By: Clive Spash

This book explores radical dissent from orthodox mainstream economics, and sets out a theoretically grounded vision for the emerging paradigm of social ecological economics. At the heart of this paradigmatic shift lies an acknowledgement of the inextricable embeddedness of economies in biophysical reality and social structure. The struggle for this transformative vision unfolds through a cr...

By: Miriam Lang

Climate coloniality manifests in the violent appropriation of territories in the Global South, including the extraction of strategic minerals such as copper and molybdenum to service energy transition and green growth for the major world powers. Peasant communities in the Intag river valley in Ecuador have been resisting large-scale mining for decades and, thus, have built up a local solidary e...

By: Miriam Lang

Degrowth literature predominantly states that degrowth strategies are meant from and for the Global North.While economic mainstream discourse suggests that the Global South still has to grow in terms of achievingdevelopment, degrowth proponents expect a reduction of material and energy throughput in the GlobalNorth to make ecological and conceptual space for the Global South to find its own pat...

By: Tejendra Pratap Gautam

A review of Nelson, A. (2022). Beyond Money: A Postcapitalist Strategy. Pluto Press.

By: Sagari Ramdas, Michel Pimbert

The Andhra Pradesh Zero Budget Natural Farming project was implemented by India’s State of Andhra Pradesh in 2016 and renamed AP Community Managed Natural Farming (APCNF) in 2020. APCNF is recognised as a sucessful example of peasant-led agroecology by social movements, multilateral UN bodies, governments, and researchers. We offer more critical perspectives here, and argue that this agroecolog...

By: Camille Souffron, Pierre Jacques

This paper presents a nuanced exploration of the current economic models used by the European Commission, highlighting their required complements in the context of ecological transition policies in the European Union, such as the European Green Deal. It emphasises the need for and value of incorporating a broader range of complementary modelling tools and models that illuminate aspects often ab...

By: Joe Ament, John-Oliver Engler, Max-Friedemann Kretschmer, Julius Rathgens, Thomas Huth, Henrik von Wehrden

In academia and political debates, the notions of ‘degrowth’ has gained traction since the dawn of the 21st century. While some uncertainty around its exact definition remains, research on degrowth revolves around the idea of reducing resource and energy throughput as a unifying theme. We employ a mixed-methods design to systematically review the scientific peer-reviewed English literature fr...

By: Brent Bleys, Jonas Van der Slycken

This paper is the first to calculate welfare, measured by the Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare (ISEW), for the EU-15 countries in a standardized and comparable way. This paper does so by building on a case study for Belgium by Van der Slycken and Bleys (2023) that puts forward a “2.0 methodology” with two distinct ISEWs that deal with cross-time and cross-boundary issues. Both welfare and ...

By: Joëlle Saey-Volckrick, Simon Tremblay-Pepin, Krystof Beaucaire

The integration of environmental issues into democratic economic planning models is the object of ongoing debates. Environmental factors cannot be reduced only to economic indicators, rendering economic models unable to properly account for ecological limits. By focusing on our societies’ biophysical needs, the concept of social metabolism opens new avenues to answer such problems. This paper p...

By: Tahir Karakaş

Since the 2000s, French politics has been reshaped by emergencies imposed by the ecological crisis, spurred on by a consumer society, problems of developmentalism as ideology and a belief in endless exponential economic growth. Today, the ecological question has become commonplace for both the left and the right (and even for far-right movements). This process of restructuring political life re...

By: Milica Kočović De Santo, Stéphanie Eileen Domptail

The chapter opens up key dichotomies characterizing the Western cartesian worldview and modernity to shed light on the consequences of an understanding of the world characterized by binaries and to open up the doors towards a new space of flourishing. We understand decolonization efforts in economic thinking and science as attempts to destabilize this binary world organization and to create a n...

By: Ting Wang

As the world’s second-largest economy and the biggest greenhouse gas emitter in total terms, China plays a significant role in addressing climate change and promoting effective action. While gender mainstreaming has been adoptedin the UN system since 1995 and has subsequently been incorporated intodifferent national policies, itis rarely recognizedin China’s climate policies. However, enhancing...

By: Tamara Schneider

Without doubt, anthropogenic climate change has increased the risk of ‘natural’ disasters—and the impact on society will only become more severe. Art history studies societal phenomena such as culture, politics and economics through the lens of artworks, and can thus also be applied to climate-related disasters. But is there a universal response in art creation to catastrophes—particularly in i...

By: Stéphanie Eileen Domptail, Jennifer Hirsch, Ernst-August Nuppenau

In Western Europe, farmers are embedded in a secular culture, characterized by a worldview where (hu)mans and nature are separated and opposed, capitalism rules exchanges, nature is rationally exploited, and the process of food production was long ignored. This worldview is hegemon and questioned as colonizing. Agroecological approaches and practices are said to enable farmers to entertain fund...

By: Katharina Richter

This chapter brings degrowth into conversation with Buen Vivir/sumak kawsay, an alternative to development from Ecuador. The Anthropocene is a crisis marked by multiple ecological crises, but also by dualistic and hierarchical structures of oppression. It’s a civilisationary crisis that needs to be confronted in all its intersecting dimensions. Anthropocentrism is one of the defining features o...

By: Inga Barbara Kuźma

The paper discusses the concepts of degrowth and decolonisation in the context of the tensions of the Cold War in socialist Poland of the 70-ies. At that time, the Berlin Wall symbolised the divisions between two geopolitical structures, namely the West, perceived as a guarantor of democracy, and the East, dominated by the Soviet sphere of influence. However, both sides were full of anticipatio...

By: Milica Kočović De Santo

Until the 60s, in Yugoslavia, the emphasis was mainly on the economic policy and instruments—in a narrower sense. Traditionally unprofitable activities started to appear to capture in a more excellent picture of development. The culture slowly became an integral part of social being by allowing the politics and policy to become social constructs (through self-governance socialism) and not the e...

By: Milica Kočović De Santo, Stéphanie Eileen Domptail, Jennifer Hirsch

Degrowth Decolonization and Development offers a collection of seven original case study analyses, followed by a synopsis of concepts contributing to decolonize development by shaking the hegemony of the Western paradigm. The participating researchers met when presenting their work in Decolonization and Degrowth panels within two International Degrowth Conferences held in July (organized by Man...

By: Charles Stevenson

A review of Degrowth & Strategy: How to Bring about Social-Ecological Transformation

By: Hubert Buch-Hansen, Iana Nesterova

While the notion of degrowth has gained traction in recent times, scholarship on degrowth transformations has yet to provide a conceptualisation that captures key attributes of what such transformations entail: (1) the reduction of some items and the expansion of others and (2) profound changes in various dimensions of social being, including in how humans interact with nature, non-humans, and ...