in the beginning, we said that basically, if it has one, touches one ecological problem and one social problem at the same time, you can already talk about a Donut Project, a Donut Initiative. So if it's only, let's say only a sustainable project, but doesn't have any social implications, or does not organize ownership in a different way, or doesn't look at social benefits, it won't really fit. So we need to touch, the social and ecological part. So we sometimes say that a Donut Initiative can be inspired by Doughnut Economics, but it may also be that they don't even know that the Doughnut exists, but fit perfectly, because in a natural way, they already tackle social and sustainable issues, which by the way, happens a lot. So you can say that if you live in these times and you want to mean something for your neighborhood, you will think about both, how get two people involved, how to make people part of it, how to make people co-owner of it. So it feels natural that, especially on a community level, people approach things like that. It’s the challenges more, uhm, even companies try and really understand that and especially they have to report to the CSRD, ECG's uhm, ESG's*, that they have to report on their social and their ecological performance. Until now, it's been quite a challenge for policy makers, for municipalities, or for other countries, that they have those silos. And so they have to organize themselves different, in order to tackle things in an integrated way. But also this sense that we need to subsidy measures, we need to have, you know a platform, not platform, let's say conversation between different departments about an integrated approach to those challenges and kind of mutual goal setting, instead of everybody only working on their own challenge. So as we develop and we are doing active-so one of our main problems at the moment are called Living Labs. Living Labs, and we bring, it’s a program in which we bring about eight initiatives, place-based initiatives. So our only demand is that, initiative, has a spot in the city which in they interact with people. So it can be a house, it can be a garden. So local initiative in different neighborhoods. We invite eight of them to kind of share their experience together, kind of peer learning. What are the practices that has been successful, and others can adapt, or where is there a problem, that maybe another one can fix. At the same time, we work with them through the design of the Doughnut model to look, to analyze the organization. So what is the purpose? How does the network look like? How are they financed? By whom? Yeah, and whether it's about food, so we have food cooperatives or food initiatives, we can have, let's say, living cooperatives or housing cooperatives. So what you see now, is that on the current, that is now really coming up, is the cooperative approach. You know, many energy cooperatives, of course, but also farmers, or is it a agricultural cooperative, care cooperatives, and the buzzword now coming up in Amsterdam is really translated, it feeds in the Doughnut, is community economy. "Gemeenschapseconomie." So how can we, the economy, not only, how can we make an economy, that the community is part owner of? Yeah, Jason Hickel wrote in his book, "Less is More." The thing that struck me the most about his book, which is a fantastic analysis on the history of Capitalism and how is it tied into Colonialism. But his main strong point, he said, in most of the Western countries, we live in a political democracy, but not an economical democracy, because companies are organized autocratically and by shareholders. There is no influence of the, yeah, you can influence by buying or not buying stuff, but you do not get to decide, which services or products you actually want and need and have a say in that. So I think the big revolution will be ultimately, to have a cooperative economy. And well okay, that's the future vision I think a lot of us share at the moment.

James:

You know, I recognize that you don’t personally measure, the planetary boundaries and ecological overreach, but could you comment on how, the, uhm, those who do measure the planetary boundaries are working kind of on the side of the metrics, but the community is actually providing the intuitive understanding of, how to stay within the planetary boundaries and prevent the overreach. Do you have any particular insights around that?

Dagan:

