Library

Scientific paper • 2019

Promoting Waste Degrowth and Environmental Justice at a Local Level: The Case of Unit-Pricing Schemes in Spain

By: Giacomo D'Alisa, Gabriel Weber, Ignazio Cabras, Maria Calaf-Forn, Ignasi Puig-Ventosa

This paper investigates the introduction of unit-pricing (UP) schemes in waste management with regard to grassroots initiatives promoting bottom-up participatory processes in local communities, addressing several issues concerning environmental justice and degrowth. As waste service charges and fees increase in proportion of waste generated in presence of UP schemes, the paper explores and...

Scientific paper • 2019

The New Rural Reconstruction Movement: A Chinese degrowth style movement?

By: Rowan Alcock

This paper investigates a grassroots Chinese movement called the New Rural Reconstruction Movement (NRRM). Drawing on field visits, surveys, interviews and social media posts regarding a NRRM project and relevant literature I link the NRRM to the degrowth movement. This is likely the first research analysing a Chinese grass-roots movement from a degrowth theoretical perspective. This link is...

Interview • 2019

Maybrit Illner (ZDF) vom 26. September 2019: "Abschwung, Jobs und Klimarettung – riskieren wir unseren Wohlstand?"

By: Nina Treu, Peter Altmaier, Robert Habeck, Carolin Roth, Mario Gutmann, Karl Haeusgen

Deutschlands Wirtschaft rutscht ab. Die Industrie leidet unter US-Handelskriegen, Brexit-Angst und schwächerer Weltwirtschaft. Stehen wir vor einer der üblichen Konjunkturkrisen oder vor einem epochalen Umbruch? Klimaschutz und Digitalisierung zwingen die Unternehmen zu Abbau und Umbau der alten Arbeitsplätze, zum „Neu-Erfinden“ ganzer Produktionszweige. Wen erreicht die Krise zuerst? Für...

Scientific paper • 2019

Need, Entitlement and Desert: A Distributive Justice Framework for Consumption Degrowth

By: Cle-Anne Gabriel, Carol Bond

Post-growth societies seek socio-ecological transformations towards a just and sustainable redistribution and reduced consumption of natural capital. There is no one universally just and ecologically sustainable way of fulfilling these redistribution and consumption objectives; it depends on the criteria used and their underlying ethical teleology. We suggest three distribution criteria,...

Scientific paper • 2019

Governance from below and environmental justice: Community water management from the perspective of social metabolism

By: David Barkin, Mario Enrique Fuente-Carrasco, Ricardo Clark-Tapia

The Mexican neoliberal political regime created a hegemonic governance model (top-down) which has tried to impose a single definition for the rules of the distribution of the costs and benefits (environmental and economic) related to the appropriation of “natural resources” (fossil fuels, forests, mineral, water, genetic). Social metabolism is a framework that highlights the contribution of...

Scientific paper • 2019

De-growing environmental justice: Reflections from anti-mining movements in Eastern Europe

By: Irina Velicu

While the critique to economic growth is quintessential in the degrowth scholarship, one may observe a similar focus in various environmental justice movements around the world. This is particularly visible when it comes to the increasing perception that mega-development projects are both unjust and unsustainable, threatening the survival of people and environments. In this paper, we...

Misc • 2019

Strategies for a degrowth transformation: How useful are historical analogies?

By: Giuseppe Feola

Degrowth scholars and activists often turn to past cases of social or socioecological transformation for inspiration to inform transformative action in the present. Yet, there has so far been insufficient awareness of the bias that comes with using any historical analogy. The insights provided by historical analogies are limited, but can fruitfully complement analyses of

Misc • 2019

Rise of sustainability reporting brings questions of motivation, agenda

By: Chris Gaetano

The use of sustainability accounting has grown apace with a rising demand from both investors and consumers for information on firms’ environmental, social and governance-related (ESG) impacts to the point where, today, 85 percent of S&P 500 companies report on such matters in some form or another. Yet with this rise have also come concerns that, in some cases, these reports are less for...

Misc • 2019

Defending limits is not Malthusian

By: Giorgos Kallis

"Self-limitation is not about constraining, but about defining collectively as societies our limits." This blogpost introduces the key ideas of Giorgos Kallis' new book Limits. Why Malthus was wrong and why environmentalists should care (Stanford University Press, 2019)

Scientific paper • 2019

Who can challenge the imperial mode of living? The terrain of struggles for social-ecological transformation in the German population

By: Dennis Eversberg

This contribution draws on empirical evidence from the 2016 wave of the survey “Environmental Consciousness in Germany” to identify the potential social bases of both support for and resistance to attempts to overcome the current socio-ecological crisis by way of a broad social-ecological transformation. Firstly, the results of factor and cluster analyses of the survey’s items on attitudes...

