Library

Degrowth: From Utopia to Reality. An action research approach to start the Degrowth dialogue

By: Michael Nieding, Brechtje Postema

How can an idea that critiques the global capitalist system persist? How can a concept that opposes growth as indicator of wealth gather more and more supporters inside and outside of academia? How can a radical theory that challenges almost any societal structure convince us that it is something we must pursue? The Degrowth movement is often referred to as utopia, and not without good reason,...

Seeds of Change: The Degrowth Movement and Strategies Towards Cultural Change

By: Harper Waits Gambill

Towards a cultural politics of degrowth: prefiguration, popularization and pressure

By: Miriam Meissner

This article discusses the role of culture in political ecology, with a focus on degrowth. Environmental scientists increasingly consider systemic societal changes such as degrowth as indispensable for the effective tackling of current climate and ecological crises, while governments and civil society remain skeptical of it. To tackle this challenge, this article argues for the strategic...

Climate Change Inaction and Post-Reality

By: Philip J. Wilson

Blame for climate change inaction is rarely directed at a fundamental cause, the excessive complexity of society. It has given rise to post-truth, which has been largely reduced to unflattering stereotypes of the public, and post-trust, by which the public see their national institutions as increasingly distant and ineffectual. The two comprise post-reality, by which confidence in the truth is...

Mobilising Sense of Place for Degrowth? Lessons From Lancashire's Anti-fracking Activism

By: Javier Lloveras, Adam P. Marshall, Gary Warnaby, Ares Kalandides

This article foregrounds sense of place as a key concept to further advance spatial theorisations within both ecological economics and degrowth. We delineate the scope of the concept and apply it to the fracking controversy in Lancashire, UK. Specifically, we elucidate how sense of place associations were mobilised by pro- and anti-fracking actors to legitimate and advance their respective...

Could "degrowth" have the same fate as "sustainable development"? A discussion on passive revolution in the Anthropocene age

By: Nikos Trantas

The sustainable development discourse, including the modern green growth version, may have aspects that contribute to environmental and social welfare but it is a top down reform project, that aims at correcting the environmental and social externalities resulting from economic growth. It is directed by governments that abide by the logic of capital. Although in principle there is civic...

The end of the line: envisioning degrowth and ecosocial justice in the resistance to the trolleybus dismantlement in Moscow

By: Ekaterina Chertkovskaya, Alexander Paulsson

The city of Moscow has been going through a transformation of its surface transport network during the past decade as part of a broader policy of urban beautification. Despite a renewed interest in public transport, this policy has led to the dismantling of the trolleybus system. This was met with resistance from various groups. Bringing together scholarly discussions on urban growth coalitions...

The Nature of Degrowth: Theorising the Core of Nature for the Degrowth Movement

By: Pasi Heikkurinen

This article investigates human–nature relations in the light of the recent call for degrowth, a radical reduction of matter–energy throughput in over-producing and over-consuming cultures. It outlines a culturally sensitive response to a (conceived) paradox where humans embedded in nature experience alienation and estrangement from it. The article finds that if nature has a core, then the...

Limited, considered and sustainable consumption: The (non)consumption practices of UK minimalists

By: Amber Martin-Woodhead

Minimalism is an increasingly popular lifestyle movement in western economies (predominantly in the USA, Japan and Europe) that involves voluntarily reducing consumption and limiting one’s possessions to a bare minimum. This is with the intention of making space for the ‘important’ (potentially immaterial) things that are seen to add meaning and value to one’s life. Drawing on interviews with...

The Imperial Mode of Living: Everyday Life and the Ecological Crisis of Capitalism

By: Ulrich Brand, Markus Wissen

With the concept of the Imperial Mode of Living, Brand and Wissen highlight the fact that capitalism implies uneven development as well as a constant and accelerating universalisation of a Western mode of production and living. The logic of liberal markets since the 19thCentury, and especially since World War II, has been inscribed into everyday practices that are usually unconsciously...

