Library

By: Adrien Plomteux

The concept of ‘frugal abundance’ has recently been mentioned in numerous degrowth publications and even presented as “the essence of degrowth” (Kallis et al., 2022, p.2). However, it has not yet been clearly conceptualised. The aim of this article is to start filling this gap. It provides substance to degrowth-compatible understandings of frugality and of abundance based on frugality, stressin...

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: Damaris Castro

Presentation [Part of the standard session "Practicing Degrowth"] 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. Results are based on a Flemish survey (N=1118). Presenters: Damaris Castro ...

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: Joel Millward-Hopkins, Julia K. Steinberger, Narasimha D. Rao, Yannick Oswald

It is increasingly clear that averting ecological breakdown will require drastic changes to contemporary human society and the global economy embedded within it. On the other hand, the basic material needs of billions of people across the planet remain unmet. Here, we develop a simple, bottom-up model to estimate a practical minimal threshold for the final energy consumption required to provi...

By: Roberto Sciarelli

Presentation [part of the standard session "Limits, Ethics, Unsustainability and Change"] The session will explore the relations between Epicurean hedonism and degrowth, showing how such connection has the potential to enrich and refine degrowth transformative proposal of a frugal society based on shared simple pleasures, relational goods and friendship, leisure, idleness and dépense. Pre...

By: Michael Deflorian, Karoline Kalke, Roberto Sciarelli, An, Pandian, Oxana Lopatina

Standard session (discussion following 4 presentations) The Awesome Life: Why Degrowthers Need to Talk about the Feeling of Entropy - video Critical views of consumerism are widely shared among degrowthers. However, there is a risk of overlooking a particular affective dimension of consumption: the ‘entropic feeling’. The latter is triggered when we surpass the biophysical limits of our h...

By: Ted Trainer, Samuel Alexander, Jonathan Rutherford

Ted Trainer is an Australian scholar-activist who for decades has been defending and practising an 'eco-anarchist' perspective he describes as the Simpler Way. His vision is of a world where self-governing communities live materially simple but sufficient lives, in harmony with ecological limits. This anthology contains some of Trainer's most insightful and provocative essays, covering all a...

By: Maja Lindström

Original title: Leva inom planetgränserna del 2, Agroforestry How can we meet our basic human needs, while improving the health of the ecosystems that we are part of? In this part 2 of the film, some of Sweden's and England's leading pioneers in Agroforestry explain how we, through our food production, can play a key role in healing ecosystems, creating food security, new jobs and an improved ...

By: Valentin Baudouin

L’entreprise est une liberté ambigüe, elle est autant un facteur de progrès que de risque. La crise écologique actuelle conduit les entreprises à prendre conscience des effets de leurs activités sur la société dans son ensemble et l’environnement. Pressées par de nouvelles normes sociales de la société civile, les entreprises sont amenées à modifier leur comportement, notamment à travers une dé...

By: Valentin Baudouin

Considering the current ecological crisis, the concept of sustainable development, or ‘sustainability’ appears to have failed to meet the goals laid out by its authors at the 1992 Earth Summit of Rio de Janeiro. Sustainable development was originally perceived as the torchbearer of a new project, a new hope of protecting humanity’s general interest, a ‘magic formula meant to reconcile free trad...

By: François Schneider, Anitra Nelson

This groundbreaking collection on housing for degrowth addresses key challenges of unaffordable, unsustainable and anti-social housing today, including going beyond struggles for a 'right to the city' to a 'right to metabolism', advocating refurbishment versus demolition, and revealing controversies within the degrowth movement on urbanisation, decentralisation and open localism. International ...

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: Iñigo Capellán-Pérez

La validez de la narrativa del crecimiento verde queda muy tocada tras la publicación de un nuevo detallado y riguroso informe científico. El tiempo se agota y la piedra angular de la propuesta del establishment no se ha demostrado como viable en ninguna circunstancia de forma relevante. El Diario, July 8th 2019, Opinión y Blogs

By: Nick Meynen

In recent years, the concept of green economic growth, i.e. the expansion of the economy without an accompanying increase in environmental harm, has gained political acceptance. However, the idea that this policy alone is enough to deal with the environmental challenges we face appears to be founded on little to no scientific basis. META, the news channel of the European Environmental Bureau...

By: Jonathan Barth, Timothée Parrique, François Briens, Christian Kerschner, Joachim H. Spangenberg, Alejo Kraus-Polk, Anna Kuokkanen

Is it possible to enjoy both economic growth and environmental sustainability? This question is a matter of fierce political debate between green growth and post-growth advocates. Considering what is at stake, a careful assessment to determine whether the scientific foundations behind this decoupling hypothesis are robust or not is needed. This report reviews the empirical and theoretical...

By: Mario Giampietro, Grégoire Wallenborn, Francesco Ferioli

Chair: Florent Marcellesi, MEP (Greens/EFA) Panellists: Mario Giampietro (Research Professor at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB)), Grégoire Wallenborn (Free University of Brussels (ULB)), Francesco Ferioli (European Commission, DG Energy, Policy Officer in the Economic Analysis Unit)

By: Riccardo Mastini, Blake Alcott, Fulvia Raffaëlli, Philippe Tulkens, Peter Zapfel

Chair: Molly Scott-Cato, MEP (Greens/EFA) Panellists: Riccardo Mastini (Friends of the Earth Europe, campaigner Resource justice and sustainability), Blake Alcott (Cambridge University, Author of The Jevons Paradox and the Myth of Resource Efficiency Improvements), Fulvia Raffaëlli (European Commission, DG GROW, Head of Unit responsible for Clean Technologies and Products), Philippe Tulkens (E...

By: Riccardo Mastini, Friends of the Earth Europe

“Sufficiency: moving beyond the gospel of eco-efficiency” suggests introducing hard limitations to unsustainable trends—in particular to overconsumption—and putting emphasis on distributional justice. Seven chapters written by sustainability and economics experts plus a foreword by Janez Potočnik (Co-chair of the International Resource Panel and former European Commissioner for the Environment)...