Provisioning Systems in Ecological Economics

Version 1.0 (November 2025)

Overview

This tool includes an introductory video and further resources on a peer-reviewed study led by Andrew Fanning, Research & Data Analysis Lead at Doughnut Economics Action Lab (DEAL), entitled 'Provisioning systems for a good life within planetary boundaries' (PDF version of the study is available to download).

The tool has been created to make the research more widely accessible, and especially to support lecturers who are keen to include the emerging concept of 'provisioning systems' in their courses.

Provisioning systems have been emerging as a concept that helps us understand relationships between levels of resource use and meeting people’s essential needs. These relationships are fundamental issues to understand in the 21st century because we urgently need to find ways to meet the needs of all people at radically lower levels of resource use that respect planetary boundaries, especially in wealthy countries.

Watch the 7-min video below, which covers (i) what provisioning systems are, and (ii) how can we understand the ways in which they generate different social outcomes at a given level of resource use, including how to transform them to move societies towards an ecologically safe and socially just future.  Links to concepts discussed in the video are provided in the 'Further reading' section, and the peer-reviewed study and slide images shown are available to download.

Further reading

Additional resources discussed in the video include:

Peer-reviewed study. The following peer-reviewed study underpins the video:

Fanning, AL, O'Neill, DW, Büchs, M (2020). Provisioning systems for a good life within planetary boundaries. Global Environmental Change 64: 102135. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2020.102135 (PDF version available to download here)

Living Well Within Limits. The pathbreaking  Living Well Within Limits (LiLi) project was a Leverhulme Research Leadership Grant awarded to Prof Julia Steinberger, which was implemented over the 2016-2021 period at the University of Leeds. Core insights from the extraordinary research team are summarised in this recent preprint paper.

Herman Daly's 'Ends-Means Spectrum'. This post by pioneering ecological economist Herman Daly (1938-2022) describes the foundational 'Ends-Means Spectrum' underpinning the analytic framework that includes provisioning systems. Daly created the Ends-Means spectrum in 1973 to show the fundamental dependence of social outcomes and wellbeing on healthy ecosystems and the resources they provide. For a summary of Prof Daly's extraordinary life and many contributions to ecological economics, see this obituary (by Dan O'Neill) or this biography (by Peter Victor).

Six theories analysed in the study. Find links to more information on the six theories spanning natural and social sciences mentioned in the video, including:

• Complex Adaptive Systems and the Social-Ecological Systems Framework, which have origins in ecology and common property resource management. 
• Theories of Practice and the Multilevel Perspective, which have origins in sociology and sustainability transitions.
• The Social Provisioning Perspective and Systems of Provision approach, which have origins in heterodox economics and political economy. 

Additional summary details and comparative analysis results are also provided in the accompanying peer-reviewed study and supplementary information document (available to download as attachments below).

Examples of applications and modelling. The following list offers some examples and resources mentioned in the video of initiatives engaging with the analytic framework that includes provisioning systems:

•  An early publication of the concept is in a study by Brand-Correa and Steinberger (2017), entitled 'A Framework for Decoupling Human Need Satisfaction From Energy Use'.
• The first formal introduction of the analytic framework that conceives of the relationship between resource use and social outcomes as mediated by provisioning systems is in a study by O'Neill et al. (2018), entitled 'A Good Life for All within Planetary Boundaries'.
• A novel empirical application that identifies relevant provisioning factors is given in a study by Vogel et al. (2021), entitled 'Socio-economic conditions for satisfying human needs at low energy use: An international analysis of social provisioning'.
• UNEP's Global Resources Outlook (2024) calls for solutions that go beyond incremental or isolated changes using the provisioning systems concept, which they apply to facilitate an integrated and systemic approach to analysis and decision-making.
• Examples of major post-growth research projects in Europe engaging with the analytic framework that includes provisioning systems are the REAL - A post-growth DEAL project (coordinated by Giorgos Kallis, Julia Steinberger, and Jason Hickel), the MAPS project (coordinated by Dan O'Neill and Federico Demaria), and the ToBe project (coordinated by Tuuli Hirvilammi). 

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to Rigo Melgar and colleagues at the University of Vermont for the invitation to create the introductory video as part of the teaching resources included in their pathbreaking online Ecological Economics Graduate Certificate program. For the peer-reviewed study, the authors thank three anonymous reviewers as well as Stephen Hall for sharing valuable insight and comments, and the participants of the “Conceptual Frameworks for Understanding Provisioning Systems” workshop for their time and contributions.