Relationship-to-Profit: A Theory of Business, Markets, and Profit for Social Ecological Economics

By: Jennifer Hinton

How does the relationship between business and profit affect social and ecological sustainability? Many sustainability scholars have identified competition for profit in the market as a key driver of social exploitation and environmental destruction. Yet, studies rarely question whether businesses and markets have to be profit-seeking. The widespread existence of not-for-profit forms of...

Monetary Adaptation to Planetary Emergency: Addressing the Monetary Growth Imperative

By: Christian Arnsperger, Jem Bendell, Matthew Slater

Background: The existence of a Monetary Growth Imperative (MGI) and its implications for economic stability, democracy and environmental sustainability have been put forward by environmental economists for around two decades but recently criticised as invalid. Given the urgency of the climate and ecological crisis alongside spiralling public and private debt, the MGI deserves closer...

Food access in crisis: Food security and COVID-19

By: Sabine O'Hara, Etienne C. Toussaint

Disparities in food access and the resulting inequities in food security are persistent problems in cities across the United States. The nation's capital is no exception. The District of Columbia's 's geography of food insecurity reveals a history of uneven food access that has only been amplified by the vulnerability of food supply chains during the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper examines the...

Beyond the Knowledge Crisis: A Synthesis Framework for Socio-Environmental Studies and Guide to Social Change

By: Debbie Kasper

Assembles existing knowledge in the environmental and social sciences to generate a science-based, integrated, accessible, and actionable theoretical framework for socio-environmental studies Overcomes dualistic tendencies in conventional worldviews, such as humans and nature, individual and society, and the like Facilitates interdisciplinary communication and collaboration among those seeking...

Economics Journals' Engagement in the Planetary Emergency: A misallocation of resources

By: Sam Butler-Sloss, Marc Beckmann

The planetary emergency is an intellectual and humanitarian challenge that urgently warrants a significant amount of research attention from the economics profession. Is this happening? To answer this question, we assess the number of articles in the top 300 economics journals that are about either (a) climate change and/or (b) natural capital, ecosystem services or biodiversity (NEB). We find...

Plunder in the Post-Colonial Era: Quantifying Drain from the Global South Through Unequal Exchange, 1960–2018

By: Jason Hickel, Huzaifa Zoomkawala, Dylan Sullivan

This paper quantifies drain from the global South through unequal exchange since 1960. According to our primary method, which relies on exchange-rate differentials, we find that in the most recent year of data the global North (‘advanced economies’) appropriated from the South commodities worth $2.2 trillion in Northern prices — enough to end extreme poverty 15 times over. Over the whole...

Position paper • 2021

The anti-colonial politics of degrowth

By: Jason Hickel

Degrowth calls for rich nations to scale down throughput to sustainable levels, reducing aggregate energy use to enable a sufficiently rapid transition to renewables, and reducing aggregate resource use to reverse ecological breakdown. This demand is not just about ecology; rather, it is rooted in anti-colonial principles. Degrowth scholars and activists explicitly recognize the reality of...

The Ecological Constitution: Reframing Environmental Law

By: Lynda Collins

This book sets out the necessary components of any constitution that could be considered "ecological" in nature. In particular, it argues that an ecological constitution is one that codifies the following key principles, at a minimum: the principle of sustainability; intergenerational equity and the public trust doctrine; environmental human rights; rights of nature; the precautionary principle...

Conceptualising Nature: From Dasgupta to Degrowth

By: Clive L. Spash

The problematic conceptualisation of Nature has led confusion and failure to relate to reality. Some merge Nature into society creating a hybrid concept that denies the existence of anything but that which is human controlled or influenced, a position popular amongst Promethians of the Anthropocene. Strong social constructionism also dissolves Nature into the human as evident in some stands of...

The Dasgupta Review deconstructed: an exposé of biodiversity economics

By: Clive L. Spash, Frédéric Hache

The Dasgupta Review is the latest attempt at justifying financialisation of Nature, but also much more. It represents a high point in applying concepts of capital and wealth accumulation comprehensively to all aspects of human and non-human existence. Unravelling the flaws in the arguments, contradictions and underlying motives requires both understand of and cutting through the specialist...