Library

Position paper • 2022

The flower of transformation: Alternatives for justice, sustainability and equity

This framework on radical alternatives proposes that alternatives are built on the following key elements or spheres, interconnected and overlapping in a ‘Flower of Transformation’: ecological integrity and resilience, including the conservation of nature and natural diversity, maintenance of ecological functions, respect for ecological limits (local to global), and ecological ethics in all...

Scientific paper • 2021

A Green New Deal without growth?

By: Giorgos Kallis, Riccardo Mastini, Jason Hickel

The IPCC warns that in order to keep global warming under 1.5°, global emissions must be cut to zero by 2050. Policymakers and scholars debate how best to decarbonise the energy system, and what socio-economic changes might be necessary. Here we review the strengths, weaknesses, and synergies of two prominent climate change mitigation narratives: the Green New Deal and degrowth. Green New Deal...

Scientific paper • 2021

What structural change is needed for a post-growth economy: A framework of analysis and empirical evidence

By: Lukas Hardt, Peter G. Taylor, Timothy J. Foxon, John Barret

In order to avoid environmental catastrophe we need to move to a post-growth economy that can deliver rapid reductions in environmental impacts and improve well-being, independent of GDP growth. Such a move will entail considerable structural change in the economy, implying different goals and strategies for different economic sectors. So far there are no systematic approaches for...

Scientific paper • 2021

Towards an urban degrowth: Habitability, finity and polycentric autonomism

By: Federico Savini

Abstract: Over the last decade, degrowth has offered a concrete alternative to eco-modernization, projecting a society emancipated from the environmentally destructive imperative of competition and consumption. Urban development is the motor of economic growth; cities are therefore prime sites of intervention for degrowth activists. Nevertheless, the planning processes that drive urban...

Misc • 2021

Sustainable Hedonism. A Thriving Life that Does Not Cost the Earth

By:

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Misc • 2021

Sustainable Hedonism. A Thriving Life that Does Not Cost the Earth

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Scientific paper • 2020

De-growth: Some suggestions from the Simpler Way perspective

By: Ted Trainer

It is argued that there are some important issues which the current de growth literature neglects. The first is the sheer magnitude of the global predicament, which determines not just the insufficiently recognized difficulty of the transition task but also that the goals and means must take particular and largely unrecognized forms. The goal cannot be reform of the existing society; it must...

Scientific paper • 2020

Reviewing the Smart City Vienna Framework Strategy’s Potential as an Eco-Social Policy in the Context of Quality of Work and Socio-Ecological Transformation

By: Jana Brandl, Irina Zielinska

In the face of an increasing awareness of environmental issues and the urgent need to tackle them without shifting the burden onto the most vulnerable social groups, calls for a socio-economic transformation are growing louder. However, there is no consensus on what transformative strategies should look like. Within the German-language literature one can broadly distinguish two transformative...

Scientific paper • 2020

The Virtuous Circle of Sustainable Welfare as a Transformative Policy Idea

By: Tuuli Hirvilammi

Welfare states are highly dependent on the economic growth paradigm. Especially in social democratic welfare states, growth dependence has historically been accompanied by the notion of a virtuous circle, which ensures that social policy measures do not conflict with economic growth. However, this policy idea ignores the environmental impacts that are now challenging human wellbeing and welfare...

Misc • 2020

Beyond the growth gospel

By: Aaron Timms

Aaron Timms shares his impressions of the Degrowth Summer school, and life at Can Decreix in Cerbère. This article appeared in The New Republic, on January 27th 2020

Misc • 2020

The Conservation Revolution: Radical Ideas for Saving Nature Beyond the Anthropocene

By: Robert Fletcher, Bram Büscher

A post-capitalist manifesto for conservation Conservation needs a revolution. This is the only way it can contribute to the drastic transformations needed to come to a truly sustainable model of development. The good news is that conservation is ready for revolution. Heated debates about the rise of the Anthropocene and the current ‘sixth extinction’ crisis demonstrate an urgent need and desire...

Misc • 2020

Tourism, Degrowth, and the COVID-19 Crisis

By: Robert Fletcher, Asunción Blanco-Romero, Macià Blázquez-Salom, Ivan Murray Mas

The COVID-19 crisis shows what degrowth in the global tourism industry could look like. But it would need much more concerted planning to address the social impacts of this transition.

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

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

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...

Misc • 2020

The Simpler Way: Collected Writings of Ted Trainer

By: Ted Trainer, Samuel Alexander, Jonathan Rutherford

Ted Trainer is an Australian scholar-activist who for decades has been defending and practising an 'eco-anarchist' perspective he describes as the Simpler Way. His vision is of a world where self-governing communities live materially simple but sufficient lives, in harmony with ecological limits. This anthology contains some of Trainer's most insightful and provocative essays, covering all...

Scientific paper • 2020

Structure, action and change: a Bourdieusian perspective on the precondition for a degrowth transition

By: Max Koch

A deprioritization of economic growth in policy making in the rich countries will need to be part of a global effort to re-embed economy and society into planetary boundaries. However, societal support for a degrowth transition remains for the time being moderate, and it is not well understood as yet why this is the case. This article argues that Pierre Bourdieu’s sociology can help theorize...

Misc • 2020

Green New Deal(s): A Resource List for Political Ecologists

By: Diego Andreucci, Gustavo García López

The Green New Deal has become a central focus of debates around ecosocialist politics; this list brings together diverse resources to foster critical reflection on its potential and limitations.

Misc • 2020

Degrowth Vienna 2020 - Strategic Approaches: an Overview

By: Nathan Barlow, Panos Petridis, Nilda Inkermann, Katya Chertkovskaya

Panel debate This panel aims to give an overview of different strategic approaches for degrowth. Panelists will discuss frameworks or typologies of strategic approaches to assist the discussions on strategy that place in the following days of the conference. Further, challenges and weaknesses of different strategic approaches, as well as inter-linkages between strategies will be...

Presentation • 2020

Degrowth Vienna 2020 - Via radical social reforms towards a counter-hegemony?

By: Ulrich Schachtschneider, Frank Adler, Jana Flemming, Barbara Sennholz-Weinhard, Ellen Ehmke

Special session How could counter-hegemony become realistic, which is necessary for a democratic transition? Our thesis: We need a bundle of “non-reformist reforms” (Gorz) which tie on everyday social needs and problems (time pressure, fears of future or descent, deficient recognition etc.) and propose alternative ways of their satisfaction or solution. The chances and barriers of this...