Degrowth Research Articles

Geographical Approaches to Understanding Urban Decline: From Evolutionary Theory to Political Economy…and Back?

AbstractThis article surveys selected theories of urban growth and decline, from an American shrinking cities perspective, on the backdrop of three key themes. First, urban change is context‐dependent. Second, urban (de)growth processes are multiscalar. And third, growth and shrinkage are not part of a dichotomy but are different realizations of similar underlying processes. Because the relationships between globalization and regional‐ and city‐level urban restructuring tendencies are relatively established in the shrinking cities literature, the present article focuses primarily on sublocal theoretical approaches. This is intended to uncover insights about the mechanisms and bottom‐up constraints that influence the direction of urban change. The review leads to a proposed framework for understanding how urban neighborhoods (do not) respond to internal or external pressures to change. Notably, the framework is partially derived from efforts that seek to re‐ground the study of urban change in evolutionary theory, which in some ways represents a theoretical turn back toward the earliest (ecological) school of thought on urban decline. However, while earlier evolutionary approaches were acontextual and deterministic, the proposed framework emphasizes that analyzing urban change demands attention to multiple spatial scales and location‐specific features, particularly the distribution of social capital within a city.

Degrowth, postdevelopment, and transitions: a preliminary conversation

This paper seeks to initiate a conversation between degrowth (DG) and postdevelopment (PD) frameworks by placing them within the larger field of discourses for ecological and civilizational transitions and by bridging proposals emerging from the North with those from the Global South. Not only can this dialogue, it is argued, be mutually enriching for both movements but perhaps essential for an effective politics of transformation. Part I of the paper presents a brief panorama of transition discourses (TDs), particularly in the North. Part II discusses succinctly the main postdevelopment trends in Latin America, including Buen Vivir (BV), the rights of Nature, civilizational crisis, and the concept of ‘alternatives to development’. With these elements in hand, Part III attempts a preliminary dialogue between degrowth and postdevelopment, identifying points of convergence and tension; whereas they originate in somewhat different intellectual traditions and operate through different epistemic and political practices, they share closely connected imaginaries, goals, and predicaments, chiefly, a radical questioning of the core assumption of growth and economism, a vision of alternative worlds based on ecological integrity and social justice, and the ever present risk of cooptation. Important tensions remain, for instance, around the critique of modernity and the scope for dematerialization. This part ends by outlining areas of research on PD that could be of particular interest to degrowth scholars. The conclusion, finally, envisions the dissolution of the very binary of ‘Global North’ and ‘Global South’ by adopting a pluriversal perspective.

Conjuring clean energy: exposing green assumptions in media and academia

Purpose– This research presents uncomfortable questions about the viability of alternative energy technologies, which arise during economic contraction and degrowth but are scarcely addressed within media and academia.Design/methodology/approach– The author identifies and graphically illustrates differences between media expectations for renewable energyproductionversus energyreductionstrategies. The author contrasts green energy expectations with material factors to develop unasked questions about potential: urban myths (e.g. solar cells are made from sand), assumptions (e.g. alternative energy is of comparable quality to fossil fuel energy and can offset its use), strategic ignorance (e.g. solar cost drops reflect Moore’s law), and trained incapacity (e.g. solar and wind energy is low- or zero-carbon).Findings– Compared to energyreductioncoverage, journalists cover energyproductionusing 1) more character-driven storytelling, 2) about twice the promising language, and 3) far more references to climate change and energy independence. These observations help loosely illustrate a pervasive energy production ethos, a reflexive network including behaviors, symbols, expectations, and material conditions.Social implications– Fascination with alternative energy may serve as a form of techno-denial to avoid facing the uncertain but inevitable end of growth in consumption and population on our finite planet.Originality/value– This paper offers journalists, policymakers, researchers, and students new, unasked, questions regarding the expectation that alternative energy technologies can replace fossil fuel. For instance, if wind and sunlight are free, why are wind and solar energies so expensive, requiring billions in subsidies? Where do solar cell and wind turbine costs ultimately arise, if not from fossil fuels (via labor, materials, etc.)?

