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{{Short description|Political, economic and social movement}}{{distinguish|Downsizing (disambiguation){{!}}downsizing|Shrinkage (disambiguation){{!}}shrinkage}}{{Multiple issues|{{Too few opinions|date=March 2022}}{{Copy edit|date=August 2023}}{{POV|talk=POV|date=September 2023}}}}{{Anti-consumerism |Theories}}Degrowth is an academic and social movement critical of the concept of growth in gross domestic product as a measure of human and economic development.JOURNAL, Trainer, Ted, De-growth: Do you realise what it means?, Futures (journal), Futures, 2012, 44, 6, 590–599, 10.1016/j.futures.2012.03.020, JOURNAL, Kallis, Giorgos, Kostakis, Vasilis, Lange, Steffen, et al., 2018, Research On Degrowth, Annual Review of Environment and Resources, en, 43, 1, 291–316, 10.1146/annurev-environ-102017-025941, 1543-5938, free, JOURNAL, Hickel, Jason, What does degrowth mean? A few points of clarification, Globalizations, 2021, 18, 7, 1105–1111, 10.1080/14747731.2020.1812222, 221800076, free, JOURNAL, Buch-Hansen, Hubert, Nesterova, Iana, Less and more: Conceptualising degrowth transformations, Ecological Economics (journal), Ecological Economics, 2023, 205, 107731, 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2022.107731, free, JOURNAL, Akbulut, Bengi, Degrowth, Rethinking Marxism, 2021, 33, 1, 98–110, 10.1080/08935696.2020.1847014, 232116190, WEB, Pettinger, Tejvan, Degrowth - definition, examples and criticisms,weblink Economics Help, 27 April 2020, JOURNAL, Kongshøj, Kristian, Social policy in a future of degrowth? Challenges for decommodification, commoning and public support, Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 2023, 10, 1, 1–11, 10.1057/s41599-023-02255-z, free, Degrowth theory is based on ideas and research from a multitude of disciplines such as economics, economic anthropology, ecological economics, environmental sciences, and development studies. It argues that the unitary focus of modern capitalism on growth, in terms of the monetary value of aggregate goods and services, causes widespread ecological damage and is not necessary for the further increase of human living standards.JOURNAL, Hickel, Jason, Kallis, Giorgos, Jackson, Tim, O’Neill, Daniel W., Schor, Juliet B., Steinberger, Julia K., Victor, Peter A., Ürge-Vorsatz, Diana, December 2022, Degrowth can work — here's how science can help, Nature, en, 612, 7940, 400–403, 10.1038/d41586-022-04412-x, 36510013, 2022Natur.612..400H, 254614532, free, WEB, Degrowth - an overview {{!, ScienceDirect Topics |url=https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/social-sciences/degrowth |access-date=2023-09-11 |website=www.sciencedirect.com}} Degrowth theory has been met with both academic acclaim and considerable criticism.WEB, 2022-06-15, Degrowth: what's behind this economic theory and why it matters today,weblink 2023-09-11, World Economic Forum, en, WEB, Horowitz, Julia, 2022-11-13, Degrowth: A dangerous idea or the answer to the world's biggest crisis? {{!, CNN Business |url=https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/13/economy/degrowth-climate-cop27/index.html |access-date=2023-09-11 |website=CNN |language=en}}NEWS, Bokat-Lindell, Spencer, 2021-09-16, Opinion {{!, Do We Need to Shrink the Economy to Stop Climate Change? |language=en-US |work=The New York Times |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/16/opinion/degrowth-cllimate-change.html |access-date=2023-09-11 |issn=0362-4331}}Degrowth theory'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 eco-systems and human well-being.WEB, Nelson, Anitra, 2024-01-31, Degrowth as a Concept and Practice: Introduction,weblink 2024-02-20, The Commons Social Change Library, en-AU, Degrowth theorists posit that this may increase human living standards and ecological preservation, even while GDP slows down or decreases.BOOK, Hickel, Jason, Less is more, Penguin Books, 2022, 9781786091215, 1, London, 170–179, English, JOURNAL, Akbulut, Bengi, 2021, Degrowth, Rethinking Marxism,weblink Rethinking Marxism, 33, 1, 98–110, 10.1080/08935696.2020.1847014, 232116190, 28 April 2023, JOURNAL, Demaria, Federico, Schneider, François, Sekulova, Filka, Martinez-Alier, Joan, 2013, What is Degrowth? From an Activist Slogan to a Social Movement,weblink Environmental Values, 22, 2, 191–215, 10.3197/096327113X13581561725194, 23460978, 55888884, 0963-2719, Degrowth theory is highly critical of free market capitalism, and it highlights the importance of extensive public services, care work, self-organization, commons, relational goods, community, and work sharing.BOOK, Demaria, Federico, Pluriverse. A Post-Development Dictionary, Kothari, Ashish, Salleh, Ariel, Escobar, Arturo, Acosta, Alberto, 2019, Tulika Books, 9788193732984, New Delhi, WEB, What is degrowth?,weblink dead,weblink 30 January 2021, 29 April 2020, degrowth.info,

Background

The "degrowth" movement arose from concerns over the consequences of the productivism and consumerism associated with industrial societies (whether capitalist or socialist) including:

• The reduced availability of energy sources (see peak oil)
• The destabilization of Earth's ecosystems upon which all life on Earth depends (see Holocene Extinction, Anthropocene, global warming, pollution, current biodiversity loss)
• The rise of negative societal side-effects (see unsustainable development, poorer health, poverty)
• 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)

