Degrowth: An Introduction
In 1996 Wackernagel and Rees observed that “in today’s materialistic, growth-bound world, the politically acceptable is ecologically disastrous, while the ecologically necessary is politically impossible”. I expand this claim to include a social justice component — the ecologically necessary and socially desirable remain politically elusive. This blog series takes a deeper dive into this impasse. In the first six articles I make the case for degrowth, a pathway of societal transformation which I see as ecologically necessary and socially desirable but which currently falls outside the realms of the politically possible. The final six articles then offer some reflections over how a degrowth transition might be politically realised.
Throughout the world we are experiencing what I see as a general political discourse bereft of alternatives to a growth-oriented economy. Nowhere is this more true than my place of birth, Australia. As the 2019 Federal Election made clear, the unrelenting commitment to economic growth as a central policy objective appears to be deeply embedded across the political spectrum. Worryingly, this universal and enduring commitment to growth persists in a context of increasing ecological and social breakdown.
In the most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report the IPCC warned that pathways limiting global warming to 1.5°C will be exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, to achieve without rapid societal transformation. This stark prognosis is compounded by findings from Steffen et al. (2015) that show four of the nine critical planetary boundaries have already been exceeded by human activity. Such warnings of ecological collapse come at a time when almost half the global population is living with less than $5 a day, whilst the richest 26 individuals hold more wealth than the poorest half of humanity. I believe that the ideas encompassed in the vision of degrowth not only represent the most coherent alternative to the centrist status-quo of neoliberalism, but also represent the most feasible response to these interrelated ecological and social crises. In other words, degrowth offers one of the most comprehensive macroeconomic frameworks for meeting the needs of all within the ecological means of our planetary home.
In this first article I will unpack the vision which lies behind the label of degrowth, whilst also clarifying some of the misconceptions that exist around the term. The following articles are structured as such: article 2 sets the broader context by providing a brief analysis of the origins of growth. Article 3 explores the growth imperative of capitalist economies. Articles 4, 5 and 6 present a three-pillared case for degrowth: that it is ecologically necessary, socially desirable and that there are external and internal limits to infinite economic growth.
I then turn towards exploring potential pathways for the realisation of degrowth, beginning by presenting a series of policy proposals through which a degrowth transition might be facilitated (article 7). Social mobilisation (article 8), grassroot practices and institutional reforms (article 9), shifts in consciousness (article 10) and political framing and strategy (article 11) are identified as four equally necessary and mutually reinforcing engines of change in the political realisation of degrowth. The blog series is brought to a close by offering some final reflections on the feasibility of the changes envisioned in a degrowth transition being realised (article 12). With all that said, let’s talk degrowth!
What is Degrowth?
Whilst degrowth is a term that expresses an aspiration that cannot be pinned to a single definition, it is perhaps best understood as a democratic and redistributive downscaling of production and consumption as a means of reducing the overall material and energy throughput of the global economy. Here, material and energy throughput refers to the total amount of raw materials and energy that is utilised during the economic process, from extraction, production and consumption to waste
The downscaling of production and consumption envisioned in a degrowth transition is not one of continual descent. Rather, degrowth can be seen as a desired trajectory towards steady-state economies, where societies operate within the reproductive limits of ecosystems whilst ensuring social justice and well-being for all. In this sense, degrowth is not the primary objective, but rather the outcome of a wider transition towards a more socially just, environmentally sustainable and democratically participative form of political, social and economic organisation.
The French translation of degrowth, décroissance, entails a two-fold meaning; challenging in the first instance the physical reality of growth, croissance, but also our belief in it, croire. Degrowth is thus not only an appeal for the scaling-down of energy and resource use, but is also a challenge to the dominant role of market-based relations in society. Put differently, degrowth is a call for what Serge Latouche (2009) terms a ‘decolonisation’ of the social imaginary from the growth paradigm.
Giorgos Kallis, one of the foremost thinkers on degrowth, identifies nine core elements of the degrowth vision: an end to exploitation, direct democracy, more localised production, sharing and the reclaiming of the commons, the shifting of resources away from material goods and towards the provision of relational goods, unproductive and collective expenditures, a revaluing and redistributing of care, a diverse economy and the decommodification of value, land and labour. Degrowth is therefore not simply about doing less of the same, but is instead principally concerned with transitioning to a society with fundamentally different structures and functions.
It is here we encounter the core misconception surrounding degrowth, that it equates to negative GDP growth or voluntary recession. Thankfully, there is a fundamental difference between degrowth and recession. Whereas a recession is typified by a shrinking of the existing economy, one that demands growth for its stability, degrowth signifies a shift to a radically different economy altogether, one whose stability is not dependent on growth in the first instance.