The no-nonsense guide to degrowth and sustainability

The no-nonsense guide to degrowth and sustainability

The ‘Environmentalism of the Poor’ revisited: Territory and place in disconnected glocal struggles

In 2002, the year it was published, The Environmentalism of the Poor was one of the first books examining in a multidisciplinary perspective three parallel environmental movements around the world. Eleven years later, we re-examine these movements – the Cult of Wilderness, the Gospel of Eco-Efficiency and the Mantra of Environmental Justice, – focusing on the increased visibility of struggles representing Environmental Justice and The Environmentalism of the Poor. Even if they are often disconnected from an organizational standpoint, glocal manifestations of resistance have emerged since the 1990s. Today, environmental movements assert common values related to place, identity, and culture. Activists' concepts such as ecological debt, environmental justice, environmental liabilities, land grabbing, environmental gentrification, corporate accountability, climate justice, food sovereignty, or economic degrowth are the keywords of the networks of the global Environmental Justice movement. At the same time, such concepts support the rural and urban movements that remake place for marginalized groups, re-assert traditional practices, and protect territory from contamination, land appropriation, and real estate speculation. Some possibilities exist for cooperation between Environmental Justice and the other varieties of environmentalism. Here, comparative research can help unravel the use of valuation languages different from “green” economic growth or sustainable development.

Ethics and Finance in Times of Crisis

In a challenging moment within the socioeconomic history – as with the one we are experiencing nowadays – the process of reconciling opposing political tendencies is controversial within the context of framing technical measures upon which the current economic recession may be overcome. Indeed, indignation and dissatisfaction, instead of rationality and efficiency, may become an incentive for utopian theories based upon the illusion of a sort of ‘participatory-democracy-driven model’ inspired by the ‘economic degrowth theory’. According to the outlined framework, the analysis of ‘ethics in finance’ may open the avenue to hope! In fact, ethics’ values become key features for an assessment of the principles of equality, equity and solidarity which lead to the implementation of normative and economic reforms. Thus, substantial welfare reforms may be achievable; consequently, there is the need to establish a climate of trust and harmony, that should characterise each civilisation. In light of the aforementioned concerns, I consider that ‘ethics in finance’, in the current historical moment, is a debated concept. Nevertheless, any attempt to define that concept marks a useful step forward to the improvement of ‘canons of social conduct’; in other words, it may be helpful to identify incorrect behaviours or financial distortions. Ethics allows us to dream and hope for a positively reformed future! In fact, it teaches us that it is possible to reform our reality and to say ‘no’ to speculation and oppression; in fact, in light of a renewed life environment for which we have to fight, ethics leads us to trust ‘non-violence’ which may solve desperate circumstances and eliminate any form of hostility.

Institutional change for strong sustainable consumption: sustainable consumption and the degrowth economy

The environmental space concept illustrates that socially unsustainable underconsumption must be overcome and environmentally unsustainable overconsumption must be phased out. The planetary boundaries help to quantify the “ceiling,” while the social protection floor concept operationalizes the linea de dignidad, the minimal conditions for a dignified life. In order for Western societies to respect these limits, significant institutional change is needed with respect to both orientations and mechanisms. For the ceiling, this article suggests a shift to an orientation of “better but less” for affluent groups, and toward “enough and better” for those still living in poverty. The corresponding mechanisms include a redistribution of income and wealth, a cap on income, an unconditional minimum income, and a strengthening of democracy. The choice of instruments has to take into account that consumption is to a large degree not an individual but a social act and to employ informational, financial, and legal measures that overcome the preference of decision makers for market instruments. Implementing these changes would alter the fabric of our societies. Important first steps can be taken here and now.

