Comparing Pathways through the Anthropocene and semi periphery perspective:A Doughnut Economics Assessment of Four European States

This contribution examines the applicability of the Doughnut Economics framework as a systemic and ethically grounded analytical tool for navigating socio-ecological challenges of the Anthropocene. Focusing on a comparative analysis of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Slovenia, and Austria, the paper develops a regional Doughnut model that captures both national performance and relational interdependencies across ecological ceilings and social foundations. By situating these four countries within a shared socio-ecological system, the analysis highlights asymmetries, spillover effects, and structural interconnections that are often obscured in single-country sustainability assessments. Methodologically, the study builds on the transformative model developed by the Institute for Political Ecology (IPE) in Zagreb and further advances it through an integrated indicator framework that combines Doughnut Economics, selected Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and a relational, colour-coded diagnostic logic. This approach enables a systemic reading of the Anthropocene as a condition marked not only by biophysical limits but also by socio-economic inequalities, governance failures, and uneven responsibility for ecological overshoot. Beyond diagnosis, the paper engages directly with key ethical and political questions raised by the Anthropocene concept: how to communicate systemic limits without foreclosing future imaginaries; how to use scientific frameworks to challenge public policy without technocratic determinism; and how to translate structural diagnosis into actionable yet hopeful transformation pathways. By comparing countries across different development trajectories and governance regimes, the study demonstrates that the Doughnut Economy can function as more than a sustainability narrative; it can operate as a replicable scientific methodology that supports reflexive governance, informs public debate, and fosters ethically grounded responses to Anthropocene conditions. The findings contribute to interdisciplinary discussions on how systemic concepts of the Anthropocene can be operationalised in ways that retain both analytical rigour and transformative potential.