In 2017, Inês Cosme and colleagues summarised the research literature on degrowth, finding that it focused on three main goals: (1) reduction of environmental degradation; (2) redistribution of income and wealth locally and globally; (3) promotion of a social transition from economic materialism to participatory culture.JOURNAL, Cosme, Inês, Santos, Rui, O'Neill, Daniel W., 2017-04-15, Assessing the degrowth discourse: A review and analysis of academic degrowth policy proposals,weblink Journal of Cleaner Production, en, 149, 321–334, 10.1016/j.jclepro.2017.02.016, 0959-6526,

Decoupling

{{unbalanced|section|date=July 2023}}(File:Absolute-decoupling-Growth-and-falling-emissions-all.png|thumb|upright=1.0|Examples of countries with eco-economic decoupling)The concept of decoupling denotes decoupling economic growth, usually measured in GDP growth or GDP per capita growth,Gupta, Shilpi. "Decoupling: a step toward sustainable development with reference to OECD countries." International Journal of Sustainable Development & World Ecology 22.6 (2015): 510-519. 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.JOURNAL, Haberl, Helmut, Wiedenhofer, Dominik, Virág, Doris, Kalt, Gerald, Plank, Barbara, Brockway, Paul, Fishman, Tomer, Hausknost, Daniel, Krausmann, Fridolin, Leon-Gruchalski, Bartholomäus, Mayer, Andreas, 2020-06-10, A systematic review of the evidence on decoupling of GDP, resource use and GHG emissions, part II: synthesizing the insights, Environmental Research Letters, en, 15, 6, 065003, 10.1088/1748-9326/ab842a, 2020ERL....15f5003H, 216453887, 1748-9326, free, 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.JOURNAL, Antal, Miklós, Van Den Bergh, Jeroen C.J.M., 2016-02-17, Green growth and climate change: conceptual and empirical considerations,weblink Climate Policy, 16, 2, 165–177, 10.1080/14693062.2014.992003, 2016CliPo..16..165A, 153816870, 1469-3062, WEB, Decoupling debunked – Evidence and arguments against green growth as a sole strategy for sustainability,weblink 2022-05-31, EEB - The European Environmental Bureau, en-US, 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. 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 Â°C or 2 Â°C, even under optimistic policy conditions.JOURNAL, Hickel, Jason, Kallis, Giorgos, 2020-06-06, Is Green Growth Possible?,weblink New Political Economy, 25, 4, 469–486, 10.1080/13563467.2019.1598964, 159148524, 1356-3467, Moreover, relying on decoupling as the main or only strategy to combine economic growth and the reduction of environmental pressures would be a high-risk action in the context of the climate emergency of the 21st century.

Resource depletion

As economies expand, there is a corresponding increase in the demand for resources, unless there are improvements in efficiency or shifts in demand prompted by changes in prices. {{citation needed |date=June 2023}} 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.Bardi, U. (2008) 'Peak Caviar'. The Oil Drum: Europe.weblink 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.WEB, Resilience.org, October 20, 2009, Peak Oil Reports,weblink 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.JOURNAL, Corvellec, Hervé, Paulsson, Alexander, 2023-03-01, Resource shifting: Resourcification and de-resourcification for degrowth, Ecological Economics, en, 205, 107703, 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2022.107703, 254388285, 0921-8009, free,

Ecological footprint

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,WEB,weblink Data Sources, footprintnetwork.org, dead,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20091001074513weblink">weblink 2009-10-01, 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.JOURNAL, Merz, Joseph J, Barnard, Phoebe, Rees, William E, Smith, Dane, Maroni, Mat, Rhodes, Christopher J, Dederer, Julia H, Bajaj, Nandita, Joy, Michael K, Wiedmann, Thomas, Sutherland, Rory, July 2023, World scientists' warning: The behavioural crisis driving ecological overshoot, Science Progress, en, 106, 3, 10.1177/00368504231201372, 0036-8504, 10515534, 37728669,

Degrowth and sustainable development

{{Further|Sustainable development}}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.JOURNAL, 10.1016/j.jclepro.2011.08.008, Strong sustainable consumption governance – precondition for a degrowth path?, Journal of Cleaner Production, 38, 36–43, 2013, Lorek, Sylvia, Fuchs, Doris, 49362153,weblink 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. Development based on growth in a finite, environmentally stressed world is viewed as inherently unsustainableCritics of degrowth argue that a slowing of economic growth would result in increased unemployment, increased poverty, and decreased income per capita. Many who understand the devastating environmental consequences of growth still advocate for economic growth in the South, even if not in the North. But, 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.Latouche, S. (2004). Degrowth Economics: Why less should be so much more. Le Monde Diplomatique. 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. 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.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.JOURNAL, Discursive Synergies for a 'Great Transformation' Towards Sustainability: Pragmatic Contributions to a Necessary Dialogue Between Human Development, Degrowth, and Buen Vivir, Ecological Economics, 11 September 2017, 144, 304–313, 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2017.08.025,weblink 21 July 2020, Beling, Adrián E., Vanhulst, Julien, Demaria, Federico, Rabi, Violeta, Carballo, Ana E., Pelenc, Jérôme, 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.JOURNAL, Diesendorf, Mark, Scenarios for mitigating CO2 emissions from energy supply in the absence of CO2 removal, Climate Policy, 22 April 2022, 22, 7, 882–896, 10.1080/14693062.2022.2061407, 2022CliPo..22..882D, 248358617,weblink 1 June 2022,

"Rebound effect"