David de la Croix, Fertility, Education, Growth, and Sustainability

David de la Croix, <i>Fertility, Education, Growth, and Sustainability</i>

Translating Degrowth into Contemporary Policy Challenges: A Symbiotic Social Transformation Strategy

Wright poses us the challenge of building a world of equality while working in the world of today. This article addresses the challenge of transitioning to a degrowth economy and eco-socialism which focuses on distribution over production and which requires a strong ethic of equality at the heart of society. Degrowth aims to address over-consumption by addressing real need, reducing wants, ensuring greater distributive equality and ultimately by suppressing production. However, the detailed mechanisms of how a steady-state economics can provide a quality of life and employment, eliminate poverty and promote an egalitarian society require immense work to flesh out. This article points in the desired direction of travel and outlines some initial steps. It fleshes out two key obstacles to degrowth, the issue of employment and the impact for revenue and expenditure arising from a move towards degrowth. It points to the relevance of degrowth arguments for feminist and democratic movements and how the degrowth strategy offers potential for new political coalitions. It concludes by reflecting on the limitations of symbiotic transformative strategies and the need for a language capable of imagining and articulating real utopias.

The Failed Growth Economy, Stagnation, and Biophysical Limits to Growth

There are many indications that the era of economic degrowth has already begun, despite conscious policy efforts to maintain it. This indicated by a secular decline in the rate of GDP growth for essentially all OECD countries and many developing ones over the second half of the twentieth century. I believe that this phenomenon has occurred because the mature economies of the world have confronted a set of internal, or social, limits driven by the internal dynamics of capital accumulation and by approaching biophysical limits. These patterns are likely to continue. The purpose of this paper is to synthesize the literature on internal limits to capital accumulation and economic growth with the emerging literature on biophysical limits. Growth-oriented mainstream economics is incapable of analyzing adequately the historical conjuncture of the internal and biophysical limits. A study of heterodox political economy and institutional economics is needed in order to understand the transition to sustainability. The paper surveys prior theories of the internal limits to economic growth and synthesizes them with future potential limits imposed by the decrease in availability and increase in cost of high-quality resources, climate change and peak oil.

Could working less reduce pressures on the environment? A cross-national panel analysis of OECD countries, 1970–2007

Many scholars and activists are now advocating a program of economic degrowth for developed countries in order to mitigate demands on the global environment. An increasingly prominent idea is that developed countries could achieve slower or zero economic growth in a socially sustainable way by reducing working hours. Research suggests that reduced working hours could contribute to sustainability by decreasing the scale of economic output and the environmental intensity of consumption patterns. Here, we investigate the effect of working hours on three environmental indicators: ecological footprint, carbon footprint, and carbon dioxide emissions. Using data for 1970–2007, our panel analysis of 29 high-income OECD countries indicates that working hours are significantly associated with greater environmental pressures and thus may be an attractive target for policies promoting environmental sustainability.

Lose Less Instead of Win More: The Failure of Decoupling and Perspectives for Competition in a Degrowth Economy

This paper aims to provide a comprehensive explanation for the likely failure in the decoupling of economic growth from environmental degradation, and also intends to offer perspectives on the new role of competition in a steady state or a degrowth economy. The analysis is based on five different scenarios, and uses the European Union as an example. It is concluded that we must prepare ourselves for a potential incompatibility between sustainability and economic growth. In this respect one can say that the current EU situation is in some ways already quite close to an economic system without growth, although far from sustainable as yet. Two of the four perspectives developed, regarding the new role of competition in an economy without growth, indicate an increase of direct and indirect competition over resources. The other two perspectives point out that regulatory public intervention as well as financial intervention will increase in order to ensure that - despite the revised role of competition - the poorest are still given a chance to develop (e.g. through basic minimum incomes), even in a degrowth economy.

