Library

Scientific paper • 2019

Do Beyond GDP indicators initiated by powerful stakeholders have a transformative potential?

The last four decades have seen a proliferation of new indicators aiming to challenge GDP. But do they really produce new outcomes? By observing the rankings they produce (compared to those produced by GDP), the potential of 6 Beyond GDP indicators to suggest a way towards a more social and ecological society has been examined. The conclusion is that rankings from indicators initiated by...

Scientific paper • 2019

Estimation of global final-stage energy-return-on-investment for fossil fuels with comparison to renewable energy sources

By: Lukas Hardt, Paul Brockway, Anne Owen, Lina Brand-Correa

Under many scenarios, fossil fuels are projected to remain the dominant energy source until at least 2050. However, harder-to-reach fossil fuels require more energy to extract and, hence, are coming at an increasing ‘energy cost’. Associated declines in fossil fuel energy-return-on-investment ratios at first appear of little concern, given that published estimates for oil, coal and gas are...

Scientific paper • 2019

First Nations sovereignty, Environmental Justice, and Degrowth in Northwest BC, Canada

By: Karl Frost

Abstract: Environmental Injustice has been intrinsic to Canadian extractivism, with First Nations displaced from their traditional territories and their cultural identity suppressed through an explicit policy of cultural genocide to make way for colonial extractivist practices. Likewise, this extractivism has long been legitimized in Canada through a rhetoric of economic growth. This paper...

Misc • 2019

Efficiency in production - A path for degrowth

By: Alberto Huerta

A material efficiency strategy, achieved through investment in labour, can potentially generate the ecological benefits and avoid its rebound effects. This “type” of efficiency constitutes a fundamentally anti-capitalistic behaviour, while at the same time allowing the survival of an enterprise in a capitalistic system. Petridis argued, that practices and institutions grounded in the current...

Scientific paper • 2019

Decolonizing degrowth in the post-development convergence: Questions, experiences, and proposals from two Indigenous territories

By: Padini Nirmal, Dianne Rocheleau

Abstract: A growing coalition of degrowth scholar-activist(s) seeks to transform degrowth into an interdisciplinary and international field bridging a rising network of social and environmental justice movements. We offer constructive decolonial and feminist critiques to foster their productive alliances with multiple feminisms, Indigenous, post-development and pluriversal thought and design...

Misc • 2019

Prioritising well-being on a finite planet: A research manifesto

By: Joëlle Saey-Volckrick

The Well Planet Manifesto is an invitation to undertake an agenda of research that is closer to the state of emergency in which we find ourselves. It encourages researchers, activists, policy-makers and member of civil society to act according to this emergency. Those are invited to connect to one another by signing up the

Misc • 2019

Challenging global corporate power

By: James Shultz

International corporations are decimating nature, destroying lives and manipulating opinion. Here’s how to stop them..

Scientific paper • 2019

Keeping multiple antennae up: Coevolutionary foundations for methodological pluralism

By: Giorgos Kallis, Richard B. Norgaard, Jessica J. Goddard

Methodological pluralism has been a tenet of ecological economics since the journal's inauguration. Pluralism has fostered collaboration and forged new insights across disciplines. However, to counter the hegemonic voice of mainstream economics and inspire action on climate change and inequality, ecological economics requires coherence to produce meaningful knowledge from diverse research...

Scientific paper • 2019

Who promotes sustainability? Five theses on the relationships between the degrowth and the environmental justice movements

By: Bengi Akbulut, Federico Demaria, Julien-François Gerber, Joan Martínez-Alier

Environmental destructions, overconsumption and overdevelopment are felt by an increasing number of people. Voices for ‘prosperity without growth’ have strengthened and environmental conflicts are on the rise worldwide. This introduction to the special issue explores the possibility of an alliance between post-growth and ecological distribution conflicts (EDCs). It argues that among the...

Misc • 2019

Climate breakdown, capitalism and democracy

By: Julia Steinberger

When the BBC asked me if I would participate in a debate panel on climate change, capitalism and democracy, I first panicked and then said yes. All I really wanted to do this week was finish up and (re)submit some research I started a long time ago. This research shows that, despite their massive growth, energy

Scientific paper • 2019

Overcoming the process-structure divide in conceptions of Social-Ecological Transformation: Assessing the transformative character and impact of change processes

By: Stefanie Sievers-Glotzbach, Julia Tschersich

A fundamental transformation towards sustainability in face of complex social-ecological challenges needs to initiate deep changes of those incumbent system structures that support unsustainable trajectories, while at the same time encouraging a diversity of alternative practices. A review of transformation approaches towards sustainability shows that these do not (sufficiently) link processes...