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.{{harv|Zehner|2012}}, pp.172–73, 333–34 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.JOURNAL, Binswanger, M., 2001, Technological Progress and Sustainable Development: What About the Rebound Effect?, Ecological Economics, 36, 1, 119–32, 10.1016/S0921-8009(00)00214-7,weblink 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.JOURNAL, Heikkurinen, Pasi, Degrowth by means of technology? A treatise for an ethos of releasement,weblink Journal of Cleaner Production, 197, 1654–1665, 10.1016/j.jclepro.2016.07.070, 2018, 55830276, However, the convergence of digital commons of knowledge and design with distributed manufacturing technologies may arguably hold potential for building degrowth future scenarios.JOURNAL, Kostakis, Vasilis, Latoufis, Kostas, Liarokapis, Minas, Bauwens, Michel, The convergence of digital commons with local manufacturing from a degrowth perspective: Two illustrative cases, Journal of Cleaner Production, 197, 1684–1693, 10.1016/j.jclepro.2016.09.077, 2018, 43975556,weblinkweblink 2019-06-09,

Mitigation of climate change and determinants of 'growth'

(File:1.5 °C scenario map under different levels of energy-GDP decoupling, RE speed and NETs.webp|thumb|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.NEWS, 1.5°C degrowth scenarios suggest need for new mitigation pathways,weblink 14 June 2021, phys.org, en, Alternative LinkJOURNAL, Keyßer, Lorenz T., Lenzen, Manfred, 1.5 °C degrowth scenarios suggest the need for new mitigation pathways, Nature Communications, 2021-05-11, 12, 1, 2676, 10.1038/s41467-021-22884-9, 33976156, 8113441, 2021NatCo..12.2676K, en, 2041-1723, (File:CC-BY icon.svg|50px) Available under CC BY 4.0. 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".WEB, Green growth vs degrowth: are we missing the point?,weblink Resilience, 23 June 2021, 2020-12-07, {{additional citation needed |date= June 2021}} 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.NEWS, Securing decent living standards for all while reducing global energy use,weblink 10 July 2021, phys.org, en, JOURNAL, Socio-economic conditions for satisfying human needs at low energy use: An international analysis of social provisioning, Global Environmental Change, 29 June 2021, 102287, 10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2021.102287, en, 0959-3780, Vogel, Jefim, Steinberger, Julia K., O'Neill, Daniel W., Lamb, William F., Krishnakumar, Jaya, 69, free, The word 'degrowth' was mentioned 28 times in the United Nations IPCC Sixth Assessment Report by Working Group III published in April 2022.How the corporate interests and political elites watered down the world's most important climate report MR Online. 2022.

Easterlin Paradox

In 1973, Richard Easterlin published a paper entitled "Does Economic Growth Improve the Human Lot? Some Empirical Evidence" which finds that after a certain income level or "satiation point", income does not affect happiness levels.Easterlin, Richard A. "Does Economic Growth Improve the Human Lot? Some Empirical Evidence." Nations and Households in Economic Growth: Essays in Honor of Moses Abramovitz, Elsevier Inc, 1974, pp. 89–125. Web. The Easterlin Paradox has been reassessed multiple times with varying conclusions.Stevenson, Betsey, and Justin Wolfers. "Economic Growth and Subjective Well-Being: Reassessing the Easterlin Paradox." Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, vol. 2008, no. 1, Brookings Institution, 2008, pp. 1–87. Web.Frank, Robert H. "The Easterlin Paradox Revisited." Emotion (Washington, D.C.), vol. 12, no. 6, American Psychological Association, 2012, pp. 1188–91. Web.Mentus, Vladimir, and Marko Vladisavljevic. "Easterlin Paradox Revisited: Do Increases in Income Bring Higher Levels of Income Satisfaction?" Sociologija, vol. 63, no. 2, 2021, pp. 220–35. Web. Furthermore, Easterlin writes consumption levels directly correlate with income level, indicating that after reaching a certain satiation point increased consumption does not affect happiness levels.

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.CONFERENCE,weblink open localism, Schneider, Francois, Sekulova, Filka, Leipzig, Open localism is a direct challenge to the acts of closure regarding identitarian politics {{citation needed|date=July 2023}}. 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.Schneider, François, and Anitra Nelson. "'Open localism'–on Xue and Vansintjan III." Housing for Degrowth. Routledge, 2018. 223-230.

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.BOOK, Waring, Marilyn, If Women Counted: A New Feminist Economics, 1989, Macmillan, London, 0-333-49262-5, 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.WEB, Federici, Silvia, Feminism and the Politics of the Commons, 17 June 2020,weblink 4 April 2022, BOOK, Fraser, Nancy, Crisis of Care? On the Social-Reproductive Contradictions of Contemporary Capitalism, 2017, In: BOOK, Bhattacharya, Tithi, Social Reproduction Theory: Remapping Class, Recentering Oppression, Pluto Press, London, 21–36, Instead of devaluing it, degrowth centers the economy around care,BOOK, Kallis, Giorgos, Demaria, Federico, D'Alisa, Giacomo, Introduction: Degrowth, 2015, In: BOOK, Kallis, Giorgos, Demaria, Federico, D'Alisa, Giacomo, Degrowth: Vocabulary for a New Era, 1–17, New York, Routledge, proposing that care work should be organized as a commons.JOURNAL, Dengler, Corinna, Lang, Miriam, Commoning Care: Feminist Degrowth Visions for a Socio-Ecological Transformation, Feminist Economics, 2022, 28, 1, 1–28, 10.1080/13545701.2021.1942511, 240534324, Centering care goes hand in hand with changing society's time regimes. Degrowth scholars propose a working time reduction.BOOK, Kallis, Giorgos, Degrowth, 2018, Agenda Publishing, 978-1-911116-79-0, As this does not necessarily lead to gender justice, the redistribution of care work has to be equally pushed. 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.BOOK, Haug, Frigga, Die Vier-in-einem-Perspektive. Politik von Frauen für eine neue Linke, 2009, Argument Verlag, Hamburg, 978-978-3-88619-3, 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.BOOK, Mies, Maria, Bennholdt-Thomsen, Veronika, The Subsistence Perspective: Beyond the Globalised Economy, 1999, Zed Books, BOOK, Salleh, Ariel, Ecofeminism as Politics; Nature, Marx and the Postmodern. When Feminism Fails, 1997, 153–174, 10.1080/08854300.2018.1509619, 149712144, Synergies and opportunities for cross-fertilization between degrowth and feminism were proposed in 2022, through networks including the Feminisms and Degrowth Alliance (FaDA). FaDA argued that the 2023 launch of Degrowth Journal created "a convivial space for generating and exploring knowledge and practice from diverse perspectives".Q, Q118151474,