On the Increase of Social Capital in Degrowth Economy

The present work provides a theoretical analysis oriented to link the social capital to the concept of degrowth. Defined by Schneider et al., 2010 as “an equitable downscaling of production and consumption that increases human well-being and enhances ecological conditions at the local and global level in the short and in the long term”, the concept of degrowth leads to a radical criticism of the neoclassical approach of economic growth and propose an alternative socio-economic paradigm based on the concept of “reciprocity work”. Constituted by a mix of social work, unpaid activities, self-production and co- operation among individuals, “reciprocity work” is assumed to be able to increase the social capital by promoting conviviality, mutual sustain and social relationships. In recent years, academic, political and social debates have been oriented to investigate the concepts of degrowth and the related impacts on social capital and well-being. The objective this paper is twofold. On one side, it provides a theoretical analysis in an attempt of explaining the concept of degrowth, that of reciprocity work and the implications for the social capital formation. On the other side, it reviews the main studies that investigate the social capital generation in a context of degrowth.

De-growth. Nursing and Research

De-growth. Nursing and Research

The economic and financial dimensions of degrowth

We respond to the call for future research on degrowth and specifically analyze the implications of economic degrowth on the monetary and financial system. We argue that any early indications of degrowth would cause the stock market to crash, which would trigger further deleveraging (contagion) and a deflation. As a result, the economy would implode, which would eventually allow for a new rapid growth cycle, given the likely extraordinary fiscal and monetary policy response during the implosion. Thus, in our view, degrowth as an explicit strategy option is economically unsustainable and unfeasible. As a limitation, our analysis centers on the examples of unplanned crisis leading to an economic implosion, which imperfectly represent the idea of planned/voluntary degrowth.

Degrowth: from theory to practice

Abstract The collection of articles reviewed in this editorial presents an eclectic sample of the best contributions from the Second international conference on degrowth, exemplifying recent debates in the field and touching on different aspects of the multi-dimensional transition at stake. Moving beyond theory and the construction of the degrowth proposal, the articles in this special issue look at particular applications, new methodologies and fresh policy options. For example, social enterprises are evaluated as primer candidates for a sustainable degrowth economy in the North. Lessons are also drawn from very different parts of the world, such as Cuba's experience with an oil and commodity shock, to which it adapted through the introduction of ecological labour-intensive agriculture in urban regions. This Special Issue approaches from a degrowth perspective important sectoral issues in agriculture, resource consumption and water. The unsustainable fuel-dependence of the Spanish agrarian sector, where the energy input for the production process is six times higher than the energy contained in finished food products, is analysed in the context of the industrialization of food production. Rather than efficiency, sufficiency (in consumption) is proposed as an organising societal principle and a call is made for stronger NGO action and coalition-building in the direction of absolute (rather than relative) consumption reduction. The obstacles to sufficiency policies are illustrated with a case-study on water in the city of Barcelona, where a growth discourse is still dominant and a source of a technological and institutional deadlock against softer, decentralized and more participatory forms of water management. Finally, many of the contributions in this issue focus on work. The policy option of a Job Guarantee scheme is examined as a tool to decouple jobs from economic growth and fiscal policy by bringing them to the realm of political rights. This is complemented by a discussion of the social benefits of an “amateur economy” through work-sharing and a socially beneficial reduction in labour productivity. Original data from Barcelona analysed for this Special Issue shows that household activities, an essential component of a more amateur economy, have a much lower intensity of energy use than the paid-sector delivery of equivalent services, especially government and privatized caring services. Interesting research questions are identified concerning work under a degrowth trajectory, not least whether reducing paid work will be possible in an energy-scarce future. Put together, the diverse contributions of this issue show that there is a vibrant and fertile degrowth research agenda with a range of open questions to which the community of this journal has much to offer.

Economic democracy: A path for the future?

