Library

By: Vasilis Kostakis, Chris Giotitsas, Christina Priavolou, Katerina Troullaki, Nikiforos Tsiouris

An emerging commons-oriented mode of production that combines globally accessible knowledge with distributed manufacturing has recently been presented as a better fit for sustainable degrowth and localisation, compared to incumbent practices. To tentatively test this potential we select the case of 3D printers. The production of 3D printers varies within a spectrum from proprietary and industri...

By: Markus Wissen, Melanie Pichler, Nora Krenmayr

Workshop In this Special Session, results of the CON-LABOUR research project will be presented, which during more than two years explored the opportunities and challenges of a social-ecological transformation in the Austrian automotive industry from the perspective of employees and their representations. We provide insight into the political economy of Austrian supplier industry and reflect ...

By: Quentin Couix

This paper provides a synthetic account of Georgescu-Roegen's flow-fund theory, as a contribution to the history of ecological economics. It reconstitutes Georgescu-Roegen's perspective on production, and its relationships with other frameworks, such as the neoclassical production function and input-output tables. The overall purpose is to clearly establish the foundations of the flow-fund th...

By: Daniel Horen Greenford

This video is based on findings from our recent study: Greenford, D. H., Crownshaw, T., Lesk, C., Stadler, K., & Matthews, H. D. (2020). Shifting economic activity to services has limited potential to reduce global environmental impacts due to the household consumption of labour. Environmental Research Letters, 15(6), 064019.

By: Konstantin Stadler, Daniel Horen Greenford, Timothy Crownshaw, Corey Lesk, Damon Matthews

The tertiary (or 'service') sector is commonly identified as a relatively clean part of the economy. Accordingly, sustainable development policy routinely invokes 'tertiarization'—a shift from primary and secondary sectors to the tertiary sector—as a means of decoupling economic growth from environmental damages. However, this argument does not account for environmental impacts related to t...

By: Clive L. Spash

Coronavirus (COVID-19) policy shut down the world economy with a range of government actions unprecedented outside of wartime. In this paper, economic systems dominated by a capital accumulating growth imperative are shown to have had their structural weaknesses exposed, revealing numerous problems including unstable supply chains, unjust social provisioning of essentials, profiteering, precari...

By: Vasilis Kostakis, Chris Giotitsas

Cosmolocalism emerges from technology initiatives that are small-scale and oriented towards addressing local problems, but simultaneously engage with globally asynchronous collaborative production through digital commoning. We thus connect such a discussion with two ongoing grassroots developments: first, a cosmolocal response to the coronavirus pandemic; and, second, an ongoing effort of Frenc...

By: Pinar Ertör-Akyazi

The expansion of industrial fishing via technological advancements and heavy subsidies in the Global North has been a significant factor leading to the current global fishery crisis. The growth of the industrial fleet led to an initial increase in global catches from the 1950s to the 1990s; yet, today, several marine fish stocks are harvested at unsustainable rates, and catches are stagnati...

By: Borja Nogué-Algueró

Shipping carries virtually all internationally traded goods. Major commercial ports are fully integrated into transnational production and distribution systems, enabling the circulation of massive flows of energy and materials in the global economy. Port activity and development are usually associated with positive socio-economic effects, such as increased GDP and employment, but the indust...

By: Jeffrey Althouse, Guilio Guarini, Jose Gabriel Porcile

This article introduces a novel (environmental) interpretation of a “Keynesian coordination game” and develops four potential scenarios to remaining within a global carbon emissions constraint. With inspiration from research on “ecologically unequal exchange” (EUE), we demonstrate the drawbacks of present “green growth” strategies by considering how pollution- and resource-intensive industrie...

By: Tim Crownshaw

"In place of the GND, we might be better served by scaling back our ambition and embracing a Green New Direction. This alternative could preserve many of the same essential goals, but would need to forgo the use of enticing promises to motivate action and instead do the hard work of building solidarity and commitment to collectively face an energy future which will be more complex, more unpredi...

By: Thomas Roulet, Joel Bothello

"As we continue to grapple with climate change, we can expect consumers, rather than politicians, to increasingly drive degrowth by changing their consumption patterns. Firms should think in an innovative way about this consumer-driven degrowth as an opportunity, instead of resisting or dismissing the demands of this small but growing movement. Businesses that successfully do so will emerge mor...

By: Lukas Hardt, John Barrett, Peter G. Taylor, Timothy J. Foxon

Post-growth economists propose structural changes towards labour-intensive services, such as care or education, to make our economy more sustainable by providing meaningful work and reducing the environmentally damaging production of material goods. Our study investigates the assumption underlying such proposals. Using a multi-regional input-output model we compare the embodied energy intensi...

By: Iñigo Capellán-Pérez, Carlos de Castro, Luis Javier Miguel González

A novel methodology is developed to dynamically assess the energy and material investments required over time to achieve the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources in the electricity sector. The obtained results indicate that a fast transition achieving a 100% renewable electric system globally by 2060 consistent with the Green Growth narrative could decrease the EROI of the e...

By: Daniel Cerezuelle

Conferencia de la Plenaria del Martes por Daniel Cerezuelle: "La destrucción de los recursos y conocimientos técnicos vernáculos por el desarrollo industrial y tecnocientífico, una perspectiva francesa."

By: Miguel Valencia

Conferencia de la Plenaria del Martes por Miguel Valencia: "El regalo, la charla y la desindustrialización del mundo"

By: Edgar Ocampo Téllez

Esta presentación explica los desafíos de un modelo energético sostenible en México (2050).

By: Alevgul H. Sorman, Sofía Avila-Calero

Socio-environmental issues will continue to emerge if an energy transition project does not include changes in patterns of consumption and resource governance.

By: Armando Contreras, Indra Morandín, Yair Merlín

Esta presentación explica los retos y las acciones del sector cafetalero hacía el descrecimiento.

By: Eeva Houtbeckers

Organising for post-growth society is called for to enable living on our finite planet. While previous research has suggested that social enterprise could be one form of post-growth organising (PGo), these suggestions might not rely on critical studies of social enterprise (SE) or studies exploring everyday practices of SE. This paper asks to what extent can SE practices be considered to be pos...