Library

Scientific paper • 2020

Looking for the inverted pyramid: an application using input-output networks

By: Louison Cahen-Fourot, Emanuele Campiglio, Elena Dawkins, Antoine Godin, Eric Kemp-Benedict

Herman Daly's view of the economy as an “inverted pyramid” sitting on top of essential raw material inputs is compelling, but not readily visible in monetary data, as the contribution of primary sectors to value added is typically low. This article argues that “forward linkages”, a classical development theory concept capturing the relevance of a sector for downstream activities, is an...

Art contribution • 2020

Life within Planetary Boundaries, Down to Earth (Part 1)

By: Maja Lindström

Original title: Leva inom planetgränserna, Ett jordat liv. The film is based on interviews with author and journalist David Jonstad and agronomist and research leader Johanna Björklund, who guides us away from the utopia of eco-modernism: that with new technology we could live on as today, but in a sustainable way. Together they explain how we can "democratize survival" through sharing the...

Art contribution • 2020

Life within Planetary Boundaries, Agroforestry (Part 2)

By: Maja Lindström

Original title: Leva inom planetgränserna del 2, Agroforestry How can we meet our basic human needs, while improving the health of the ecosystems that we are part of? In this part 2 of the film, some of Sweden's and England's leading pioneers in Agroforestry explain how we, through our food production, can play a key role in healing ecosystems, creating food security, new jobs and an improved...

Misc • 2020

Energy and the Green New Deal. The complex challenge of powering societies

By: Tim Crownshaw

"In place of the GND, we might be better served by scaling back our ambition and embracing a Green New Direction. This alternative could preserve many of the same essential goals, but would need to forgo the use of enticing promises to motivate action and instead do the hard work of building solidarity and commitment to collectively face an energy future which will be more complex, more...

Scientific paper • 2020

Blue degrowth and the politics of the sea: rethinking the blue economy

By: I. Ertör, M. Hadjimichael

Editorial to the Special Issue in Sustainability Science (15, 2020)

Scientific paper • 2020

The Blue Fix: What's driving blue growth?

By: Zoe W. Brent, Mads Barbesgaard, Castren Pedersen

This article explores the politics behind the promise of ‘blue growth’. Reframing it as a ‘blue fix’, we argue that the blue growth discourse facilitates new opportunities for capital accumulation, while claiming that this accumulation is compatible with social and ecological aims as well. The blue fix is made up of three underlying sub-fixes. First of all, the conservation fix quenches the...

Scientific paper • 2020

Contesting growth in marine capture fisheries: the case of small-scale fishing cooperatives in Istanbul

By: Pinar Ertör-Akyazi

The expansion of industrial fishing via technological advancements and heavy subsidies in the Global North has been a significant factor leading to the current global fishery crisis. The growth of the industrial fleet led to an initial increase in global catches from the 1950s to the 1990s; yet, today, several marine fish stocks are harvested at unsustainable rates, and catches are...

Scientific paper • 2020

The paradox of sustainable tuna fisheries in the Western Indian Ocean: between visions of blue economy and realities of accumulation

By: Mialy Andriamahefazafy, Megan Bailey, Hussain Sinan, Christian A. Kull

For many coastal nations in the Western Indian Ocean, and notably the islands of Madagascar, Mauritius, and Seychelles, the tuna fishery is considered one of the main pillars of economic development, providing jobs and substantial revenues while ensuring food security. However, the fishery is also an illustration of the paradox behind the idea of the blue economy, where economic growth and...

Scientific paper • 2020

‘Re-grabbing’ marine resources: a blue degrowth agenda for the resurgence of small-scale fisheries in Malta

By: Alicia Said, Douglas MacMillan

The era of blue growth, underpinned by neoliberal policy discourses, has been pervasive in the promulgation of European marine governance and policies in the past decade, with little or no regard for the sustainability of small-scale fisheries. In this paper, we engage with theoretical and empirical observations to reflect on how the promise of sustainable economic growth arising from the...

Scientific paper • 2020

Performing ‘blue degrowth’: critiquing seabed mining in Papua New Guinea through creative practice

By: John Childs

Scripted as a sustainable alternative to terrestrial mining, the licence for the world’s first commercial deep-sea mining (DSM) site was issued in Papua New Guinea in 2011 to extract copper and gold from a deposit situated 1600 m below the surface of the Bismarck Sea. Whilst DSM’s proponents locate it as emergent part of a blue economy narrative, its critics point to the ecological and...

