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We need to break free from the capitalist economy. Degrowth gives us the tools to bend its bars. Economic growth isn’t working, and it cannot be made to work. Offering a counter-history of how economic growth emerged in the context of colonialism, fossil-fueled industrialization, and capitalist modernity, The Future Is Degrowth argues that the ideology of growth conceals the rising inequalities...

Scientific paper • 2022

Exploring degrowth policy proposals: A systematic mapping with thematic synthesis

By: Timothée Parrique, Inês Cosme, Nick Fitzpatrick

Misc • 2022

Promises of growth and sustainability in the bioeconomy

By: Sandra Venghaus, Martin Fritz, Dennis Eversberg, Lilian Pungas

This Special Issue engages critically with the promises of 'green' economic growth within the bioeconomy discourse which as a concept is increasingly marshalled as providing an answer to multiple challenges. The aim is to shed light on the nexus of sustainability, technology and growth within the bioeconomy from multidisciplinary, critical and constructive perspectives. The papers published...

Misc • 2022

National responsibility for ecological breakdown: a fair-shares assessment of resource use, 1970–2017

By: Jason Hickel, Daniel W O’Neill, Andrew L Fanning, Huzaifa Zoomkawala

High-income nations are responsible for 74% of global excess material use, driven primarily by the USA (27%) and the EU-28 high-income countries (25%). China is responsible for 15% of global excess material use, and the rest of the Global South (ie, the low-income and middle-income countries of Latin America and the Caribbean, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia) is responsible for only 8%....

Scientific paper • 2022

Economics for people and planet—moving beyond the neoclassical paradigm

By: Milena Büchs, Lina Brand-Correa, Daniel W O’Neill, Anna Brook, Petra Meier, Yannish Naik

Despite substantial attention within the fields of public and planetary health on developing an economic system that benefits both people's health and the environment, heterodox economic schools of thought have received little attention within these fields. Ecological economics is a school of thought with particular relevance to public and planetary health. In this article, we discuss...

Misc • 2022

A one-off wealth tax for Belgium: Revenue potential, distributional impact, and environmental effects

By: Daniel W. O'Neill, Arthur Apostel

Policymakers and economists are becoming increasingly concerned about wealth inequality. Here we estimate Belgium's wealth distribution — and based on this distribution — the revenue potential, distributional impact, and environmental effect of three proposals for a one-off Belgian wealth tax. Our method consists of (1) estimating the Belgian wealth distribution by extending survey data with a...

Misc • 2022

Welfare systems should be made independent of GDP growth

By: Max Koch

Given environmental pressures and long-term economic stagnation, GDP growth can no longer be considered as method to improve welfare resources. Researchers must investigate the relationship between growth and welfare, finding ways to decouple them, new welfare funding sources less dependant on economic fluctuations, and methods to decrease demand for welfare. Policymakers must realize...

Scientific paper • 2022

Decolonial feminisms and degrowth

By: Mariam Abazeri

Degrowth has become a major topic of interdisciplinary scholarship and practice that critiques the ideology of growth, reimagining social and economic relations and measures of well-being outside economic rationality. While the movement engages with gender politics peripherally in coalition with feminist schools of thought and activist groups, e.g., the feminisms and degrowth alliance, I argue...

Misc • 2022

Visions before models: The ethos of energy modeling in an era of transition

By: Christian Kerschner, Melf-Hinrich Ehlers, Christian Kimmich, Sgouris Sgouridis, Jordi Solé, Martin Černý

Energy-Economy-Environment (E3) models feature prominently in energy policy and climate mitigation planning. Nevertheless, these models have a mixed track record when assessed retrospectively and exhibit biases that can make them counterproductive for prescriptive policy during transition. We argue that in times of energy transitions it is preferable to develop a vision of the desired future...

Misc • 2022

A critique of degrowth: An ecosocialist perspective in the context of a global Green New Deal

By: David Schwartzman

Misc • 2022

Ecologically unequal exchange and uneven development patterns along global value chains

By: Louison Cahen-Fourot, Jeffrey Althouse, Bruno Carballa Smichowski, Cédric Durand, Steven Knauss

The ecologically unequal exchange (EUE) literature has provided ample empirical evidence for asymmetric transfer of material and energy resources from low-income to high-income countries. However, research has not been able to clearly specify the causal mechanisms driving these processes. This paper relates participation in global value chains (GVCs) to development patterns and ecologically...

Scientific paper • 2022

State-civil society relations in Gramsci, Poulantzas and Bourdieu: Strategic implications for the degrowth movement

By: Max Koch

Degrowth thought and strategies suffer from a tension between viewing the state as incapable of initiating transformational change and making a political appeal to it to do precisely this via targeted eco-social policies. While a small number of academic papers has theoretically addressed this tension, there is a lack in research on the strategic implications arising from conceptualizations of...