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.BOOK, Gómez, Martha, Saldarriaga, Dora, López, Maria, Zapata, Lina, Decolonial and Postcolonial Studies. Theories about Modernity, Coloniality, and Eurocentrism, 2017, 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.JOURNAL, Hickel, Jason, Jason Hickel, 2021, The anti-colonial politics of degrowth,weblink Political Geography, 88, 102404, 10.1016/j.polgeo.2021.102404, 235549247, 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|date=July 2023}}. 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.BOOK, Wuttke, Tobias, Reconciling catch-up industrialisation with de-growth, 2021, 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".JOURNAL, Cosme, Inês, Parrique, Timothée, Fitzpatrickl, Nick, 2022, Exploring degrowth policy proposals: A systematic mapping with thematic synthesis,weblink Journal of Cleaner Production, en, 365, 132764, 10.1016/j.jclepro.2022.132764, 249875134, free, 10362/150706, 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 anthropologist Jason 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.JOURNAL, Olk, Christopher, Schneider, Colleen, Hickel, Jason, December 2023, How to pay for saving the world: Modern Monetary Theory for a degrowth transition,weblink Ecological Economics, 214, 107968, 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2023.107968, 0921-8009, Taxation, credit regulations and price controls could be used to mitigate the inflation this may generate, while also reducing consumption.

Origins of the movement

{{More citations needed section|date=April 2013}}The contemporary degrowth movement can trace its roots back to the anti-industrialist trends of the 19th century, developed in Great Britain by John Ruskin, William Morris and the Arts and Crafts movement (1819–1900), in the United States by Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862), and in Russia by Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910).WEB,weblink Degrowth: A Vocabulary for a New Era (Paperback) - Routledge, Routledge.com, 134, 2016-02-28, The concept of "degrowth" properly appeared during the 1970s, proposed by André Gorz (1972) and intellectuals such as Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen, Jean Baudrillard, Edward Goldsmith, E.F. Schumacher, Erich Fromm, Paul Goodman and Ivan Illich, whose ideas reflect those of earlier thinkers, such as the economist E. J. Mishan,Mishan, Ezra J., The Costs of Economic Growth, Staples Press, 1967. the industrial historian Tom Rolt,BOOK, Rolt, L. T. C., High Horse Riderless, 1947, George Allen & Unwin, 171,weblink and the radical socialist Tony Turner. The writings of Mahatma Gandhi and J. C. Kumarappa also contain similar philosophies, particularly regarding his support of voluntary simplicity. Degrowth research was active in the 2010s in the work of Joan Martinez-Alier and the "Barcelona School".JOURNAL, Kallis, Giorgos, 2023-04-01, Degrowth and the Barcelona School, open access, The Barcelona School of Ecological Economics and Political Ecology, Studies in Ecological Economics, en, 8, 83–90, 10.1007/978-3-031-22566-6, 978-3-031-22565-9, 257222514, free, More generally, degrowth movements draw on the values of humanism, enlightenment, anthropology and human rights.JOURNAL, 10.1080/17448689.2013.788935, Civil and Uncivil Actors for a Degrowth Society, Journal of Civil Society, 9, 2, 212–224, 2013, d'Alisa, Giacomo, Demaria, Federico, Cattaneo, Claudio, 55508495,weblink

Club of Rome reports

{{Rquote |align=right |quote=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. |author=Donella Meadows |source=Thinking in SystemsDonella Meadows, edited by Diana Wright, Thinking in Systems: A Primer, Chelsea Green Publishing, 2008, page 146 ({{ISBN|9781603580557}}).}}In 1968, the Club of Rome, a think tank headquartered in Winterthur, Switzerland, asked researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for a report on the limits of our world system and the constraints it puts on human numbers and activity. The report, called The Limits to Growth, published in 1972, became the first significant study to model the consequences of economic growth.WEB, The Limits to Growth+50,weblink Club of Rome, 7 November 2023, 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,BOOK, Meadows, Donella H., Randers, Jorgen, Meadows, Dennis L., The Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update, 2004, Chelsea Green Publishing Co, White River Junction VT, 1931498512,weblink 27 November 2017, 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.BOOK, Randers, Jørgen, 2052: A Global Forecast for the Next Forty Years, 2012, Chelsea Green Publishing Co, White River Junction VT, 978-1-60358-467-8,weblink 29 March 2019, In 2021, Club of Rome committee member Gaya Herrington published an article comparing the proposed models' predictions against empirical data trends.JOURNAL, Herrington, Gaya, June 2021, Update to limits to growth: Comparing the World3 model with empirical data,weblink Journal of Industrial Ecology, en, 25, 3, 614–626, 10.1111/jiec.13084, 226019712, 1088-1980, The BAU2 ("Business as Usual 2") scenario, predicting "collapse through pollution", 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. 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.BOOK, Dixson-Declève, Sandrine,weblink Earth for all: a survival guide for humanity: a report to the Club of Rome (2022), fifty years after The limits of growth (1972), 2022, Owen Gaffney, Jayati Ghosh, Jørgen Randers, Johan Rockström, Per Espen Stoknes, Club of Rome, 978-0-86571-986-6, New Society Publishers, Gabriola Island, British Columbia, Canada, 1315537859,

