Degrowth's main argument is that an infinite expansion of the economy is fundamentally contradictory to the finiteness of material resources on Earth. It argues that economic growth measured by GDP should be abandoned as a policy objective. Policy should instead focus on economic and social metrics such as life expectancy, health, education, housing, and ecologically sustainable work as indicators of both ecosystems and human well-being.[10] Degrowth theorists posit that this would increase human living standards and ecological preservation even as GDP growth slows.[11][12][3]
A 2024 review of degrowth studies over the past 10 years showed that most were of poor quality: almost 90% were opinions rather than analysis, few used quantitative or qualitative data, and even fewer ones used formal modelling; the latter used small samples or a focus on non-representative cases. Also most studies offered subjective policy advice, but lacked policy evaluation and integration with insights from the literature on environmental/climate policies.[16]
Background
The "degrowth" movement arose from concerns over the consequences of the productivism and consumerism associated with industrial societies (whether capitalist or socialist) including:[17]
The reduced availability of energy sources (see peak oil);
The ever-expanding use of resources by Global North countries to satisfy lifestyles that consume more food and energy, and produce greater waste, at the expense of the Global South (see neocolonialism).
Examples of countries with eco-economic decoupling
The concept of decoupling denotes decoupling economic growth, usually measured in GDP growth, GDP per capita growth or GNI per capita growth[19] from the use of natural resources and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Absolute decoupling refers to GDP growth coinciding with a reduction in natural resource use and GHG emissions, while relative decoupling describes an increase in resource use and GHG emissions lower than the increase in GDP growth.[20] The degrowth movement heavily critiques this idea and argues that absolute decoupling is only possible for short periods, specific locations, or with small mitigation rates.[21][22] In 2021 NGO European Environmental Bureau called stated that "not only is there no empirical evidence supporting the existence of a decoupling of economic growth from environmental pressures on anywhere near the scale needed to deal with environmental breakdown", and that reported cases of existing eco-economic decouplings either depict relative decoupling and/or are observed only temporarily and/or only on a local scale, arguing that alternatives to eco-economic decoupling are needed.[22] This is supported by several other studies which state that absolute decoupling is highly unlikely to be achieved fast enough to prevent global warming over 1.5°C or 2°C, even under optimistic policy conditions.[23]
Major criticism of this view points out that Degrowth is politically unpalatable, defaulting towards the more free market green growth orthodoxy as a set of solutions that is more politically tenable.[9][8] The problems with the SDG process are political rather than technical, Ezra Klein of the New York Times claims in summary of these criticisms, and degrowth has less plausibility than green growth as a democratic political platform.[9] However, in a recent review of efforts toward Sustain Development Goals by the Council of Foreign Relations in 2023 it was found that progress toward 50% of the minimum viable SDG's have stalled and 30% of these verticals have reversed (or are getting worse, rather than better).[7] Thus, while it may be true that Degrowth will be 'a difficult sell'[8] (per Ezra Klein) to introduce via democratic voluntarism, the critique of SDG's and decoupling against green capitalism leveled by Degrowth theorists appear to have predictive power.[11][13]
Degrowth proponents argue that economic expansion must be met with a corresponding increase in resource consumption.[24] Non-renewable resources, like petroleum, have a limited supply and can eventually be exhausted. Similarly, renewable resources can also be depleted if they are harvested at unsustainable rates for prolonged periods. An example of this depletion is evident in the case of caviar production in the Caspian Sea.[25]
Supporters of degrowth contend that reducing demand is the sole permanent solution to bridging the demand gap. To sustain renewable resources, both demand and production must be regulated to levels that avert depletion and ensure environmental sustainability. Transitioning to a society less reliant on oil is crucial for averting societal collapse as non-renewable resources dwindle.[26] Degrowth can also be interpreted as a plea for resource reallocation, aiming to halt unsustainable practices of transforming certain entities into resources, such as non-renewable natural resources. Instead, the focus shifts towards identifying and utilizing alternative resources, such as renewable human capabilities.[27]
The ecological footprint measures human demand on the Earth's ecosystems by comparing human demand with the Earth's ecological capacity to regenerate. It represents the amount of biologically productive land and sea area required to regenerate the resources a human population consumes and to absorb and render harmless the corresponding waste.
According to a 2005 Global Footprint Network report,[28] inhabitants of high-income countries live off of 6.4 global hectares (gHa), while those from low-income countries live off of a single gHa. For example, while each inhabitant of Bangladesh lives off of what they produce from 0.56 gHa, a North American requires 12.5 gHa. Each inhabitant of North America uses 22.3 times as much land as a Bangladeshi. According to the same report, the average number of global hectares per person was 2.1, while current consumption levels have reached 2.7 hectares per person. For the world's population to attain the living standards typical of European countries, the resources of between three and eight planet Earths would be required with current levels of efficiency and means of production. For world economic equality to be achieved with the currently available resources, proponents say rich countries would have to reduce their standard of living through degrowth. The constraints on resources would eventually lead to a forced reduction in consumption. A controlled reduction of consumption would reduce the trauma of this change, assuming no technological changes increase the planet's carrying capacity. Multiple studies now demonstrate that in many affluent countries per-capita energy consumption could be decreased substantially and quality living standards still be maintained.[29]
Degrowth ideology opposes all manifestations of productivism, which advocates that economic productivity and growth should be the primary objectives of human organization. Consequently, it stands in opposition to the prevailing model of sustainable development.[30] While the concept of sustainability aligns with some aspects of degrowth philosophy, sustainable development, as conventionally understood, is based on mainstream development principles focused on augmenting economic growth and consumption. Degrowth views sustainable development as contradictory because any development reliant on growth within a finite and ecologically strained context is deemed intrinsically unsustainable.[31] Development based on growth in a finite, environmentally stressed world is viewed as inherently unsustainable.