Misc • 2019

Green digital capitalism: Dream, milestone or red herring?

By: Timo Daum & Steffen Lange

Digitalization is changing the world. And it’s true: The vehicles of digitalization have spread through society at a rapid pace. Smartphones only entered the market a good ten years ago! Moreover, everywhere else in society – in companies, administrations, in agriculture, in transport and even in art and music – sensors, processors and many other

Scientific paper • 2019

Growth imperatives: Substantiating a contested concept

By: Oliver Richters, Andreas Siemoneit

Economic growth remains a prominent political goal, despite its conflicts with ecological sustainability. Are growth policies only a question of political or individual will, or do ‘growth imperatives’ make them inescapable? We structure the debate along two dimensions: (a) degree of coerciveness between free will and coercion, and (b) agents affected. With carefully derived micro level...

Scientific paper • 2019

An offer you can't refuse: Enhancing personal productivity through ‘efficiency consumption’

By: Andreas Siemoneit

Worldwide, economic growth is a prominent political goal, despite its severe conflicts with ecological sustainability. Contributing to the debate on economic ‘growth imperatives’, this article explores the thesis that both firms and consumers frequently acquire goods that increase their efficiency (productivity). For firms, efficiency is accepted as a main investment motive, but for consumers...

Misc • 2019

Grünes Wachstum oder Verzicht – wie retten wir die Welt?

By: Kristin Langen

Die natürlichen Ressourcen müssen geschont werden. Darüber herrscht große Einigkeit, jedoch nicht über den Weg dorthin: Die einen plädieren für ein „grünes Wirtschaftswunder“ mit Zukunftstechnologien. Die anderen fordern den Abschied vom Wachstum. Zeitfragen, Beitrag vom 01.10.2019

Interview • 2019

Dr. Stuart Newman: “It Seems to Me That We Are Headed for A Techno-Eugenic Future”

By: Mohsen Abdelmoumen

An interview with Dr. Stuart Newman on the excesses of biotechnology and its ramifications with the world of money. Newman is a professor of cell biology and anatomy at New York Medical College in Valhalla, NY, United States.

Scientific paper • 2019

Global Climate Emergency: after COP24, climate science, urgency, and the threat to humanity

By: Barry Gils, Jamie Morgan

This Special Editorial on the Climate Emergency makes the case that although we are living in the time of Global Climate Emergency we are not yet acting as if we are in an imminent crisis. The authors review key aspects of the institutional response and climate science over the past several decades and the role of the economic system in perpetuating inertia on reduction of greenhouse gas...

Misc • 2019

Defending degrowth is not Malthusian

By: Giorgos Kallis

Self-limitation is not about constraining, but about defining collectively as societies our limits.

Scientific paper • 2019

Alternative and Resistance Movements: The Two Faces of Sustainability Transformations?

By: Léa Sébastien, Jérôme Pelenc, Nicolas Merveille, Grégoire Wallenborn, Julien Milanesi, Julien Vastenaekels, Fany Lajarthe, Jérôme Ballet, Manuel Cervera-Marzal, Aurélie Carimentrand, Bruno Frère

This article addresses the issue of sustainability transformations in Ecological Economics through the lens of social movements, by linking environmental resistance movements and alternative movements. We advocate for a more politicized, social-movement oriented and place-based approach to sustainability transformations, and contribute to the development of a more political and emancipatory...

Scientific paper • 2019

Mapping and Analyzing Ecological Distribution Conflicts in Andean Countries

By: Joan Martinez-Alier, Mario Pérez-Rincón, Julieth Vargas-Morales

The extractive sector is increasingly important in the GDP and export basket of the four Andean countries under study (ACs) (Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia). The analysis of an updated inventory of 296 environmental conflicts in the EJAtlas for these four countries reaches the following conclusions: extractivism causes environmental conflicts related to mining, fossil fuels, hydropower and...

Report • 2019

Decoupling debunked – Evidence and arguments against green growth as a sole strategy for sustainability

By: Jonathan Barth, Timothée Parrique, François Briens, Christian Kerschner, Joachim H. Spangenberg, Alejo Kraus-Polk, Anna Kuokkanen

Is it possible to enjoy both economic growth and environmental sustainability? This question is a matter of fierce political debate between green growth and post-growth advocates. Considering what is at stake, a careful assessment to determine whether the scientific foundations behind this decoupling hypothesis are robust or not is needed. This report reviews the empirical and theoretical...