The Dynamics of Ecological Convergence to an Economic Model of Degrowth through Coherence Wavelet Analysis

Abstract

From the turn of the 1980s, almost unanimity "on an international scale" was acquired on the idea that humanity must urgently rethink a new economic model, more humane and fairer. Thus, as an alternative to neoclassical growth models, the United Nations first began to favor the economic philosophy of sustainable development before it was criticized by giving way to a new concept developed since 2008, namely "Degrowth". ". It is about reducing growth while improving the ethical aspects that manifest themselves in a fairer and more equitable distribution. According to the followers of these models of Degrowth, these make it possible to reach higher levels of Well-Being where the economic rhymes with the ecological while trying to design a social model respectful of human values and more particularly of justice and fairness. Thus, the main question of this article revolves around the following idea: is there currently a collective or individual trend, either it, adopted by countries or the international community to converge towards models of Degrowth? To answer this problem, we tried to use Wavelet analysis (which is one of the most important methods in the analysis of economic cycles because it allows to divide the data into different frequency components and to treat each category according to analyzes and resolutions adapted to their scales) by trying to know the co-movement between the growth rate, CO2 emissions, exports, oil rents and oil consumption for four countries, the Kingdom Saudi Arabia (Saudi Arabia), India, denmark and Norway, from 1990 to 2018 (CO2 and exports), from 1990 to 2019 (oil rents) and from 1990 to 2020 (CO2 emissions and oil consumption). The main results of this work are threefold: First, Saudi Arabia seems to be converging towards a model of sustainability and sustainable development, despite its enormous oil resources. Second, the Indian model ends up in a tricky situation, as it may not be able to replace its current growth model with one centered on degrowth. Third, the Scandinavian countries are the best representatives of how this model could work.