Download This PaperDegrowth
Elgar Encyclopedia of Ecological Economics, edited by Emilio Padilla Rosa and Jesús Ramos Martin. Forthcoming.
7 Pages Posted: 27 Apr 2022
Date Written: April 13, 2022
Abstract
Degrowth means equitably downscaling wealthy societies’ throughputs of materials and energy. It entails reorganizing the economy to meet people’s needs regardless of what happens with GDP. The literature on degrowth, which emerged from the Francophone décroissance school, brings together diverse critiques of economic growth and its pursuit: growth is absurd, unnecessary, unsustainable, homogenizing, destructive, exploitative, and uneconomic. Scholars of degrowth call for collective self-limitation, through politics, to reduce resource use and avoid transgressing planetary thresholds beyond which lie an inhospitable Earth system. Such limits, they argue, can open space for diverse conceptions of the good life and how to pursue it.
Keywords: Limits; metabolism; GDP; justice; well-being; transformation.
JEL Classification: B51, B59, E61, O44, Q57
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