Lasting influence of Georgescu-Roegen

{{See also | Steady-state economy #Declining-state economy }}The degrowth movement recognises Romanian American mathematician, statistician and economist Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen as the main intellectual figure inspiring the movement.{{rp|548f}} {{rp|1742}} {{rp|xi}} {{rp|1f}} In his work, The Entropy Law and the Economic Process, Georgescu-Roegen argues that economic scarcity is rooted in physical reality; that all natural resources are irreversibly degraded when put to use in economic activity; that the carrying capacity of Earth—that is, Earth's capacity to sustain human populations and consumption levels—is bound to decrease sometime in the future as Earth's finite stock of mineral resources is presently being extracted and put to use; and consequently, that the world economy as a whole is heading towards an inevitable future collapse.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, {{ill|Jacques Grinevald|fr}}, 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'). 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.{{rp|1742}}{{rp|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.{{rp|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:{{cquote | [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.{{rp|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.{{rp|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.{{rp|1742}} {{rp|15f}} {{rp|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.{{rp|548}} {{rp|15f}} {{rp|874–876}}When the first international degrowth conference was held in Paris in 2008, the participants honoured Georgescu-Roegen and his work.{{rp|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". Likewise, Italian degrowth theorist Mauro Bonaiuti considered Georgescu-Roegen's work to be "one of the analytical cornerstones of the degrowth perspective".

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.Schumacher, E. F. (1973). Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered. New York: Perennial Library.

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".WEB,weblink A Blueprint for Survival, The Ecologist Vol. 2, No. 1. Preface, 2008-04-10,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20090907143122weblink">weblink 2009-09-07, dead, In 2019, a summary for policymakers of the largest, most comprehensive study to date of biodiversity and ecosystem services was published by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. The report was finalised in Paris. The main conclusions:

1. Over the last 50 years, the state of nature has deteriorated at an unprecedented and accelerating rate.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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".BOOK, Summary for policymakers of the global assessment report on biodiversity and ecosystem services of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, 6 May 2019, the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services,weblink 10 May 2019, NEWS, Why Biodiversity Loss Hurts Humans as Much as Climate Change Does, Deutsche Welle,weblink 10 May 2019, May 6, 2019,

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.WEB, Overconsumption and growth economy key drivers of environmental crises,weblink Phys.org, University of New South Wales, 22 June 2020, Press release, JOURNAL, Wiedmann, Thomas, Lenzen, Manfred, Keyßer, Lorenz T., Steinberger, Julia K., Julia Steinberger, Scientists' warning on affluence, Nature Communications, 2020, 11, 3107, 3107, 10.1038/s41467-020-16941-y, 32561753, 7305220, 2020NatCo..11.3107W, 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.WEB, Kolinjivadi, Vijay, This pandemic IS ecological breakdown: different tempo, same song,weblink Uneven Earth, 2 April 2020, 20 July 2020, 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."{{citation|last1= Ripple |first1=William J.|display-authors=etal.|date=November 5, 2019 |title=World Scientists' Warning of a Climate Emergency |url=https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/advance-article/doi/10.1093/biosci/biz088/5610806 |journal=BioScience |volume=70 |pages=8–12 |doi=10.1093/biosci/biz088 |access-date=February 21, 2022|hdl=1808/30278|hdl-access=free}}{{citation|last1= Ripple |first1=William J.|display-authors=etal.|date=July 28, 2021 |title=World Scientists' Warning of a Climate Emergency 2021 |url=https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/advance-article/doi/10.1093/biosci/biab079/6325731 |journal=BioScience |volume=71 |issue=9 |pages=894–898 |doi=10.1093/biosci/biab079 |access-date=February 21, 2022|hdl=1808/30278 |hdl-access=free }} In an opinion piece published in Al Jazeera, Jason Hickel states that this paper, which was has more than 11,000 scientist cosigners, demonstrates that there is a "strong scientific consensus" towards abandoning "GDP as a measure of progress."NEWS, Hickel, Jason, 6 December 2019, The dark side of the Nordic model,weblink Al Jazeera, 3 July 2023, The first step is to abandon GDP as a measure of progress – as New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern recently pledged to do – and focus instead on human well-being and ecology. There is a strong scientific consensus forming around this approach. A new paper signed by more than 11,000 scientists argues that high-income nations must shift to post-growth economic models if we are going to have any chance of preventing climate breakdown., 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".JOURNAL, Hickel, Jason, Kallis, Giorgos, Giorgos Kallis, Jackson, Tim, Tim Jackson (economist), O'Neill, Daniel W., Schor, Juliet B., Juliet Schor, Steinberger, Julia K., Julia Steinberger, etal., December 12, 2022, Degrowth can work — here's how science can help, Nature (journal), Nature, 612, 7940, 400–403, 10.1038/d41586-022-04412-x, 36510013, 2022Natur.612..400H, 254614532, free,

Degrowth movement

Conferences

The movement has included international conferences {{in lang|fr}} "La genèse du Réseau Objection de Croissance en Suisse", Julien Cart, in Moins!, journal romand d'écologie politique, 12, July–August 2014. promoted by the network Research & Degrowth (R&D).WEB,weblink Research & Degrowth, 23 September 2014, 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.Declaration of the Paris 2008 Conference. Retrieved from:weblinkweblink Décroissance économique pour la soutenabilité écologique et l'équité sociale, 16 May 2011, 10 January 2016,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20160110061603weblink">weblink dead, Further conferences were in Barcelona (2010),WEB,weblink Degrowth Conference Barcelona 2010, 6 February 2014,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20140410204609weblink">weblink 10 April 2014, dead, Montreal (2012),WEB,weblink International Conference on Degrowth in the Americas, 2013-04-06,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20140531103344weblink">weblink 2014-05-31, dead, Venice (2012),WEB,weblink International Degrowth Conference Venezia 2012, 5 Dec 2012, Leipzig (2014), Budapest (2016),WEB,weblink 2018-01-31, 5th International Degrowth Conference in Budapest, 2015-03-26, Malmö (2018),WEB,weblink Dialogues in turbulent times, Dialogues in turbulent times, en-US, 2018-08-28, and Zagreb (2023).WEB,weblink 9th International Degrowth Conference, The 10th International Degrowth Conference will be held in Pontevedra in June 2024WEB, 10th International Degrowth Conference,weblink . Separately, two conferences have been organised as cross-party initiatives of Members of the European Parliament: the Post-Growth 2018 Conference and the Beyond Growth 2023 Conference, 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. 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 will organise the 5th assembly in June 2024.