Uhm. Well, I can say a couple of things about that. So if you look at the classic, if you want to measure the overshoot and the shortfall based on the Doughnut model, you can do so. You can do that on a city level, which was, let’s say this first city portrait, tried as much as data was available, to see how, on what levels there was an overshoot in Amsterdam and where there was a shortfall. One of the things that they did discover though, is that this required some kind of dashboard to be in place, in order to monitor these developments, or at least, let's say, measure again in five years. So in the municipality, there was an initiative to do the city portrait again after five years. So this year. But it was not approved because, partly because the efforts it caused to monitor that and especially to create data points of things that you do not have data about. So first of all, you have to monitor what is in place, then you have to integrate systems, and then you have to set up data warehouses, or data entry points of those indicators, so you do not need the information. So the question is, is that the most valuable thing to do? So on a global level, there are many scientists looking on those, the SEGs look at that, the UN, UN Habitat, UNSCCC is measuring its own scientific level, it's done. But on a local level, I think that the efforts is so big that you can wonder whether that's worth the investment and the time, or that you look much more on the inside of the Doughnut that I'm also kind of much more in favor of being regenerative and distributive by design. What are we doing as a city to promote regenerative practices in the city? What are we doing to divide the fruits of society to make that more distributive? I think, and to measure that, and how you perform against that. So what we do see, what we are working on, is what is the impact of those neighborhoods and civic initiatives? At the moment, we also, the municipality of Amsterdam is working on developing what is called, uhm, "a value compass", which is to measure the value of societal initiatives in neighborhoods, in districts, to do that together with them, also not say, okay, we talked to a lot of experts and we decided this is the measure, the matrix that we're going to use. So it was co-created with a lot of other initiatives and it's kind of a, now in a kind of a concept phase, not even a prototype, but in a concept phase. And that's really, looking at measuring the value that the initiative adds to the city and how is that placed in comparison to the city instruments themselves. So just to give an example, one of the things we kind of found out, or are seeing more and more happening, is that local initiative, neighborhood initiative, kind of jump in the hole that is left by companies and by the municipality. So to give you an example, Amsterdam is very advanced in collecting waste and especially general waste. So, you know, in waste handling, our waste handling system and recycling on that is very advanced. You don't even have to separate plastics from your litter anymore, because through intelligent cameras at the plants, they can sort all the plastics out. So it's very advanced in that sense. For instance, what they do not do, they do not collect, uhm, fruit and vegetable waste, so food waste, do not collect collectively. So what happens is that, we know of a fantastic initiative, which is called "From Waste to Harvest", that they collect on a neighborhood level, vegetable, food, especially fruit and vegetable waste and use that as compost for gardens and communal parks, in which then, greens or vegetable are grown which are then sold. This is a service that is now being kind of replicated in different cities by this organization. And they do so because the municipality doesn’t. So then you have this idea, and what is much more acknowledged now is that we need those local infrastructure to complement what the cities do, because the city can't do everything. And I think in our previous kind of first conversation, we also talked about, kind of a decline in the trust of government worldwide, and also in the Netherlands. After the bank crisis, 2008, we did not trust banks and now so many scandals with IT systems, for instance, the government damaging lives of people and Corona, there is kind of distrust of government. So who do you actually trust? Yeah, call the Ghostbusters today. Who do you call? It’s the community. Because in a community, you can trust your neighbors. You can lend new things from them. So this idea is that, hey, we need a community as a base of trust in society as a whole during the current developments. But we are in the early stage of measuring the value and the contribution of those initiatives to the city.

Hagen:

I’d like to follow that. That’s again, all of your answers lead to fascinating examples and illustrations of how these ideas kind of mushroom on their own, or are picked up by government agencies, companies, more citizen organizations. That’s great. I'd like to follow up on a question about the politics of it, in terms of party politics. You mentioned someone from the Green Party earlier in our talk here. And that's a natural kind of color party to talk about it. And I was wondering, whether all of these Donut Days, and these great initiatives, whether they are picked up by other parties as well? And whether this has any more political, let’s say stickiness. And then this, you know what I mean? It’s picked up by other parties. Is that an initiative? Are there coalitions forming? Or is the political party discourse, how are they acting? If you go through the portfolio of the many Dutch parties, where do you see you have allies or overlaps, or people see, they may be free riders on these ideas. You know, maybe some right wing party picks upon it, or I don't know, I'd be interested in it because it's a popular system.

Dagan:

Yeah. Uhm, at the moment, Amsterdam has always been a very progressive city, politically. So we always had the Labor Party and the Green Party leading it and in coalition that are, mostly progressive. I’m completely in favor of trying to work on a basis to involve more political parties. The pathway towards that are in ways slippery, or are sometimes difficult. First of all, the national government, the last one, we had a "non-functional government” at the moment, you know, many crises. It was a very right-wing government, but it was, I'd say, the most dysfunctional government we've had since the war, really terrible. Everybody agrees on it. We're having elections in October. We’ll probably go more towards the middle, a middle kind of political balance. As it seems. But to give you an example, the current Minister of Economic Affairs is called 'Minister of Economic Affairs and Green Growth'. That's the name, Ministry of Economic Affairs and Green Growth. So, the Green Growth as being a "progressive model" is, let’s say more at the liberal parties and a bit more towards the right, is something, they can kind of embrace. Yes, of course, we need to move away from fossil energy, go to a more green economy, but obviously this green economy offers huge opportunities for companies et cetera, but we also know that green growth is a myth. It’s a beautiful frame. You can't be against it. Green and the same kind will grow. Kate has a whole shtick about that, which is, it's called the "decoupling strategy." It is in fact, scientifically impossible. Still people, there's a group of people who believes in green growth. It is for a lot of others in more liberal and more the right side of politics. Doughnut Economics is too radical. You know they, Doughnut.. Doughnut what? Doughnut economics, you have to explain it first. Well first of all, you have to explain it. Secondly, they think it's too radical. Obviously, it is idealistic, it is a kind of ideal vision of the future. And you can work towards it. You might never get into The Doughnut completely, but this kind of raising the bar, in order to kind of have this lightning rod to follow, it’s for them, too idealistic. And they are also very much skeptical economic, economy specialists, that say its too idealistic, it's too radical. They prefer, there is much more consensus on Broad Prosperity Theory, the approach of broad prosperity, which has notions of The Doughnut in it. But I think there is one way in, but I'm not sure if I want to get into the lobby, towards the politics in the Netherlands as a whole. But a while ago, a couple of months ago, I had a conversation with the, let’s say the,the Chairwoman of the Green Party and socialist collaboration in the Socialist party in the province of North Holland.

