Welcome to the Green Alliance podcast.

We are the charity and think tank that is all about ambitious leadership for the environment.

I'm Libby Peake, head of resource policy here at Green Alliance.

And in all the time I spend thinking about resource use,

I can't help but notice that resource consumption and the structure of the economy often take a back scene in the debate on the nature and climate crisis.

Most of the efforts by government to cut emissions focus on phasing out fossil fuels and replacing them with cleaner alternatives.

But how the economy consumes resources and the structure of the economy are integral to preventing

catastrophic climate change, and even more key to reversing the decline of nature.

According to the UN, over half of emissions that cause climate change are from the extraction

and processing of resources, and resource use also causes 90% of biodiversity loss around the world.

That's why, in our recent report for the Circular Economy Task Force, targeting success,

we called on the government to replicate the model of the net zero target for climate change,

with a target to cut resource consumption by half by 2050.

But to build a truly circular economy,

we need to rethink our relationship with stuff and with the planet that we live upon.

We don't want an elite circularity where a few corporations control all the resources,

all the intellectual property.

Renegate economist Kate Rayworth has thought about all of this in great detail

and is most well known for developing the idea of donut economics, which is a new approach to the

economy that focuses on meeting societal needs or staying within planetary boundaries. She is co-founder

of Donut Economics Action Lab, which aims to transform that radical titular idea into action.

And she also teaches at Oxford University's Environmental Change Institute.

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