Critics of degrowth argue that a slowing of economic growth would result in increased unemployment, increased poverty, and decreased income per capita. Many who believe in negative environmental consequences of growth still advocate for economic growth in the South, even if not in the North. Slowing economic growth would fail to deliver the benefits of degrowth — self-sufficiency and material responsibility — and would indeed lead to decreased employment. Rather, degrowth proponents advocate the complete abandonment of the current (growth) economic model, suggesting that relocalizing and abandoning the global economy in the Global South would allow people of the South to become more self-sufficient and would end the overconsumption and exploitation of Southern resources by the North.[31] Supporters of degrowth view it as a potential method to shield ecosystems from human exploitation. Within this concept, there is an emphasis on communal stewardship of the environment, fostering a symbiotic relationship between humans and nature. Degrowth recognizes ecosystems as valuable entities beyond their utility as mere sources of resources.[17] During the Second International Conference on degrowth, discussions encompassed concepts like implementing a maximum wage and promoting open borders. Degrowth advocates an ethical shift that challenges the notion that high-resource consumption lifestyles are desirable. Additionally, alternative perspectives on degrowth include addressing perceived historical injustices perpetrated by the global North through centuries of colonization and exploitation, advocating for wealth redistribution. Determining the appropriate scale of action remains a focal point of debate within degrowth movements.[17]
Some researchers believe that the world is poised to experience a Great Transformation, either by disastrous events or intentional design. They maintain that ecological economics must incorporate Postdevelopment theories, Buen vivir, and degrowth to affect the change necessary to avoid these potentially catastrophic events.[32]
A 2022 paper by Mark Diesendorf found that limiting global warming to 1,5 degrees with no overshoot would require a reduction of energy consumption. It describes (chapters 4–5) degrowth toward a steady state economy as possible and probably positive. The study ends with the words: "The case for a transition to a steady-state economy with low throughput and low emissions, initially in the high-income economies and then in rapidly growing economies, needs more serious attention and international cooperation.[33]
Technologies designed to reduce resource use and improve efficiency are often touted as sustainable or green solutions. Degrowth literature, however, warns about these technological advances due to the "rebound effect", also known as Jevons paradox.[34] This concept is based on observations that when a less resource-exhaustive technology is introduced, behavior surrounding the use of that technology may change, and consumption of that technology could increase or even offset any potential resource savings.[35] In light of the rebound effect, proponents of degrowth hold that the only effective "sustainable" solutions must involve a complete rejection of the growth paradigm and a move to a degrowth paradigm. There are also fundamental limits to technological solutions in the pursuit of degrowth, as all engagements with technology increase the cumulative matter-energy throughput.[36] However, the convergence of digital commons of knowledge and design with distributed manufacturing technologies may arguably hold potential for building degrowth future scenarios.[37]
Mitigation of climate change and determinants of 'growth'
1.5 °C scenario map under different levels of energy-GDP decoupling, RE speed and NETs
Scientists report that degrowth scenarios, where economic output either "declines" or declines in terms of contemporary economic metrics such as current GDP, have been neglected in considerations of 1.5 °C scenarios reported by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), finding that investigated degrowth scenarios "minimize many key risks for feasibility and sustainability compared to technology-driven pathways" with a core problem of such being feasibility in the context of contemporary decision-making of politics and globalized rebound- and relocation-effects.[39][38] However, structurally realigning 'economic growth' and socioeconomic activity determination-structures may not be widely debated in both the degrowth community and in degrowth research which may largely focus on reducing economic growth either more generally or without structural alternative but with e.g. nonsystemic political interventions. Similarly, many green growth advocates suggest that contemporary socioeconomic mechanisms and metrics – including for economic growth – can be continued with forms of nonstructural "energy-GDP decoupling".[40][additional citation(s) needed] A study concluded that public services are associated with higher human need satisfaction and lower energy requirements while contemporary forms of economic growth are linked with the opposite, with the contemporary economic system being fundamentally misaligned with the twin goals of meeting human needs and ensuring ecological sustainability, suggesting that prioritizing human well-being and ecological sustainability would be preferable to overgrowth in current metrics of economic growth.[41][42] The word 'degrowth' was mentioned 28 times in the United Nations IPCC Sixth Assessment Report by Working Group III published in April 2022.[43]
Open Localism
Open localism is a concept that has been promoted by the degrowth community when envisioning an alternative set of social relations and economic organization. It builds upon the political philosophies of localism and is based on values such as diversity, ecologies of knowledge, and openness. Open localism does not look to create an enclosed community but rather to circulate production locally in an open and integrative manner.[44]
Open localism is a direct challenge to the acts of closure regarding identitarian politics.[45] By producing and consuming as much as possible locally, community members enhance their relationships with one another and the surrounding environment.