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)"WEB,weblink Degrowth in movement(s), Degrowth.info, 2021-07-24,weblink dead, in 2017, which maps relationships with 32 other social movements and initiatives. The relation to the environmental justice movement is especially visible.Although not explicitly called degrowth, movements inspired by similar concepts and terminologies can be found around the world, including Buen VivirNEWS, Balch, Oliver, 2013-02-04, Buen vivir: the social philosophy inspiring movements in South America,weblink 2016-09-03, The Guardian, en-GB, 0261-3077, in Latin America, the Zapatistas in Mexico, the Kurdish Rojava or Eco-Swaraj in India, and the sufficiency economy in Thailand.JOURNAL, Kothari, Ashish, Demaria, Federico, Acosta, Alberto, 2014, Buen Vivir, Degrowth and Ecological Swaraj: Alternatives to sustainable development and the Green Economy,weblink Development, 57, 3–4, 362–375, 10.1057/dev.2015.24, 86318140, 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.BOOK, Cederlöf, Gustav, The Low-Carbon Contradiction: Energy Transition, Geopolitics, and the Infrastructural State in Cuba, 2023, University of California Press, 978-0-520-39313-4, Critical environments: nature, science, and politics, Oakland, California, {{Rp|page=7, 71}}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.Helfrich, Silke and David Bollier. 2014. Commons. In: Degrowth. A vocabulary for a new era. Giacomo D'Alisa, Federico Demaria, Giorgos Kalliseds. Oxon: RoutledgeJOURNAL, Asara, Viviana, Profumi, Emanuele, Kallis, Giorgos, 2013, Degrowth, Democracy and Autonomy, Environmental Values, 22, 2, 217–239, 10.3197/096327113X13581561725239, 144023408, 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.JOURNAL, Robra, Ben, Pazaitis, Alex, Giotitsas, Chris, Pansera, Mario, July 2023, From creative destruction to convivial innovation - A post-growth perspective,weblink Technovation, 125, 102760, 10.1016/j.technovation.2023.102760, 0166-4972, 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.JOURNAL, Kostakis, Vasilis, Niaros, Vasilis, Giotitsas, Chris, 2023-06-30, Beyond global versus local: illuminating a cosmolocal framework for convivial technology development, Sustainability Science, 18, 5, 2309–2322, en, 10.1007/s11625-023-01378-1, 1937-0709, free,

Criticisms, challenges and dilemmas

Critiques of degrowth concern the 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

Negative connotation

The use of the term "degrowth" is criticized for being detrimental to the degrowth movement because it could carry a negative connotation,JOURNAL, 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2016.04.001, Degrowth: A 'missile word' that backfires?, Ecological Economics, 126, 182–187, 2016, Drews, Stefan, Antal, Miklós, in opposition to the positively perceived "growth".JOURNAL, 10.3758/s13428-012-0314-x, 23404613, Norms of valence, arousal, and dominance for 13,915 English lemmas, Behavior Research Methods, 45, 4, 1191–1207, 2013, Warriner, Amy Beth, Kuperman, Victor, Brysbaert, Marc, free, "Growth" is associated with the "up" direction and positive experiences, while "down" generates the opposite associations.JOURNAL, Meier, B. P., Robinson, M. D., 2004-04-01, Why the Sunny Side Is Up: Associations Between Affect and Vertical Position, Psychological Science, 15, 4, 243–247, 10.1111/j.0956-7976.2004.00659.x, 15043641, 31201262, 0956-7976, 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.BOOK, The Rationalizing Voter, Lodge, Milton, Taber, Charles S., 2013, Cambridge University Press, 9781139032490, Cambridge, 10.1017/cbo9781139032490, At the conscious level, degrowth can be interpreted negatively as the contraction of the economy,JOURNAL, 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2010.09.035, Environment versus growth — A criticism of "degrowth" and a plea for "a-growth", Ecological Economics, 70, 5, 881–890, 2011, van den Bergh, Jeroen C.J.M., Jeroen C. J. M. van den Bergh, although this is not the goal of a degrowth transition, but rather one of its expected consequences. 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. 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."WEB,weblink The greening of Noam Chomsky: a conversation, Levy, Andrea, Gonick, Cy, January 22, 2014, Canadian Dimension, Open Publishing, March 27, 2019, Lukacs, Martin, 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. "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.JOURNAL, van den Bergh, Jeroen C. J. M., 2017, A third option for climate policy within potential limits to growth, Nature Climate Change, en, 7, 2, 107–112, 10.1038/nclimate3113, 1758-678X, 2017NatCC...7..107V,weblink 1871.1/55d55cfa-2617-4e8a-b21c-fbc02ee19eea, free,

