Library

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: 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: Heinrich Böll Foundation, ZOE – Institute for Future-Fit Economies, Finanzwende Recherche

By: Katharina Zimmermann, Paolo Graziano

Attention towards topics such as environmental pollution, climate change, or biodiversity has strongly increased in the last years. The struggles to balance market powers and ecological sustainability somehow evoke memories of the early days of European welfare states, when social protection emerged as a means to prevent industrial capitalism from disruptive social tensions due to excessive soc...

By: Louison Cahen-Fourot, Emanuele Campiglio, Elena Dawkins, Antoine Godin, Eric Kemp-Benedict

Herman Daly's view of the economy as an “inverted pyramid” sitting on top of essential raw material inputs is compelling, but not readily visible in monetary data, as the contribution of primary sectors to value added is typically low. This article argues that “forward linkages”, a classical development theory concept capturing the relevance of a sector for downstream activities, is an informat...

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: Roldan Muradian

I argue that the degrowth movement reflects the values of a particular social group, namely the well-educated European middle class that share progressive-green-cosmopolitan values. This feature creates significant barriers for its dissemination among lower-income social groups in other parts of the world. There is an important difference between frugality as a choice and frugality as a social ...

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: Teresa Anderson, Stefania Barca, Grace Blakeley, Friedrich Bohn, Sam Bright, Giacomo D'Alisa, Nick Dearden, Nicoletta Dentico, Laura C. Zanetti-Domingues, Dirk Ehnts, Skender Fani, Julia Fish, Charlotte Hanson, Jason Hickel, Nick Jacobs, Giorgos Kallis, Tessa Khan, Mat Lawrence, Laurie Laybourn-Langton, Emanuele Leonardi, Ruth London, Riccardo Mastini, Bill McKibben, Julian Brave NoiseCat, David Powell, Jérémy Rodrigues, Jakob Schäfer, Christoph Schneider, Giovanna Sissa, Isaac Stanley, Will Stronge, Sean Sweeney

Europe today confronts two crises. The first is an economic crisis, with rising levels of poverty, insecurity, and homelessness across the continent. The second is a climate and environmental crisis, with severe consequences for Europe’s front-line communities and even more perilous ones on the horizon. Both crises are the products of Europe’s political decisions, and they are closely bound t...

By: Mladen Domazet, Branko Ančić

Abstract: Inspired by the thesis that an alliance between degrowth and environmental justice (EJ) movements is essential (Akbulut et al., this issue), this paper presents the findings of empirical research concerning the pitfalls and possibilities of such an alliance as understood by prominent Croatian EJ movement leaders. We outline the context of the Croatian EJ movement through two specific...

By: Roldan Muradian

Is degrowth doomed to be an Eurocentric project?

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)...

By: David Goeßmann

Einleitung Ein finsterer Wolfskopf fletscht die Zähne. Im Maul hält er knurrend die Weltkugel wie einen Spielball. Eine weiße Hand im Stile Michelangelos streckt sich nach der bedrohten Erde aus. Daneben stehen die mahnenden Worte: „Globalisierung außer Kontrolle. TRAUT EUCH! Radikal denken, entschlossen handeln – nur so ist die Welt noch zu retten.“ Das ist kein Plakat „linker Randalierer“, d...

By: Mladen Domazet, Logan Richardson, Branko Ancic

Description by the authors: We are focused on the European semiperiphery as the standardly presented environmentalist laggard within European environmentalism (cf. Bozonnet, 2017). Unlike societies classified as globally “peripheral”, this region is characterised by already high material standards of living. At the same time, here concern for the environment appears even lower than what is the ...

By: Mladen Domazet, Branko Ančić, Logan Richardson

Keywords: Degrowth, environmentalism, attitudes survey, comparative, Europe

By: Saamah Abdallah

Presentation by Saamah Abdallah Degrowth is a post-materialist movement, which places value on the biosphere, human wellbeing, and justice, above and beyond the possession of material goods (Degrowth Declaration, 2008). And yet surveys suggest that levels of materialism are higher in post-socialist countries than in Western European countries (Kyvelidis, 2001). In the sixth round of the Euro...

By: Saamah Abdallah

Degrowth is a post-materialist movement, which places value on the biosphere, human wellbeing, and justice, above and beyond the possession of material goods (Degrowth Declaration, 2008). And yet surveys suggest that levels of materialism are higher in post-socialist countries than in Western European countries (Kyvelidis, 2001). In the sixth round of the European Social Survey (2012), nine of ...

By: John Szabo

Insuring European energy security in a degrowth environment, is essential in maintaining current levels of well-being. To transition toward a sustainable economy, the current, heavy reliance upon hydrocarbon imports needs to be tuned down and substituted with domestic energy production from renewable resources—primarily solar and wind—, leading to a substantial decrease in emissions emitted, wh...

By: Daniel Gerbery, Lidija Živčič, Lidija Živčič, Richard Filcak, Sergio Tirado Herrero

Austerity-driven, unsustainable degrowth has resulted in a surge of energy poverty in EU and beyond. Understood as the inability of households to secure a materially- and socially-necessitated level of energy services in the home, energy poverty has become a widespread societal concern that demands structural responses. Tensions are foreseen between energy poverty alleviation and degrowth. On ...

By: carmine arvonio

Linking Europe on two wheels “The bicycle is a chance for a way of life in which respect for others and joy of living are priorities. This offers us a great hope: Cycling as a new Humanism!” This quote from M. Augé synthesizes our approach. We started CicloPoetica in Firenze, Italy, connecting different fields: pedagogy, sport, ecology, sustainability. Our focus is Bike culture, which fo...