Degrowth's ideas around open localism share similarities with ideas around the commons while also having clear differences. On the one hand, open localism promotes localized, common production in cooperative-like styles similar to some versions of how commons are organized. On the other hand, open localism does not impose any set of rules or regulations creating a defined boundary, rather it favours a cosmopolitan approach.[46]
Feminism
The degrowth movement builds on feminist economics that has criticized measures of economic growth like the GDP as it excludes work mainly done by women such as unpaid care work (the work performed to fulfill people's needs) and reproductive work (the work sustaining life), first argued by Marilyn Waring.[47] Further, degrowth draws on the critique of socialist feminists like Silvia Federici and Nancy Fraser claiming that capitalist growth builds on the exploitation of women's work.[48][49] Instead of devaluing it, degrowth centers the economy around care,[1] proposing that care work should be organized as a commons.[50]
Centering care goes hand in hand with changing society's time regimes. Degrowth scholars propose a working time reduction.[51] As this does not necessarily lead to gender justice, the redistribution of care work has to be equally pushed.[50] A concrete proposal by Frigga Haug is the 4-in-1 perspective that proposes 4 hours of wage work per day, freeing time for 4 hours of care work, 4 hours of political activities in a direct democracy, and 4 hours of personal development through learning.[52]
Furthermore, degrowth draws on materialist ecofeminisms that state the parallel of the exploitation of women and nature in growth-based societies and proposes a subsistence perspective conceptualized by Maria Mies and Ariel Salleh.[53][54] Synergies and opportunities for cross-fertilization between degrowth and feminism were proposed in 2022, through networks including the Feminisms and Degrowth Alliance (FaDA).[50] FaDA argued that the 2023 launch of Degrowth Journal created "a convivial space for generating and exploring knowledge and practice from diverse perspectives".[55]
Decolonialism
A relevant concept within the theory of degrowth is decolonialism, which refers to putting an end to the perpetuation of political, social, economic, religious, racial, gender, and epistemological relations of power, domination, and hierarchy of the global north over the global south.[56]
The foundation of this relationship lies in the claim that the imminent socio-ecological collapse is caused by capitalism, which is sustained by economic growth. This economic growth in turn can only be maintained under the eaves of colonialism and extractivism, perpetuating asymmetric power relationships between territories.[57] Colonialism is understood as the appropriation of common goods, resources, and labor, which is antagonistic to degrowth principles.
Through colonial domination, capital depresses the prices of inputs and colonial cheapening occurs to the detriment of the oppressed countries.[citation needed] Degrowth criticizes these appropriation mechanisms and enclosure of one territory over another and proposes a provision of human needs through disaccumulation, de-enclosure, and decommodification. It also reconciles with social movements and seeks to recognize the ecological debt to achieve the catch-up, which is postulated as impossible without decolonization.[57][58]
In practice, decolonial practices close to degrowth are observed, such as the movement of Buen vivir or sumak kawsay by various indigenous peoples.
Policies
There is a wide range of policy proposals associated with degrowth. In 2022, Nick Fitzpatrick, Timothée Parrique and Inês Cosme conducted a comprehensive survey of degrowth literature from 2005 to 2020 and found 530 specific policy proposals with "50 goals, 100 objectives, 380 instruments".[59] The survey found that the ten most frequently cited proposals were: universal basic incomes, work-time reductions, job guarantees with a living wage, maximum income caps, declining caps on resource use and emissions, not-for-profit cooperatives, holding deliberative forums, reclaiming the commons, establishing ecovillages, and housing cooperatives.
To address the common criticism that such policies are not realistically financeable, economic anthropologistJason Hickel sees an opportunity to learn from modern monetary theory, which argues that monetary sovereign states can issue the money needed to pay for anything available in the national economy without the need to first tax their citizens for the requisite funds.[60] Taxation, credit regulations and price controls could be used to mitigate the inflation this may generate, while also reducing consumption.
The world's leaders are correctly fixated on economic growth as the answer to virtually all problems, but they're pushing it with all their might in the wrong direction.
The reports (also known as the Meadows Reports) are not strictly the founding texts of the degrowth movement, as these reports only advise zero growth, and have also been used to support the sustainable development movement. Still, they are considered the first studies explicitly presenting economic growth as a key reason for the increase in global environmental problems such as pollution, shortage of raw materials, and the destruction of ecosystems. The Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update was published in 2004,[65] and in 2012, a 40-year forecast from Jørgen Randers, one of the book's original authors, was published as 2052: A Global Forecast for the Next Forty Years.[66] In 2021, Club of Rome committee member Gaya Herrington published an article comparing the proposed models' predictions against empirical data trends.[67] The BAU2 ("Business as Usual 2") scenario, predicting "collapse through pollution",[67] as well as the CT ("Comprehensive Technology") scenario, predicting exceptional technological development and gradual decline, were found to align most closely with data observed as of 2019.[67] In September 2022, the Club of Rome released updated predictive models and policy recommendations in a general-audiences book titled Earth for all – A survival guide to humanity.[68]
Georgescu-Roegen's intellectual inspiration to degrowth dates back to the 1970s. When Georgescu-Roegen delivered a lecture at the University of Geneva in 1974, he made a lasting impression on the young, newly graduated French historian and philosopher, Jacques Grinevald, who had earlier been introduced to Georgescu-Roegen's works by an academic advisor. Georgescu-Roegen and Grinevald became friends, and Grinevald devoted his research to a closer study of Georgescu-Roegen's work. As a result, in 1979, Grinevald published a French translation of a selection of Georgescu-Roegen's articles entitled Demain la décroissance: Entropie – Écologie – Économie ('Tomorrow, the Decline: Entropy – Ecology – Economy').[74] Georgescu-Roegen, who spoke French fluently, approved the use of the term décroissance in the title of the French translation. The book gained influence in French intellectual and academic circles from the outset. Later, the book was expanded and republished in 1995 and once again in 2006; however, the word Demain ('tomorrow') was removed from the book's title in the second and third editions.[71]:1742[74][75]:15f
By the time Grinevald suggested the term décroissance to form part of the title of the French translation of Georgescu-Roegen's work, the term had already permeated French intellectual circles since the early 1970s to signify a deliberate political action to downscale the economy on a permanent and voluntary basis.[17]:195 Simultaneously, but independently, Georgescu-Roegen criticised the ideas of The Limits to Growth and Herman Daly's steady-state economy in his article, "Energy and Economic Myths", delivered as a series of lectures from 1972, but not published before 1975. In the article, Georgescu-Roegen stated the following:
[Authors who] were set exclusively on proving the impossibility of growth ... were easily deluded by a simple, now widespread, but false syllogism: Since exponential growth in a finite world leads to disasters of all kinds, ecological salvation lies in the stationary state. ... The crucial error consists in not seeing that not only growth, but also a zero-growth state, nay, even a declining state that does not converge toward annihilation, cannot exist forever in a finite environment.[76]:366f ... [T]he important, yet unnoticed point [is] that the necessary conclusion of the arguments in favor of that vision [of a stationary state] is that the most desirable state is not a stationary, but a declining one. Undoubtedly, the current growth must cease, nay, be reversed.[76]:368f [Emphasis in original]
When reading this particular passage of the text, Grinevald realised that no professional economist of any orientation had ever reasoned like this before. Grinevald also realised the congruence of Georgescu-Roegen's viewpoint and the French debates occurring at the time; this resemblance was captured in the title of the French edition. The translation of Georgescu-Roegen's work into French both fed on and gave further impetus to the concept of décroissance in France—and everywhere else in the francophone world—thereby creating something of an intellectual feedback loop.[71]:1742[75]:15f[17]:197f
By the 2000s, when décroissance was to be translated from French back into English as the catchy banner for the new social movement, the original term "decline" was deemed inappropriate and misdirected for the purpose: "Decline" usually refers to an unexpected, unwelcome, and temporary economic recession, something to be avoided or quickly overcome. Instead, the neologism "degrowth" was coined to signify a deliberate political action to downscale the economy on a permanent, conscious basis—as in the prevailing French usage of the term—something good to be welcomed and maintained, or so followers believe.[70]:548[75]:15f[77]:874–876
When the first international degrowth conference was held in Paris in 2008, the participants honoured Georgescu-Roegen and his work.[78]:15f,28,et passim In his manifesto on Petit traité de la décroissance sereine ("Farewell to Growth"), the leading French champion of the degrowth movement, Serge Latouche, credited Georgescu-Roegen as the "main theoretical source of degrowth".[69] Likewise, Italian degrowth theorist Mauro Bonaiuti considered Georgescu-Roegen's work to be "one of the analytical cornerstones of the degrowth perspective".[72]
Schumacher and Buddhist economics
E. F. Schumacher's 1973 book Small Is Beautiful predates a unified degrowth movement but nonetheless serves as an important basis for degrowth ideas. In this book he critiques the neo-liberal model of economic development, arguing that an increasing "standard of living", based on consumption is absurd as a goal of economic activity and development. Instead, under what he refers to as Buddhist economics, we should aim to maximize well-being while minimizing consumption.[79]
Ecological and social issues
In January 1972, Edward Goldsmith and Robert Prescott-Allen—editors of The Ecologist—published A Blueprint for Survival, which called for a radical programme of decentralisation and deindustrialization to prevent what the authors referred to as "the breakdown of society and the irreversible disruption of the life-support systems on this planet".[80]
Over the last 50 years, the state of nature has deteriorated at an unprecedented and accelerating rate.
The main drivers of this deterioration have been changes in land and sea use, exploitation of living beings, climate change, pollution and invasive species. These five drivers, in turn, are caused by societal behaviors, from consumption to governance.
Damage to ecosystems undermines 35 of 44 selected UN targets, including the UN General Assembly's Sustainable Development Goals for poverty, hunger, health, water, cities' climate, oceans and land. It can cause problems with food, water and humanity's air supply.
To fix the problem, humanity needs transformative change, including sustainable agriculture, reductions in consumption and waste, fishing quotas and collaborative water management. Page 8 of the report proposes "enabling visions of a good quality of life that do not entail ever-increasing material consumption" as one of the main measures. The report states that "Some pathways chosen to achieve the goals related to energy, economic growth, industry and infrastructure and sustainable consumption and production (Sustainable Development Goals 7, 8, 9 and 12), as well as targets related to poverty, food security and cities (Sustainable Development Goals 1, 2 and 11), could have substantial positive or negative impacts on nature and therefore on the achievement of other Sustainable Development Goals".[81][82]
In a June 2020 paper published in Nature Communications, a group of scientists argue that "green growth" or "sustainable growth" is a myth: "we have to get away from our obsession with economic growth—we really need to start managing our economies in a way that protects our climate and natural resources, even if this means less, no or even negative growth." They conclude that a change in economic paradigms is imperative to prevent environmental destruction, and suggest a range of ideas from the reformist to the radical, with the latter consisting of degrowth, eco-socialism and eco-anarchism.[83][84]
In June 2020, the official site of one of the organizations promoting degrowth published an article by Vijay Kolinjivadi, an expert in political ecology, arguing that the emergence of COVID-19 is linked to the ecological crisis.[85]
The 2019 World Scientists' Warning of a Climate Emergency and its 2021 update have asserted that economic growth is a primary driver of the overexploitation of ecosystems, and to preserve the biosphere and mitigate climate change civilization must, in addition to other fundamental changes including stabilizing population growth and adopting largely plant-based diets, "shift from GDP growth and the pursuit of affluence toward sustaining ecosystems and improving human well-being by prioritizing basic needs and reducing inequality."[86][87] In an opinion piece published in Al Jazeera, Jason Hickel states that this paper, which has more than 11,000 scientist cosigners, demonstrates that there is a "strong scientific consensus" towards abandoning "GDP as a measure of progress."[88]
In a 2022 comment published in Nature, Hickel, Giorgos Kallis, Juliet Schor, Julia Steinberger and others say that both the IPCC and the IPBES "suggest that degrowth policies should be considered in the fight against climate breakdown and biodiversity loss, respectively".[5]
Movement
Conferences
The movement has included international conferences promoted by the network Research & Degrowth (R&D).[89] The First International Conference on Economic Degrowth for Ecological Sustainability and Social Equity in Paris (2008) was a discussion about the financial, social, cultural, demographic, and environmental crisis caused by the deficiencies of capitalism and an explanation of the main principles of degrowth. Further conferences were in Barcelona (2010), Montreal (2012), Venice (2012), Leipzig (2014), Budapest (2016), Malmö (2018), and Zagreb (2023). The 10th International Degrowth Conference will be held in Pontevedra in June 2024. Separately, two conferences have been organised as cross-party initiatives of Members of the European Parliament: the Post-Growth 2018 Conference[90] and the Beyond Growth 2023 Conference,[91] both held in the European Parliament in Brussels.