Marxist critique

{{See also|Steady-state economy #Capitalism without growth}}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.{{rp|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.L'écologie politique à l'ère de l'information, Ere, 2006, p. 68-69 Other Marxist writers have adopted positions close to the de-growth perspective. For example, John Bellamy Foster]weblink Monthly Review Press. and Fred Magdoff,WEB,weblink Harmony and Ecological Civilization: Beyond the Capitalist Alienation of Nature, June 2012, Monthly Review, 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. 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."WEB,weblink Planned Degrowth: Ecosocialism and Sustainable Human Development, Foster, John Bellamy, John Bellamy Foster, July 1, 2023, Monthly Review, August 20, 2023,

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.WEB,weblink Growth and function. A viral research program for next organizations, Roth, Steffen, International Journal of Technology Management,

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.Tunstall, E. (2015) 'Degrowth: Japan models design for steady state economies'. Swinburne University of Technology.weblink

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.JOURNAL, Rosa, Hartmut, Dörre, Klaus, Lessenich, Stephan, 148366804, 2017, Appropriation, Activation and Acceleration: The Escalatory Logics of Capitalist Modernity and the Crises of Dynamic Stabilization, Theory, Culture & Society, en, 34, 1, 53–73, 10.1177/0263276416657600, 0263-2764,weblink 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.JOURNAL, Luhmann, Niklas, 1976, The Future Cannot Begin: Temporal Structures in Modern Society, Social Research, 43, 130–152, 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.JOURNAL, Büchs, Milena, Koch, Max, 2019, Challenges for the degrowth transition: The debate about wellbeing, Futures, en, 105, 155–165, 10.1016/j.futures.2018.09.002, free,

Land privatisation

Baumann, Alexander and Burdon Baumann, A., S. Alexander and P. Burdon (2020) 'Land Commodification as a Barrier to Political and Economic Agency: A Degrowth Perspective' Journal of Australian Political Economy No. 86, pp. 379-405 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."They are saying that land (something we all need like air and water) 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.Samuel Alexander and Alex Bauman, 'Access to land is a barrier to simpler, sustainable living' (22 August 2019) The Conversation.

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.JOURNAL, 10.1016/j.jclepro.2017.03.237, Agriculture and degrowth: State of the art and assessment of organic and biotech-based agriculture from a degrowth perspective, Journal of Cleaner Production, 197, 1823–1839, 2018, Gomiero, Tiziano, 157265598, JOURNAL, Ferguson, Rafter Sass, Lovell, Sarah Taylor, 15089504, 2014, Permaculture for agroecology: design, movement, practice, and worldview. A review, Agronomy for Sustainable Development, en, 34, 2, 251–274, 10.1007/s13593-013-0181-6, 1774-0746,weblink free, 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.JOURNAL, Müller, Adrian, Strategies for feeding the world more sustainably with organic agriculture,weblink Nature Communications, 2017, 8, 1, 1290, Springer Nature, 10.1038/s41467-017-01410-w, 29138387, 5686079, 2017NatCo...8.1290M, 17 June 2020, 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.BOOK, Giampietro, Mario, 2011-10-12, The Metabolic Pattern of Societies, 10.4324/9780203635926, 9780203635926, 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 modernityBOOK, Enlightenment Now, Pinker, Steven, 9780141979090, 1083713125, 2019-01-03, Penguin Books, (e.g., social justice, gender equality, long life expectancy, low infant mortality) and unsustainable levels of energy and material use.JOURNAL, 10.3197/096327113X13581561725310, De-Growth is Not a Liberal Agenda: Relocalisation and the Limits to Low Energy Cosmopolitanism, Environmental Values, 22, 2, 261–285, 2013, Quilley, Stephen, 144880469, 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.Nelson, Joel I. "Inequality in America: The Case for Post-Industrial Capitalism." Research in social stratification and mobility 18 (2001): 39–62. Web. Others also argue that modern capitalism maintains gender inequalities by means of advertising, messaging in consumer goods, and social media.Rosalind Gill, Akane Kanai, Mediating Neoliberal Capitalism: Affect, Subjectivity and Inequality, Journal of Communication, Volume 68, Issue 2, April 2018, Pages 318–326. Web.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. 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.JOURNAL, 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2017.08.008, Wicked Dilemmas of Scale and Complexity in the Politics of Degrowth, Ecological Economics, 142, 306–317, 2017, Kish, Kaitlin, Quilley, Stephen, 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,Lynch, Kathleen, and Manolis Kalaitzake. "Affective and Calculative Solidarity: The Impact of Individualism and Neoliberal Capitalism." European journal of social theory 23.2 (2020): 239. Web. 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.Lynch, Kathleen, and Manolis Kalaitzake. "Affective and Calculative Solidarity: The Impact of Individualism and Neoliberal Capitalism." European journal of social theory 23.2 (2020): 245. Web. 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,BOOK, Gender of Modernity, Felski, Rita, 2009, Harvard University Press, 9780674036796, 1041150387, 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.Cudd, Ann E., and Nancy Holmstrom. Capitalism, For and Against : a Feminist Debate. Cambridge University Press, 2011. 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.BOOK, Doyal, Len, Towards a political economy of degrowth, Gough, Ian, 1991, Rowman & Littlefield International, Ltd., 9781786608963, London, New York, 77, 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.Büchs, Milena, and Max Koch. "Challenges for the Degrowth Transition: The Debate About Wellbeing." Futures : the journal of policy, planning and futures studies 105 (2019): 155–165. Web. 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.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.Kenneth J. Saltman, and David A. Gabbard. Education as Enforcement: The Militarization and Corporatization of Schools. Taylor and Francis, 2010. Web. The degrowth movement, based on the empirical assumption that resources are finite and growth is limited, 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|date=July 2023}}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. 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.Kallis, Giorgos, Christian Kerschner, and Joan Martinez-Alier. "The Economics of Degrowth." Ecological economics 84 (2012): 172–180. Web. Several assert the main barriers to the movement are social and structural factors clashing with implementing degrowth measures.Akbulut, Bengi. "Degrowth." Rethinking Marxism 33.1 (2021): 98–110. Web.