Hagen:

Dagan, sorry. But when you have a conversation with someone, we learned earlier, that’s the beginning of something beautiful. So,

Dagan:

Yeah, you're damn right. Indeed. She told me something, that I found fascinating. She was in a coalition, which is not completely progressive at all. They have the farmer's party, which just says, do not touch the farmers, do not take away the land, do not kind of make the cattle, size of the cattle, smaller. You should help them, you should subsidize them. It’s a big lobby for the big agricultural sector. They are big in the province of North Holland, but also the more right-winged Liberal party. She said, well, ”I’m inspired by the Doughnut, I would like to look at, how Doughnut Economics on a province level can work. But it's hard because I am enthusiastic, but day by day and the others, the Liberal Party are not enthusiastic.” They agree, however, on one thing, which is the power of community. Because small businesses are part of the community, small farmers are, they are in the fabric. So we need this, you know, the community, power of the community. So I think the way in, it's kind of, if you are able to show what the power of community is and that we need them. That’s the way of getting the, let’s say the values of the Doughnut Economy, on a broader political level implemented. And I think this will be kind of the movements. You see more and more people kind of, politicians putting their trust in initiatives and the power of community. Because they feel it themselves partly, and they know they can't do it alone. You know, that's typical Dutch. We need to do everything together. Yeah, sure. Then you need the community and community initiatives.

James:

Yeah. Lastly, I wanted to ask you, do you think there is a role for participatory citizens' assemblies to supplement what some of the parties might be thinking? In other words, beyond the parties themselves, how can citizens themselves organize, to carry out a lot of these strategies?

Dagan:

Very good points. I’m absolutely in favor of citizens' assemblies and also on a global level. And I know that a lot of efforts have been made towards that goal, even with the COP, you know, the yearly COP, the conference of the parties around climate. There are quite a lot of citizen assemblies around, specifically, the climate issues and problems and potential solutions. There is a big organization in the Netherlands which is called 'Bureau of Citizens' Assembly’, which promotes the use of citizen assemblies. There are a lot, on the municipal level, there was recently a citizen assembly around waste and liquor in the city. Yeah, I think, you know, I’m very in favor of that system. The catch is only, when do you get a government that really is willing and is committed to, execute the most important solutions that come out of the assemblies and not say, "Hey, that's a great idea, well thank you very much.” And I think, I'm not an expert on that level, so it's for me, hard to really be precise on it, but that's the main issue. So, what is the level of commitment of the government to carry out citizen assemblies conclusions? and how is the COP? Will they do that? Yeah, there will be another big global assembly at the next COP. It's a subject all by itself and we have quite a lot of experts on that level. But it's a good reminder, also for me, to also reach out to them and look how we can combine that with the existing initiatives that we have in our network and how we can organize citizens' assembly around that.

Hagen:

I just looked at the time and I'm afraid we're overshooting. We’re overshooting our temporal boundaries.

Dagan:

Oh shit, haha, so which indicators are we?

Hagen:

This is a whole different conversation. And I'd love to go on with the talk, because James has a lot to say about this as well. And we will be back with another podcast, maybe even on that. But for today, I'd like to close this conversation with you and thank you so much for sharing your effervescent creativity and all these great projects that you're involved in. And I've taken away a lot of things. Not least, that Community Economics seems to be a small little granular part from where things can grow, even across party lines, even across party, you know, seemingly entrenched party camps. And that's what I take from it, among many other things. So bravo to you, great work. And keep it up. Thank you for being with us.

Dagan:

Thank you. Thank you very much. It was great talking to you.

James:

Thank you.

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Hagen Schulz-Forberg

Host
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James Quilligan

Co-host
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Dagan Cohen

Guest