Library

Misc • 2019

A dangerous courtship: The authoritarian nationalist right and the post-growth debate

Growth-critical authors and advocates of a post-growth society are often criticized on the grounds that some of their arguments appear open to appropriation by authoritarian nationalist and nativist racist forces. As such objections are often made in a polemical and overly generalised manner, often ultimately aiming to delegitimize growth-critical ideas as a whole, those being

Scientific paper • 2019

Food self-provisioning as an answer to the metabolic rift: The case of ‘Dacha Resilience’ in Estonia

By: Lilian Pungas

Abstract: Agriculture is not only an essential nexus between society and nature but in its current industrial form also a possible threat to ecological stability. This article explores how a supplement to the conventional agrifood system alleviates the negative consequences of the industrial food production system that manifest through the metabolic rift (Marx, 1981). During fieldwork in...

Misc • 2019

A Green New Deal beyond growth

By: Riccardo Mastini

Since 2018, a coalition of grassroots environmental groups and progressive politicians in the United States have brought into the public debate the idea of a Green New Deal. The plan is inspired not only by Roosevelt’s New Deal, but also by the subsequent wartime mobilization in response to a large-scale threat. The difference is that

Scientific paper • 2019

The Paradox of Sustainable Degrowth and a Convivial Alternative

By:

Abstract: Insofar as development implies economic growth, the term 'sustainable development' appears to some as a contradiction in terms. However, such conclusions still lack a thorough examination of the conceptual structure of the two terms between which there is a purported contradiction. In order to address this issue, the present paper scrutinises some of the assumptions which underwrite...

Misc • 2019

Maximum limits on income and wealth? A degrowth perspective

By: Hubert Buch-Hansen, Max Koch

Against the background of a looming ecological collapse and extreme socio-economic inequality, growth-critical scholars and activists debate various eco-social policies that can facilitate transitions towards genuinely environmentally sustainable and socially equitable societies. Such policies include work sharing, time-banks, job guarantees, complementary currencies and minimum income schemes....

Scientific paper • 2019

Building new foundations: the future of education from a degrowth perspective

By: Christoph Sanders, Nadine Kaufmann, Julian Wortmann

Abstract: Considering education in the context of making and unmaking sustainable futures, a growing relevance is attributed to the role of shared beliefs or mental infrastructures which shape the way people perceive crises and solutions. The currently dominant capitalist economic paradigm is seen as one such powerful belief that generates imaginaries which cannot accommodate sustainable...

Misc • 2019

A Green New Deal beyond growth (II) - Some steps forward

By: Elena Hofferberth

Among the proposals of how to address the climate crisis, calls for a Green New Deal (GND) have recently gained a lot of traction. Riccardo Mastini’s article laid out much of the content of current GND proposals as well as criticism from the degrowth perspective. While critical scrutiny is absolutely crucial to ensure that ideas

Scientific paper • 2019

Activities of degrowth and political change

By: Pasi Heikkurinen, Pierre Tosi, Jana Lozanoska

Abstract: Hannah Arendt's three-fold conceptualization of human activity offers a useful base for understanding the necessity of degrowth and the kinds of activities required to achieve it. The article argues that the different roles of labour, work, and action should be acknowledged and scrutinized in detail to appreciate the underpinnings of contemporary over-production and over-consumption,...

Scientific paper • 2019

What About the Global South? Towards a Feminist Decolonial Degrowth Approach

By: Corinna Dengler, Lisa Marie Seebacher

Abstract: Degrowth calls for a profound socio-ecological transformation towards a socially just and environmentally sound society. So far, the global dimensions of such a transformation in the Global North have arguably not received the required attention. This article critically reflects on the requirements of a degrowth approach that promotes global intragenerational justice without falling...

Scientific paper • 2019

A Degrowth Transition: Pathways for the Degrowth Niche to Replace the Capitalist-Growth Regime

By: Christos Zografos, Claudio Cattaneo, James Scott Vandeventer

Facing the intertwined environmental, social and economic crisis requires us to seriously consider alternatives to the current capitalist system, including the emerging concept of degrowth. Existing understandings of degrowth have focused on characterizing the shape, the key elements and the proposals for a degrowth society. However, its dynamic and evolving nature as an alternative vision of...