Scientific paper • 2020

Lessons for blue degrowth from Namibia’s emerging blue economy

By: Rosanna Carver

Globally there has been recognition that there is little consensus attributed to the definition of the blue economy. However, despite this acknowledgement, the blue economy is championed for its development potential by the African Union and subsequently, several African states. Having formalised the agenda in its fifth National Development Plan Namibia is working to implement a governance...

Scientific paper • 2020

Designing sustainability in blues: the limits of technospatial growth imaginaries

By: Duygu Kaşdoğan

In the midst of a global food crisis, the late 2000s saw tensions between rising food prices and demands for biofuels coalesce into a “food versus fuel” debate. In response to ensuing public outcries, governmental agencies, and researchers across the globe began mobilizing around alternative biofuel feedstock. Among these materials, algae emerged as the most “hopeful” sustainable alternative...

Scientific paper • 2020

The limits of transport decarbonization under the current growth paradigm

By: Iñigo Capellán-Pérez, Margarita Mediavilla, Ignacio de Blas, Carmen Duce

Achieving ambitious reductions in greenhouse gases (GHG) is particularly challenging for transportation due to the technical limitations of replacing oil-based fuels. We apply the integrated assessment model MEDEAS-World to study four global transportation decarbonization strategies for 2050. The results show that a massive replacement of oil-fueled individual vehicles to electric ones alone...

Scientific paper • 2020

Differences in carbon emissions reduction between countries pursuing renewable electricity versus nuclear power

By: Andy Stirling, Benjamin K. Sovacool, Patrick Schmid, Goetz Walter, Gordon MacKerron

Two of the most widely emphasized contenders for carbon emissions reduction in the electricity sector are nuclear power and renewable energy. While scenarios regularly question the potential impacts of adoption of various technology mixes in the future, it is less clear which technology has been associated with greater historical emission reductions. Here, we use multiple regression analyses...

Misc • 2020

The Green New Old Deal: a new industrial policy when we need a de-industrial policy

By: Bernard Marszalek

The most popular poster for the Green New Deals reveals startling assumptions...

Misc • 2020

Why degrowth is the worst idea on the planet

By: Andrew McAfee

Despite still growing over the last 50 years, we already figured out how to reduce our impact on Earth. So let's do that.

Misc • 2020

A response to McAfee: no, the "environmental Kuznets curve" won't save us

By: Jason Hickel

Jason Hickel's response to Andrew McAfee's piece for Wired ('Why degrowth is the worst idea on the planet')

Misc • 2020

Degrowth Vienna 2020 - Territories, Resources and Care Work Feminist Perspectives on Transformation

By: Wendy Harcourt, Christa Wichterich, Camila Nobrega, Anna Katharina Voss, Rosa de Nooijer, Samantha Hargreaves

Special session (discussion following 3 presentations) The Corona crisis has unprecedentedly highlighted the topic of this session: care work got visibility, its systemic relevance gained public recognition as never before. The appalling shortage of health care workers and the deficiencies in public health systems due to restructuring towards profit orientation and cost saving measures in the...

Presentation • 2020

Degrowth Vienna 2020 - Beyond the Dam - Feminist perspectives on the social-environmental conflicts around the hydropower plant São Luis do Tapajós: shifting narratives

By: Camila Nobrega

Presentation [part of the standard session "Territories, Resources and Care Work Feminist Perspectives on Transformation"] The Corona crisis has unprecedentedly highlighted the topic of this session: care work got visibility, its systemic relevance gained public recognition as never before. The appalling shortage of health care workers and the deficiencies in public health systems due to...

Presentation • 2020

Degrowth Vienna 2020 – WoMin - African women unite against destructive resource extraction

By: Samantha Hargreaves

Presentation [part of the standard session "Territories, Resources and Care Work Feminist Perspectives on Transformation"] The Corona crisis has unprecedentedly highlighted the topic of this session: care work got visibility, its systemic relevance gained public recognition as never before. The appalling shortage of health care workers and the deficiencies in public health systems due to...