Library

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: Myfan Jordan

This book explores two unique studies of women’s economic behaviour during Australia’s COVID-19 crisis. The first describes the care ‘frontline’ in the feminised labor sectors of healthcare and education, identifying extreme workload pressures, deteriorating conditions, and a shockingly high incidence of workplace bullying: including women targeting other women workers. The author argues workpl...

By: Jonathan Barth, Raphael Kaufmann, Lasse Steffens, Laure-Alizée Le Lannou, Alexandra Gerer, Sebastian Kiecker

This report investigates how reinforcing dynamics between political prioritisation in governance and statistical and data-related qualities of metrics give rise to an institutional GDP lock-in, which inhibits a mainstreaming of wellbeing and sustainability in policymaking. Building on this lock-in analysis, the report illuminate levers for strengthening the consideration of wellbeing and sustainability variables in political governance and statistical frameworks.

By: Gibran Vita

Presentation [Part of the standard session "Practicing Degrowth"] The present work aims to contribute in three major ways- 1) By connecting fundamental human needs by Max-Neef et al to global carbon emissions and their satisfaction. 2) By employing an Environmentally Extended MultiRegional Input-Output (EE-MRIO) to assess the outcomes of massive consumption-related lifestyles changes envisio...

By: Damaris Castro, Johannes Brossmann, Tobias Froese, Gibran Vita

Standard session (discussion following 4 presentations)  A sufficiency assessment: do people think they have enough? Video We investigate how individuals think about ‘having enough’ and ‘wanting more’ in the contemporary society on a financial, material and leisure level. Furthermore, we analyze how this relates to people’s relative preference for income versus leisure. Result...

By: Akshat Rathi

"In recent years, a group of economists, ecologists, and anthropologists has gained attention for trying to overturn a core tenet of economic policy — that growth is good for everyone. Known as the “degrowth” movement, these scholars suggest a reframing of humanity’s goals along ecological lines to address the climate crisis, along with a reconsideration of using gross domestic product as a met...

By: Susan Paulson, Giorgos Kallis, Federico Demaria, Giacomo D'Alisa

The time is ripe for us to refocus on what really matters: not GDP, but the health and wellbeing of our people and our planet.

By: Sheelah Kolhatkar

One of the risks of not providing an universal Health Care system is not just related to the threat  represented to life itself. Debt and despair can be easily taken advantage of and the article encloses how this dispossession process of hospital patients is all possible in the current financial system and kept legal by the same government.

By: Adeline Otto, Dimitri Gugushvili

In the face of accelerating global warming and attendant natural disasters, it is clear that governments all over the world eventually have to take measures to mitigate the most adverse consequences of climate change. However, the costs of these measures are likely to force governments to reconsider some of their tax and spending priorities, of which social spending is the largest expenditure i...

By: Mark Sutton

Mark Cramer, commentator on the subject of cycling into later life and best practice infrastructure has released a new book filled with incredible stories of how cycling contributes positively to society the world over.

By: Max Koch, Martin Fritz

Abstract: The emerging concept of sustainable welfare attempts to integrate environmental sustainability and social welfare research. Oriented at a mid-term re-embedding of Western production and consumption norms into planetary limits, it suggests the development of “eco-social” policies in the rich countries. In this theoretical context, this article empirically investigates the relationship...

By: Max Koch, Milena Büchs

Degrowth scholars and activists have convincingly argued that degrowth in developed nations will need to be part of a global effort to tackle climate change, and to preserve the conditions for future generations’ basic needs satisfaction. However, the barriers to building a broader degrowth movement appear to be very entrenched at present. To improve the political feasibility of degrowth it is ...

By: Manuel Couret Branco

Focusing on human rights, we are led to rethink the relationship between wealth and wellbeing and the role of cultural freedom in this process.

By: Thomas S.J. Smith

This book examines how the way we conceive of, or measure, the environment changes the way we interact with it. Thomas Smith posits that environmentalism and sustainable development have become increasingly post-political, characterised by abstraction, and quantification to an unprecedented extent. As such, the book argues that our ways of measuring both the environment, such as through sustain...

By: TiinaHeikkinen

Degrowth, Dynamic equilibrium, Externalities, Voluntary simplicity, Welfare, Sharing, Collaborative consumption, Basic income

By: Ronald Bailey

Introduction: Unless us folks in rich countries drastically reduce our material living standards and distribute most of what we have to people living in poor countries, the world will come to an end. Or at least that's the stark conclusion of a study published earlier this month in the journal Nature Sustainability. The researchers who wrote it, led by the Leeds University ecological economist ...

By: The Borneo Post

Introduction: For the first time in Malaysia, the concept of sustainable de-growth was presented and discussed in a public meeting here recently. Five large conferences on the subject have been held in various part of the world with 200 published articles. French industrial ecologist and de-growth researcher Dr François Schneider explained this new concept to an audience at the Sarawak Mu...

By: Timo Luthmann

Die politischen und persönlichen Herausforderungen nehmen für engagierte Menschen stetig zu. Wie können wir – ohne auszubrennen – mit diesen Umständen klug umgehen? Was macht Aktivist*innen wie auch soziale Bewegungen widerstandsfähiger, kreativer und erfolgreicher? Wie sieht es mit der feinen Balance zwischen individueller Selbstverwirklichung und kollektiver Befreiung aus? Erstmals wird da...