International Degrowth Network
The conferences have also been accompanied by informal degrowth assemblies since 2018, to build community between degrowth groups across countries.[92] The 4th Assembly in Zagreb in 2023 discussed a proposal to create a more intentional organisational structure and led to the creation of the International Degrowth Network, which organised the 5th assembly in June 2024.[93]
Relation to other social movements
The degrowth movement has a variety of relations to other social movements and alternative economic visions, which range from collaboration to partial overlap. The Konzeptwerk Neue Ökonomie (Laboratory for New Economic Ideas), which hosted the 2014 international Degrowth conference in Leipzig, has published a project entitled "Degrowth in movement(s)" in 2017, which maps relationships with 32 other social movements and initiatives.[94] The relation to the environmental justice movement is especially visible.[61]
Although not explicitly called degrowth, movements inspired by similar concepts and terminologies can be found around the world, including Buen Vivir[95] in Latin America, the Zapatistas in Mexico, the Kurdish Rojava or Eco-Swaraj in India, and the sufficiency economy in Thailand.[96] The Cuban economic situation has also been of interest to degrowth advocates because its limits on growth were socially imposed (although as a result of geopolitics), and has resulted in positive health changes.[97]
Another set of movements the degrowth movement finds synergy with is the wave of initiatives and networks inspired by the commons, where resources are sustainably shared in a decentralised and self-managed manner, instead of through capitalist organization.[10][61][98] For example, initiatives inspired by commons could be food cooperatives, open-source platforms, and group management of resources such as energy or water. Commons-based peer production also guides the role of technology in degrowth, where conviviality and socially useful production are prioritised over capital gain.[99] This could happen in the form of cosmolocalism, which offers a framework for localising collaborative forms of production while sharing resources globally as digital commons, to reduce dependence on global value chains.[100]
Criticisms, challenges and dilemmas
Critiques of degrowth concern the poor study quality of degrowth studies, negative connotation that the term "degrowth" imparts, the misapprehension that growth is seen as unambiguously bad, the challenges and feasibility of a degrowth transition, as well as the entanglement of desirable aspects of modernity with the growth paradigm.
Criticisms
According to a highly cited scientific paper of environmental economist Jeroen C. J. M. van den Bergh, degrowth is often seen as an ambiguous concept due to its various interpretations, which can lead to confusion rather than a clear and constructive debate on environmental policy. Many interpretations of degrowth do not offer effective strategies for reducing environmental impact or transitioning to a sustainable economy. Additionally, degrowth is unlikely to gain significant social or political support, making it an ineffective strategy for achieving environmental sustainability.[101]
Ineffectiveness and better alternatives
In his scientific paper, Jeroen C. J. M. van den Bergh concludes that a degrowth strategy, which focuses on reducing the overall scale of the economy or consumption, tends to overlook the significance of changes in production composition and technological innovation.
Van den Bergh also highlights that a focus solely on reducing consumption (or consumption degrowth) may lead to rebound effects. For instance, reducing consumption of certain goods and services might result in an increase in spending on other items, as disposable income remains unchanged. Alternatively, it could lead to savings, which would provide additional funds for others to borrow and spend.
He emphasizes the importance of (global) environmental policies, such as pricing externalities through taxes or permits, which incentivize behavior changes that reduce environmental impact and which provide essential information for consumers and help manage rebound effects. Effective environmental regulation through pricing is crucial for transitioning from polluting to cleaner consumption patterns.[101]
Study quality
A 2024 review of degrowth studies over the past 10 years showed that most were of poor quality: almost 90% were opinions rather than analysis, few used quantitative or qualitative data, and even fewer ones used formal modelling; the latter used small samples or a focus on non-representative cases. Also most studies offered subjective policy advice, but lacked policy evaluation and integration with insights from the literature on environmental/climate policies.[16]
Negative connotation
The use of the term "degrowth" is criticized for being detrimental to the degrowth movement because it could carry a negative connotation,[102] in opposition to the positively perceived "growth".[103] "Growth" is associated with the "up" direction and positive experiences, while "down" generates the opposite associations.[104] Research in political psychology has shown that the initial negative association of a concept, such as of "degrowth" with the negatively perceived "down", can bias how the subsequent information on that concept is integrated at the unconscious level.[105] At the conscious level, degrowth can be interpreted negatively as the contraction of the economy,[102][106] although this is not the goal of a degrowth transition, but rather one of its expected consequences.[107] In the current economic system, a contraction of the economy is associated with a recession and its ensuing austerity measures, job cuts, or lower salaries.[106]Noam Chomsky commented on the use of the term: "When you say 'degrowth' it frightens people. It's like saying you're going to have to be poorer tomorrow than you are today, and it doesn't mean that."[108]
Since "degrowth" contains the term "growth", there is also a risk of the term having a backfire effect, which would reinforce the initial positive attitude toward growth.[102] "Degrowth" is also criticized for being a confusing term, since its aim is not to halt economic growth as the word implies. Instead, "a-growth" is proposed as an alternative concept that emphasizes that growth ceases to be an important policy objective, but that it can still be achieved as a side-effect of environmental and social policies.[106][109]
Systems theoretical critique
In stressing the negative rather than the positive side(s) of growth, the majority of degrowth proponents remain focused on (de-)growth, thus giving continued attention to the issue of growth, leading to continued attention to the arguments that sustainable growth is possible. One way to avoid giving attention to growth might be extending from the economic concept of growth, which proponents of both growth and degrowth commonly adopt, to a broader concept of growth that allows for the observation of growth in other sociological characteristics of society. A corresponding "recoding" of "growth-obsessed", capitalist organizations was proposed by Steffen Roth.[110]