Scientific paper • 2019

Challenges for the degrowth transition: The debate about wellbeing

By: Max Koch, Milena Büchs

Degrowth scholars and activists have convincingly argued that degrowth in developed nations will need to be part of a global effort to tackle climate change, and to preserve the conditions for future generations’ basic needs satisfaction. However, the barriers to building a broader degrowth movement appear to be very entrenched at present. To improve the political feasibility of degrowth it is...

Scientific paper • 2019

Green growth or degrowth? Assessing the normative justifications for environmental sustainability and economic growth through critical social theory

By: Kristoffer Wilén, Maria Sandberg, Kristian Klockars

Abstract: Scientists agree that changes in the organization of human society and economy are needed to stop the degradation of the natural environment. The most commonly proposed solution, green growth, has been increasingly criticized, but the offered alternative of degrowth has remained a marginal undertaking in academia and in practice. This article further develops the argument for...

Misc • 2019

Time to grow up

By: Candy Robinson

School climate strikers in Edinburgh demanded unity and action. My decision to attend and support the Edinburgh School Strike, like my arrival, was late.

Scientific paper • 2019

Environmental justice, degrowth and post-capitalist futures

By: Neera M. Singh

Abstract: Struggles for Environmental Justice, more widespread in the global South, are often framed as traditional societies defending “old ways of life”; while degrowth, a relatively new movement in the global North is seen as striving for a “new ways of life.” I argue that both assert or aspire for other ways of being and belonging to the world and open possibilities for post-capitalist...

Misc • 2019

Paving the way for post-growth policy-making: A co-creative process to advance the degrowth movement

By: Colleen Schneider, Elena Hofferberth, Jonathan Barth, Lukas Hardt

Given the strategic indeterminacy of the degrowth movement that has been discussed in earlier articles within this series, we will consider the role that policy may play within the broader scope of a degrowth transformation and as one important focus within a plurality of movements. Specifically, working to move the focus of policy towards instruments

Misc • 2019

Global Degrowth Day

By: Joe Herbert, Ana Poças, Joël Foramitti, Álvaro Fonseca

Saturday 1st June 2019 marked a significant occasion for the degrowth movement: the inaugural ‘Global Degrowth Day’. Groups of people gathered together in places all around the world to engage with ideas of degrowth and alternatives to our growth-based society, guided by the event’s theme of ‘a good life for all’.

Misc • 2019

Towards a more radical European Society for Ecological Economics

By: Joëlle Saey-Volckrick, Andro Rilović

The time has come for ESEE to take a firmer stand and address the impossibility of tackling the monumental ecological crisis we are facing with partial “solutions”. In order to remain relevant ESEE needs to empower its members to speak the truth, confront power and focus their energies on finding meaningful, holistic and truly transformative

Misc • 2019

Decoupling is dead! Long live degrowth!

By: Timothée Parrique

If making the degrowth case was like baking a cake, disproving the plausibility of green growth would be the equivalent of turning the oven on. Decoupling is only “a myth” or “a fantasy,” some would say, a notorious fallacy that requires as much attention as the confabulations of Flat Earthers. And yet, faith in decoupling

Misc • 2019

Finnish degrowth activism in the run-up to the two 2019 elections

By: the Finnish degrowth network

In the spring of 2019, the Finnish degrowth network (kohtuusliike) undertook an election campaign. The aim of the campaign was to break the silence around degrowth ideas in political discourse. We were also curious to see how much support calls to limit production and consumption could generate within the ‘system’.

Scientific paper • 2019

From ecological macroeconomics to a theory of endogenous money for a finite planet

By: Romain Svartzman, Dominique Dron, Etienne Espagne

This paper takes stock of the achievements and gaps of the emerging field of ecological macroeconomics, which has brought insights from specific schools of macroeconomics—most notably post-Keynesian—to ecological economics, with a strong emphasis on the endogeneity of money. Ecological macroeconomics has proposed fiscal, monetary and prudential reforms to boost ‘green’ investments, and...