As opposed to political democracy and its attempts at power control in the public sector, the concentration of economic power, and its antidote, the concept of economic democracy, has received much less attention. In the paper, we first offer a definition of economic democracy as a “a system of checks and balances on economic power and support for the right of citizens to actively participate in the economy regardless of social status, race, gender, etc.” Based on our definition, we suggest six possible faces of economic democracy and look at their implications for the vision of a sustainable, equitable and non-growing society, as discussed within the degrowth movement: (1) Regulation of market mechanisms and corporate activities. Regulation is one of the most obvious paths to curbing economic power, hence we highlight the issue of deregulation vis a vis possible degrowth policies. A revision of the free-market paradigm is suggested. (2) Support for social enterprises. We discuss different forms of democratic governance within enterprises and suggest that co-operative approaches, common in social enterprises, are better suited to a degrowth economy. (3) Democratic money creation processes, including pluralist community currencies, are suggested to counter economic power caused by the practice of fractional banking. (4) Reclaiming the commons (especially in their original sense as communal land stewardship systems) both conceptually and physically is seen by us as an important aspect of enhancing economic democracy. (5) Redistribution of income and capital assets is discussed as another approach to achieving economic democracy. (6) Finally, inspired by Vandana Shiva, we suggest that a broader view of economic democracy would involve a diversity of production scales and modes, including small-scale, subsistence and self-employment.

Environmental Justice and Economic Degrowth: An Alliance between Two Movements

1The flows of energy and materials in the world economy have never been as large as they are today. This increased metabolism causes more and more conflicts on resource extraction and waste disposa...

Social enterprises and non-market capitals: a path to degrowth?

The aim of this paper is to look at alternatives to the classic for-profit shareholding enterprise and to suggest how such alternatives might be supported within the current economic system. Another aim is to link the social enterprise and degrowth discourses. We first re-define the economy as including non-monetised sectors (the core economy and the economy of nature) and discuss the liminal zone of not-for-profit and not-only-for profit organisations. We then look at social enterprise definitions from a degrowth perspective and explain why the dimensions of scale, place, environment and provisioning patterns need more space in the social enterprise discourse. After that, we define non-market capitals as capitals taken out of the market and placed under local/member/democratic control and explain their importance in a degrowth economy. We give examples of non-market capitals and suggest a model involving mutual support between primary and secondary social enterprises. Finally, we suggest areas where more research is needed in this emerging field of inquiry.

The energetic metabolism of societies and the degrowth paradigm: analyzing biophysical constraints and realities

The belief that it is possible to have a perpetual “economic growth” based on fossil energy has been challenged since the 1970s. However, only in the last decade is this issue re-emerging once again because of the predicaments of climate change and peak oil. Many, finally start to perceive that an “economic degrowth” entailing a downscaling of the current size and pattern of socio-economic systems seem unavoidable. In this paper we analyze the implications, the feasibility and the desirability of possible trajectories of downscaling from an energetic perspective. The quantitative analysis is based on the methodological approach of societal metabolism, and it provides a dynamic accounting of the profile of energy flows required and consumed by societies in relation the expression of a given set of societal functions. This analysis makes it possible to check two types of constraints: external constraints (supply and sink side limits for the whole) and internal constraints (the feasibility of energy budget of the various parts of the society expressing the required functions). The analysis of the metabolic pattern of a sample of developed countries is used to discuss possible implications of: (i) demographic changes; (ii) the declining supply of net energy sources, and (iii) the effects of the Jevons' Paradox. Within such an analysis, a few assumptions and recipes of the degrowth movement seem problematic: (i) population is and will remain as a relevant variable to be considered; (ii) the proposed reduction in working hours seem to be impractical unless a major catastrophe will reset current civilization to pre-industrial standards; and (iii) voluntary reduction of personal energy consumption, even if a welcome adjustment, alone will not solve the existing problems. In the final part of the paper, future energetic road maps are questioned within the realm of post-normal science. Can we “plan” degrowth? If we are serious about the need of doing “something completely different”, societies will have to learn how to deliberate under uncertainty within the realms of flexible management and stop planning for either growth or degrowth. Moreover, before suggesting policies, it would be wise first to try to understand the option space.