Scientific paper • 2019

Watercooler Democracy: Rumors and Transparency in a Cooperative Workplace

By: Katherine Sobering

Abstract: This article examines how rumors impact democracy and transparency in a cooperative workplace. Although literature on rumors generally analyzes them as negative to workplace culture, the author argues that rumors constitute a critical aspect of democratic participation. Drawing on long-term ethnographic fieldwork in a worker-recuperated business in Argentina, the author shows how...

Misc • 2019

Rojava: building an ecological society

By: Make Rojava Green Again group

In Rojava (Northern Syria), in the midst of a raging war, a society based on the values of women’s liberation, radical democracy, and ecology is being built. In early 2018, we, people from across the world, launched the campaign ‘Make Rojava Green Again’ in co-operation with the newly-established local autonomies to help find solutions to

Scientific paper • 2019

Disarray in global governance and climate change chaos

By: George Martine, Jose Eustaquio Alves

Scientists warn that human activity in the Anthropocene is causing the transgression of several planetary boundaries. The population/environment/development equation has become insoluble. This paper reviews the trajectory of climate change and discusses the shortcomings of ongoing efforts to address it. It analyzes the current crisis in global governance, fostered by widespread disenchantment...

Scientific paper • 2019

Degrowth and postcapitalism: transformative geographies beyond accumulation and growth

By: Benedikt Schmid

In the light of social and environmental unsustainability and injustice, scholars from geography and neighboring disciplines question incumbent socioeconomic trajectories. Empirical evidence renders the continuing attachment to a growth‐based economy and its reconcilability with ecological limits increasingly implausible. Instead, a lively transdisciplinary debate explores alternative forms of...

Misc • 2019

Do we want to advance towards the fourth industrial revolution?

By: Paz Serra Portilla

The arrival of smartphones, self-driving cars and the Cloud are all symptomatic of a profound shift that is re-writing modern society from within: the Fourth Industrial Revolution. New technologies claim to provide answers to a host of problems, but is technology unbound always a force for good? In the first of a three-part series on

Scientific paper • 2019

Zero carbon sooner: the case for an early zero carbon target for the UK

By: Tim Jackson

This briefing paper addresses the question of when the UK should aim for zero (or net zero) carbon emissions. Starting from the global carbon budget which would allow the world an estimated 66% chance of limiting climate warming to 1.5oC, the paper derives a carbon budget for the UK of 2.5 GtCO2. The briefing then analyses a variety of emission pathways and target dates in terms of their...

Scientific paper • 2019

Geographies of degrowth: Nowtopias, resurgences and the decolonization of imaginaries and places

By: Giorgos Kallis, Federico Demaria, Karen Bakker

Abstract: The term ‘décroissance’ (degrowth) signifies a process of political and social transformation that reduces a society's material and energy use while improving the quality of life. Degrowth calls for decolonizing imaginaries and institutions from – in Ursula Le Guin's words – ‘a one-way future consisting only of growth’. Recent scholarship has focused on the ecological and social...

Scientific paper • 2019

The nowtopia of the riverbank: Elder environmental activism

By: Mary Gearey, Neil Ravenscroft

Abstract: Degrowth imaginaries offer alternative ways of envisioning future societies. Those, predominantly working age and working class people, seeking to purposefully enact degrowth in the here and now are termed ‘nowtopians’. Based on empirical work undertaken along the River Adur valley in West Sussex, UK, this paper argues that dynamic examples of nowtopian initiatives can develop from...

Scientific paper • 2019

Crisis, liminality and the decolonization of the social imaginary

By: Angelos Varvarousis

Abstract: The decolonization of the social imaginary has been proposed as an important dimension of the transition towards a degrowth society. However, although omnipresent in the degrowth literature, the terms “social imaginary” and “social imaginary significations” have not been adequately explained. This creates a level of mystification that limits the analytical value of the degrowth...