Traditional Marxists distinguish between two types of value creation: that which is useful to mankind, and that which only serves the purpose of accumulating capital.[4]:86–87 Traditional Marxists consider that it is the exploitative nature and control of the capitalist production relations that is the determinant and not the quantity. According to Jean Zin, while the justification for degrowth is valid, it is not a solution to the problem.[111] Other Marxist writers have adopted positions close to the de-growth perspective. For example, John Bellamy Foster[112] and Fred Magdoff,[113] in common with David Harvey, Immanuel Wallerstein, Paul Sweezy and others focus on endless capital accumulation as the basic principle and goal of capitalism. This is the source of economic growth and, in the view of these writers, results in an unsustainable growth imperative. Foster and Magdoff develop Marx's own concept of the metabolic rift, something he noted in the exhaustion of soils by capitalist systems of food production, though this is not unique to capitalist systems of food production as seen in the Aral Sea. Many degrowth theories and ideas are based on neo-Marxist theory.[4] Foster emphasizes that degrowth "is not aimed at austerity, but at finding a 'prosperous way down' from our current extractivist, wasteful, ecologically unsustainable, maldeveloped, exploitative, and unequal, class-hierarchical world."[114]
Challenges
Lack of macroeconomics for sustainability
It is reasonable for society to worry about recession as economic growth has been the unanimous goal around the globe in the past decades. However, in some advanced countries, there are attempts to develop a model for a regrowth economy. For instance, the Cool Japan strategy has proven to be instructive for Japan, which has been a static economy for almost decades.[115]
Political and social spheres
According to some scholars in Sociology, the growth imperative is deeply entrenched in market capitalist societies such that it is necessary for their stability.[116] Moreover, the institutions of modern societies, such as the nation state, welfare, labor market, education, academia, law and finance, have co-evolved with growth to sustain them.[117] A degrowth transition thus requires not only a change of the economic system but of all the systems on which it relies. As most people in modern societies are dependent on those growth-oriented institutions, the challenge of a degrowth transition also lies in individual resistance to move away from growth.[118]
Land privatisation
Baumann, Alexander and Burdon suggest that "the Degrowth movement needs to give more attention to land and housing costs, which are significant barriers hindering true political and economic agency and any grassroots driven degrowth transition."[119]
They claim that land – a necessity like land and air – privatisation creates an absolute economic growth determinant. They point out that even one who is fully committed to degrowth nevertheless has no option but decades of market growth participation to pay rent or mortgage. Because of this, land privatisation is a structural impediment to moving forward that makes degrowth economically and politically unviable. They conclude that without addressing land privatisation (the market's inaugural privatisation – primitive accumulation) the degrowth movement's strategies cannot succeed. Just as land enclosure (privatisation) initiated capitalism (economic growth), degrowth must start with reclaiming land commons.[120]
Agriculture
When it comes to agriculture, a degrowth society would require a shift from industrial agriculture to less intensive and more sustainable agricultural practices such as permaculture or organic agriculture. Still, it is not clear if any of those alternatives could feed the current and projected global population.[121][122] In the case of organic agriculture, Germany, for example, would not be able to feed its population under ideal organic yields over all of its arable land without meaningful changes to patterns of consumption, such as reducing meat consumption and food waste.[123][121] Moreover, labour productivity of non-industrial agriculture is significantly lower due to the reduced use or absence of fossil fuels, which leaves much less labour for other sectors.[124] Potential solutions to this challenge include scaling up approaches such as community-supported agriculture (CSA).
Dilemmas
Given that modernity has emerged with high levels of energy and material throughput, there is an apparent compromise between desirable aspects of modernity[125] (e.g., social justice, gender equality, long life expectancy, low infant mortality) and unsustainable levels of energy and material use.[126] Some researchers, however, argue that the decline in income inequality and rise in social mobility occurring under capitalism from the late 1940s to the 1960s was a product of the heavy bargaining power of labor unions and increased wealth and income redistribution during that time; while also pointing to the rise in income inequality in the 1970s following the collapse of labor unions and weakening of state welfare measures.[127] Others also argue that modern capitalism maintains gender inequalities by means of advertising, messaging in consumer goods, and social media.[128]
Another way of looking at the argument that the development of desirable aspects of modernity require unsustainable energy and material use is through the lens of the Marxist tradition, which relates the superstructure (culture, ideology, institutions) and the base (material conditions of life, division of labor). A degrowth society, with its drastically different material conditions, could produce equally drastic changes in society's cultural and ideological spheres.[126] The political economy of global capitalism has generated a lot of social and environmental bads, such as socioeconomic inequality and ecological devastation, which in turn have also generated a lot of goods through individualization and increased spatial and social mobility.[129] At the same time, some argue the widespread individualization promulgated by a capitalist political economy is a bad due to its undermining of solidarity, aligned with democracy as well as collective, secondary, and primary forms of caring,[130] and simultaneous encouragement of mistrust of others, highly competitive interpersonal relationships, blame of failure on individual shortcomings, prioritization of one's self-interest, and peripheralization of the conceptualization of human work required to create and sustain people.[130] In this view, the widespread individuation resulting from capitalism may impede degrowth measures, requiring a change in actions to benefit society rather than the individual self.