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.JOURNAL, 10.1057/s41285-017-0051-4, Health systems in an era of biophysical limits: The wicked dilemmas of modernity, Social Theory & Health, 16, 2, 188–207, 2018, Zywert, Katharine, Quilley, Stephen, 149177035, 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.{{rp|142}}

See also

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• A Blueprint for Survival
• Agrowth
• Anti-consumerism
• Critique of political economy
• (:Category:Degrowth advocates|Degrowth advocates) (category)
• Political ecology
• Postdevelopment theory
• (Power Down: Options and Actions for a Post-Carbon World)
• Paradox of thrift
• The Path to Degrowth in Overdeveloped Countries
• Post-capitalism
• Productivism
• Prosperity Without Growth
• Slow movement
• Steady-state economy
• Transition town
• Uneconomic growth

{{colend}}

References

{{Reflist|refs=BOOK, Bonaiuti, Mauro, Mauro Bonaiuti, 2011, From Bioeconomics to Degrowth: Georgescu-Roegen's "New Economics" in eight essays.,weblink Book info page at publisher's site, London, Routledge, 9780415587006, BOOK, D'Alisa, Giacomo, et al, Degrowth: A Vocabulary for a New Era,weblink Book info page containing download samples, London, Routledge, 9781138000766, 2015, JOURNAL , CONFERENCE, Flipo, Fabrice, Schneider, François, :fr:François Schneider, 2008, Proceedings of the First International Conference on Economic De-Growth for Ecological Sustainability and Social Equity,weblink PDF contains all conference proceedings, Paris, European Society of Ecological Economics, BOOK, Georgescu-Roegen, Nicholas, Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen, 1971, The Entropy Law and the Economic Process,weblink Full book accessible at Scribd, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 978-0674257801, registration, JOURNAL, Georgescu-Roegen, Nicholas, Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen, 1975, Energy and Economic Myths,weblink Southern Economic Journal, 41, 3, 10.2307/1056148, 347–381, 1056148, BOOK, Georgescu-Roegen, Nicholas, Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen, 1995, 1979, Grinevald, Jacques, :fr:Jacques Grinevald, Rens, Ivo, :fr:Ivo Rens, La Décroissance: Entropie – Écologie – Économie, 2nd,weblink PDF contains full book, Paris, (:fr:Sang de la terre, Sang de la terre), CONFERENCE, Grinevald, Jacques, :fr:Jacques Grinevald, 2008, Introduction to Georgescu-Roegen and Degrowth, Flipo, Fabrice, Schneider, François, :fr:François Schneider, Proceedings of the First International Conference on Economic De-Growth for Ecological Sustainability and Social Equity,weblink PDF contains all conference proceedings, Paris, 14–17, European Society of Ecological Economics, JOURNAL, Kallis, Giorgos, 2011, In defense of degrowth,weblink Ecological Economics (journal), Ecological Economics, 70, 5, 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2010.12.007, 873–880, ; JOURNAL, Kallis, Giorgos, February 2015, The Degrowth Alternative,weblink Great Transition Initiative, JOURNAL, Kerschner, Christian, 2010, Economic de-growth vs. steady-state economy,weblink Journal of Cleaner Production, 18, 6, 10.1016/j.jclepro.2009.10.019, 544–551, {{harv|Latouche|2009}}, pp. 13-16JOURNAL, Martínez-Alier, Juan, Joan Martinez Alier, 2010, Sustainable de-growth: Mapping the context, criticisms and future prospects of an emergent paradigm,weblink Ecological Economics (journal), Ecological Economics, 69, 9, etal, 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2010.04.017, 1741–1747, }}

Reference details

• BOOK, Latouche, Serge, Serge Latouche, 2009, 2007, Farewell to Growth,weblink PDF contains full book, Cambridge, Polity Press, 978-0-7456-4616-9,
• BOOK, Zehner, Ozzie, Ozzie Zehner, Green Illusions, 2012, U. Neb. Press, Lincoln & London, 978-0803237759,weblink

Further reading

• NEWS, Berwyn, Bob, January 9, 2024, New Research Explores a Restorative Climate Path for the Earth,weblink Inside Climate News,
• WEB, Hickel, Jason, Jason Hickel, Degrowth: A Response to Branko Milanovic,weblink Jason Hickel, 25 November 2020, October 27, 2020,
• JOURNAL, Hickel, Jason, Kallis, Giorgos, Giorgos Kallis, Jackson, Tim, Tim Jackson (economist), O'Neill, Daniel W., Schor, Juliet B., Juliet Schor, Steinberger, Julia K., Julia Steinberger, etal., December 12, 2022, Degrowth can work — here's how science can help, Nature (journal), Nature, 612, 7940, 400–403, 10.1038/d41586-022-04412-x, 36510013, 2022Natur.612..400H, 254614532, free,
• BOOK, Hickel, Jason, Less is More; How Degrowth Will Save the World, 2020, William Heinemann, 9781785152498, Hardcover,weblink 20 January 2021,
• BOOK, John, K, Foundations of Real-World Economics, 2023, Abingdon-on-Thames, UK; Routledge, 3rd, 978-1-000-84789-5,weblink
• WEB, Milanovic, Branko, Branko Milanović, The illusion of 'degrowth' in a poor and unequal world,weblink globalinequality, 25 November 2020, November 18, 2017,

External links

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• List of International Degrowth conferences
• Research and Degrowth
• International Degrowth Network
• Degrowth Journal
• Planned Degrowth: Ecosocialism and Sustainable Human Development. Monthly Review issue on "Planned Degrowth". July 1, 2023.

{{Simple living}}{{Environmental social science}}