From a degrowth perspective, a shrinking of GDP is not the goal, but rather a likely by-product of a wider ecological and social transition characterised by a reduction in material and energy throughput. While some sectors — renewable energy, local and organic agriculture, medical care and education to name a few — are likely to flourish in such a transition, the aggregate result is anticipated to be an overall decline in the scale of the economy.
It is also crucial to note that degrowth is categorically different to a mere greening of current technologies and infrastructures. As is explored in article 4, the feasibility of green growth - the idea that growth can be absolutely decoupled from its negative ecological consequences and hence continue unimpeded - is almost universally doubted across the degrowth movement.
A further point of confusion and criticism concerns degrowth’s relevance beyond the high-consuming, high-income countries of the Global North. Degrowth is certainly a process that must begin in high-income, high-consuming countries, which are responsible for the large majority of historical emissions. Growth is still needed for those groups throughout the world whose basic needs are not presently being satisfied. A trajectory of degrowth in the Global North is therefore crucial to liberating the environmental space for rising incomes in the Global South.
However, as scholars from the Global South note (Gudynas 2015; Escobar 2015), the purpose of degrowth in high-income countries should not be to simply enable lower-income countries to follow a similar path of growth-based development. Instead, degrowth in the Global North should be pursued to open the conceptual space and autonomy for other countries to establish their own alternative visions of the good life. Degrowth can therefore be seen to be a concept with universal relevance, though perhaps not immediate universal applicability. Having introduced the concept of degrowth, the next article takes a step back into the broader context by exploring the origins and history of growth.
References used for this article:
Büchs, M. & Koch, M. (2019) ‘Challenges for the degrowth transition: The debate about wellbeing’. Futures, 105, pp. 155–165
Cattaneo, C. & Gavalda, M. (2010) ‘The experience of rur-ban squats in Collserola, Barcelona: What Kind of degrowth?’. Journal of Cleaner Production, 18 (6), pp. 581–589.
D’Alisa, G., Demaria, F. & Kallis, G. (2015) Degrowth: A Vocabulary For A New Era. London, Routledge.
DeMaria, F., Schneider, F., Sekulova., F. & Martinez-Alier, J. (2013) ‘What is Degrowth?: From an Activist Slogan to a Social Movement’. Environmental Values, 22 (2), pp. 191–215.
Escobar, A. (2015a) ‘Degrowth, post-development, and transitions: a preliminary conversation’. Sustainability Science, 10 (3), pp. 451–462.
Farley, J. (2015) ‘Steady State Economics’. In: D’Alisa, G., Demaria, F. & Kallis, G (eds). Degrowth: A Vocabulary For A New Era [Kindle version]. London, Routledge, pp. 208–218.
Gudynas, E. (2015) ‘Buen Vivir’. In: D’Alisa, G., Demaria, F. & Kallis, G (eds). Degrowth: A Vocabulary For A New Era [Kindle version]. London, Routledge, pp. 627–637.
Hickel, J. (2019) ‘Degrowth: A Theory of Radical Abundance’. Real-World Economics Review, 87, pp. 54–69.
IPCC. (2018) Global Warming of 1.5°C — Summary for Policymakers. Switzerland, IPCC. Available at: https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/sites/2/2019/06/SR15_Full_Report_Low_Res.pdf (Accessed 25 May 2019).
Kallis, G. (2018) Degrowth. Newcastle, Agenda Publishing.
Klein, N. (2014) This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate. New York, Simon & Schuster.
Latouche, S. (2009) Farewell to Growth. Cambridge, Polity Press.
O’Neill, D. W. (2012) ‘Measuring progress in the degrowth transition to a steady state economy’. Ecological Economics, 84, pp. 221–231.
Oxfam. (2019) Public good or private wealth?. Available at: https://oxfamilibrary.openrepository.com/bitstream/handle/10546/620599/bp-public-good-or-private-wealth-210119-en.pdf (Accessed 25 May 2019).
Seaton, L. (2019) ‘Green Questions’. New Left Review, 115, pp. 105–129.
Steffen, W., Richardson, K., Rockström, J., Cornell, S. E., Fetzer, I., Bennet, E. M. (…) (2015) ‘Planetary boundaries: Guiding human development on a changing planet’. Science, 347 (6223), pp. 736–748.
Wackernagel, M. & Rees, W. (1996) Our Ecological Footprint: Reducing Human Impact on the Earth. British Columbia, New Society Publishers.