Some argue the political economy of capitalism has allowed social emancipation at the level of gender equality,[131] disability, sexuality and anti-racism that has no historical precedent. However, others dispute social emancipation as being a direct product of capitalism or question the emancipation that has resulted. The feminist writer Nancy Holmstrom, for example, argues that capitalism's negative impacts on women outweigh the positive impacts, and women tend to be hurt by the system. In her examination of China following the Chinese Communist Revolution, Holmstrom notes that women were granted state-assisted freedoms to equal education, childcare, healthcare, abortion, marriage, and other social supports.[132] Thus, whether the social emancipation achieved in Western society under capitalism may coexist with degrowth is ambiguous.
Doyal and Gough allege that the modern capitalist system is built on the exploitation of female reproductive labor as well as that of the Global South, and sexism and racism are embedded in its structure. Therefore, some theories (such as Eco-Feminism or political ecology) argue that there cannot be equality regarding gender and the hierarchy between the Global North and South within capitalism.[133]
The structural properties of growth present another barrier to degrowth as growth shapes and is enforced by institutions, norms, culture, technology, identities, etc. The social ingraining of growth manifests in peoples' aspirations, thinking, bodies, mindsets, and relationships. Together, growth's role in social practices and in socio-economic institutions present unique challenges to the success of the degrowth movement.[134] Another potential barrier to degrowth is the need for a rapid transition to a degrowth society due to climate change and the potential negative impacts of a rapid social transition including disorientation, conflict, and decreased well-being.[134]
In the United States, a large barrier to the support of the degrowth movement is the modern education system, including both primary and higher learning institutions. Beginning in the second term of the Reagan administration, the education system in the US was restructured to enforce neoliberal ideology by means of privatization schemes such as commercialization and performance contracting, implementation of standards and accountability measures incentivizing schools to adopt a uniform curriculum, and higher education accreditation and curricula designed to affirm market values and current power structures and avoid critical thought concerning the relations between those in power, ethics, authority, history, and knowledge.[135] The degrowth movement, based on the empirical assumption that resources are finite and growth is limited,[136] clashes with the limitless growth ideology associated with neoliberalism and the market values affirmed in schools, and therefore faces a major social barrier in gaining widespread support in the US.[citation needed]
Nevertheless, co-evolving aspects of global capitalism, liberal modernity, and the market society, are closely tied and will be difficult to separate to maintain liberal and cosmopolitan values in a degrowth society.[129] At the same time, the goal of the degrowth movement is progression rather than regression, and researchers point out that neoclassical economic models indicate neither negative nor zero growth would harm economic stability or full employment.[136] Several assert the main barriers to the movement are social and structural factors clashing with implementing degrowth measures.[136][134][137]
Healthcare
It has been pointed out that there is an apparent trade-off between the ability of modern healthcare systems to treat individual bodies to their last breath and the broader global ecological risk of such an energy and resource intensive care. If this trade-off exists, a degrowth society must choose between prioritizing the ecological integrity and the ensuing collective health or maximizing the healthcare provided to individuals.[138] However, many degrowth scholars argue that the current system produces both psychological and physical damage to people. They insist that societal prosperity should be measured by well-being, not GDP.[4]:142
Ecological economics, bioeconomics, ecolonomy, eco-economics, or ecol-econ is both a transdisciplinary and an interdisciplinary field of academic research addressing the interdependence and coevolution of human economies and natural ecosystems, both intertemporally and spatially. By treating the economy as a subsystem of Earth's larger ecosystem, and by emphasizing the preservation of natural capital, the field of ecological economics is differentiated from environmental economics, which is the mainstream economic analysis of the environment. One survey of German economists found that ecological and environmental economics are different schools of economic thought, with ecological economists emphasizing strong sustainability and rejecting the proposition that physical (human-made) capital can substitute for natural capital.
Overconsumption describes a situation where a consumer overuses their available goods and services to where they can't, or don't want to, replenish or reuse them. In microeconomics, this may be described as the point where the marginal cost of a consumer is greater than their marginal utility. The term overconsumption is quite controversial in use and does not necessarily have a single unifying definition. When used to refer to natural resources to the point where the environment is negatively affected, it is synonymous with the term overexploitation. However, when used in the broader economic sense, overconsumption can refer to all types of goods and services, including manmade ones, e.g. "the overconsumption of alcohol can lead to alcohol poisoning". Overconsumption is driven by several factors of the current global economy, including forces like consumerism, planned obsolescence, economic materialism, and other unsustainable business models and can be contrasted with sustainable consumption.
Herman Edward Daly was an American ecological and Georgist economist and professor at the School of Public Policy of University of Maryland, College Park in the United States, best known for his time as a senior economist at the World Bank from 1988 to 1994. In 1996, he was awarded the Right Livelihood Award for "defining a path of ecological economics that integrates the key elements of ethics, quality of life, environment and community."
A steady-state economy is an economy made up of a constant stock of physical wealth (capital) and a constant population size. In effect, such an economy does not grow in the course of time. The term usually refers to the national economy of a particular country, but it is also applicable to the economic system of a city, a region, or the entire world. Early in the history of economic thought, classical economist Adam Smith of the 18th century developed the concept of a stationary state of an economy: Smith believed that any national economy in the world would sooner or later settle in a final state of stationarity.
