The Greater Melbourne City Portrait
Project overview
The Greater Melbourne City Portrait is a city scale application of Doughnut Economics. This emerged out of a community-led research project that also led to the formation of Regen Melbourne. The Greater Melbourne City Portrait or ‘The Melbourne Doughnut’ essentially shows how well Melbourne is tracking as a place that supports people and the planet to thrive.
APPROACH
The Greater Melbourne City Portrait comprises assessments of Melbourne’s social and ecological sustainability. The ecological component, is powered by Planetary Accounting which was used to assess Melbourne’s environmental footprints, in context.
The assessment represents economy-wide, life-cycle impacts driven by final consumption (of energy, water, food, goods and services, etc.) within the Greater Melbourne region, also known as the consumption footprint. It incorporates multiple pressures on the environment across air, land, and water, incorporating local pressures within Melbourne’s direct control (scope 1), impacts associated with purchased energy (scope 2), and upstream pressures occurring along complex global supply chains (scope 3).
oUTCOMES
This project shows how Planetary Accounting can be the point of connection between the Planetary Boundaries Framework, and Doughnut Economics.
The results are presented in an online open-access interactive digital tool which can be used to educate communities about the Planetary Boundaries. The tool enables members of the public to explore different parts of The Greater Melbourne City Portrait, including a description for each impact and its effects on the environment, how each impact is measured, as well as details of what various stakeholders across the city are doing to drive change.
We are excited to continue supporting Regen Melbourne as they enter their next phase of work on local targets.