Post-capitalism is in part a hypothetical state in which the economic systems of the world can no longer be described as forms of capitalism. Various individuals and political ideologies have speculated on what would define such a world. According to classical Marxist and social evolutionary theories, post-capitalist societies may come about as a result of spontaneous evolution as capitalism becomes obsolete. Others propose models to intentionally replace capitalism, most notably socialism, communism, anarchism, nationalism and degrowth.
Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen was a Romanian mathematician, statistician and economist. He is best known today for his 1971 magnum opus The Entropy Law and the Economic Process, in which he argued that all natural resources are irreversibly degraded when put to use in economic activity. A progenitor and a paradigm founder in economics, Georgescu-Roegen's work was decisive for the establishing of ecological economics as an independent academic sub-discipline in economics.
Thermoeconomics, also referred to as biophysical economics, is a school of heterodox economics that applies the laws of statistical mechanics to economic theory. Thermoeconomics can be thought of as the statistical physics of economic value and is a subfield of econophysics.
Sustainability is a social goal for people to co-exist on Earth over a long period of time. Definitions of this term are disputed and have varied with literature, context, and time. Sustainability usually has three dimensions : environmental, economic, and social. Many definitions emphasize the environmental dimension. This can include addressing key environmental problems, including climate change and biodiversity loss. The idea of sustainability can guide decisions at the global, national, organizational, and individual levels. A related concept is that of sustainable development, and the terms are often used to mean the same thing. UNESCO distinguishes the two like this: "Sustainability is often thought of as a long-term goal, while sustainable development refers to the many processes and pathways to achieve it."
Green growth is a concept in economic theory and policymaking used to describe paths of economic growth that are environmentally sustainable. It is based on the understanding that as long as economic growth remains a predominant goal, a decoupling of economic growth from resource use and adverse environmental impacts is required. As such, green growth is closely related to the concepts of green economy and low-carbon or sustainable development. A main driver for green growth is the transition towards sustainable energy systems. Advocates of green growth policies argue that well-implemented green policies can create opportunities for employment in sectors such as renewable energy, green agriculture, or sustainable forestry.
Post-growth is a stance on economic growth concerning the limits-to-growth dilemma — recognition that, on a planet of finite material resources, extractive economies and populations cannot grow infinitely. The term "post-growth" acknowledges that economic growth can generate beneficial effects up to a point, but beyond that point it is necessary to look for other indicators and techniques to increase human wellbeing.
Dematerialization is a term in economics and the social sciences that describes the process of making more goods with less material. The term itself possesses multi-accentuality, which allows it to be diversely explained by different fields of social science, such as Mainstream economics, which puts focus on the aspects of technological evolution and market demand shifts, and Ecological economics, which emphasizes the effect of dematerialization on the natural environment.
Mauro Bonaiuti, PhD, teaches Ecological economics on the Master's on Socio-Environmental Sustainability and Solidarity Economy and Sustainability programme at the University of Turin. He is co-founder of the Italian Degrowth Association and among the promoters of the Italian Solidarity Economy Network.
The English word "conviviality" means "the enjoyment of festive society, festivity", or, as applied to people, "convivial spirit or disposition".
Clive L. Spash is an ecological economist. He currently holds the Chair of Public Policy and Governance at Vienna University of Economics and Business, appointed in 2010. He is also Editor-in-Chief of the academic journal Environmental Values.
Giorgos Kallis is an ecological economist from Greece. He is an ICREA Research Professor at ICTA - Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, where he teaches political ecology. He is one of the principal advocates of the theory of degrowth.
Jason Edward Hickel is an anthropologist and professor at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. Hickel's research and writing focuses on economic anthropology and development, and is particularly opposed to capitalism, neocolonialism, as well as economic growth as a measure of human development.
Growth imperative is a term in economic theory regarding a possible necessity of economic growth. On the micro level, it describes mechanisms that force firms or consumers (households) to increase revenues or consumption to not endanger their income. On the macro level, a political growth imperative exists if economic growth is necessary to avoid economic and social instability or to retain democratic legitimacy, so that other political goals such as climate change mitigation or a reduction of inequality are subordinated to growth policies.
Ecologically or ecological unequal exchange is a concept from ecological economics that builds from the notion of unequal exchange. It considers the inequities hidden in the monetary value of trade flows not only in terms of wages, and quantities of labor but also regarding materials, energy and environmental degradation. As labor is also a form of energy, unequal exchange of embodied labor can even be considered a subset of the wider phenomenon of ecologically unequal exchange. There is an uneven utilization of the environment at the global level not only due to the uneven distribution of resources, but also to shift the environmental burden. The consumption and capital accumulation of core countries are based on environmental degradation and extraction in periphery countries. Sustainability analysis and solutions with a production-based perspective in core countries may thus keep increase unsustainability at the global level. The current configuration of global production networks that leads to this asymmetric trade patterns has evolved historically with colonialism. Whereas ecological unequal exchange is a concept developed in academia, the concept of ecological debt is used in an activism context of environmental justice. The latter defines the accumulation of this unequal exchange through history.
Sustainable population refers to a proposed sustainable human population of Earth or a particular region of Earth, such as a nation or continent. Estimates vary widely, with estimates based on different figures ranging from 0.65 billion people to 9.8 billion, with 8 billion people being a typical estimate. Projections of population growth, evaluations of overconsumption and associated human pressures on the environment have led to some to advocate for what they consider a sustainable population. Proposed policy solutions vary, including sustainable development, female education, family planning and broad human population planning.
Agrowth is a concept in economic policy according to which it is preferable to be indifferent to the growth of gross domestic product when devising policies to further economic and societal progress. The reasoning behind agrowth is that GDP growth does not correlate closely with such progress.
References
This article incorporates text by Savin and van den Bergh available under the CC BY 4.0 license.
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