Crisis or opportunity? Economic degrowth for social equity and ecological sustainability. Introduction to this special issue
Introduction
The paradigm of economic growth has dominated politics and policies since 1945. Environmental concerns were introduced later but always subordinated to growth objectives. Expectations of win–win, sustainable growth through technological and efficiency improvements, have not been fulfilled. The present economic crisis opens up a social opportunity to ask fundamental questions. Managed well, this may be the best, possibly last and only chance to change the economy and lifestyles in a path that will not take societies over climate, biodiversity or social cliffs.
The idea of degrowth (décroissance in French) is emerging as a response to the triple environmental, social and economic crisis [1], [2], [3], [4], [5] It did not appear out of the blue. The people who defend degrowth come from different philosophical horizons, movements and intellectual sources [7], [8]. The first of them is culturalist. It comes from anthropologists criticizing the idea that southern countries need to follow the development model of the US and Europe [3], [9], [10], [11], [12]. Serge Latouche author of the editorial (in this issue) is a prominent defender of this school of thoughts. It is often a critique of what could be called the irruption of the generalized market system, in Karl Polanyi's terms [13]. The second source of degrowth is the quest for democracy, the aspiration to determine our economic and social system, breaking the close link among the political system, the technological system, the education and information system, and short-term economic interests [13], [14], [15], [16], [17], [18], [19], [20], [21]. The third source is ecology, defending ecosystems and showing respect for living beings in all of their dimensions [21], [22], [23], [24]. The fourth source is linked to what some authors call “the meaning of life” and movements around it emphasizing spirituality, non-violence, art or voluntary simplicity [24], [25], [26], [27], [28], [29]. The last source can be called bioeconomics or ecological economics. It deals with the constraints linked to resource depletion and waste disposal [6], [29], [30], [31]. Degrowth is then needed to prevent overloading of source and sink capacities. Bioeconomists in favour of degrowth believe in more equity. In this special issue of the Journal of Cleaner Production, many of the articles are in this tradition of bioeconomics (as Georgescu-Roegen liked to say) or ecological economics (as this transdisciplinary field of study chose to call itself from the late 1980s onwards [32]). However all positions are represented to some degree.
In ecological economics there have been strong voices against economic growth in rich countries and in favour of a steady state of the economy (Herman Daly, already in the 1970s [33]). The discussion on how degrowth of the economy was required in the first instance before reaching a steady state, is new (see Kerschner in this issue). Social movements for degrowth (décroissance in French, decrescita in Italian), and the writings from the culturalist stream induced ecological economist and others, including industrial ecologists, to join in the first international scientific conference on Economic Degrowth for Ecological Sustainability and Social Equity (http://events.it-sudparis.eu/degrowthconference/en/) that witnessed the gathering of 140 multidisciplinary scientists in Paris in April 2008 [1]. In the call for the conference, economic degrowth was explicitly defined as a reduction of the “collective capacity to acquire and use physical resources”. This capacity could be measured financially or in other terms. But it had to be envisioned as a search for equity and sustainability considering environmental limits in today's highly unequal world. It implied that “degrowth had to involve a local and global redistribution”. The problem of the macro-rebound-effect also had to be dealt with: the fact that gains from efficiency are reallocated to new physical consumptions in an expanding economy.
The April 2008 Paris conference was a successful event. For the first time, scientists gathered in an interdisciplinary and international academic setting with representatives of the civil society on the topic of economic degrowth as a possible path for more ecology, more equality or more well-being. It led to the publication of the Paris Degrowth Declaration (in this issue) which calls for economic degrowth if environmental sustainability and social equity are to be achieved. The success of the Paris degrowth conference showed acceptance and understanding of the word degrowth and the importance of the projects it supports. More than 90 academic presentations were made on various topics around degrowth. The first day was on partial visionary perspectives with sessions on background, applications, research areas and sectors. The second day was on wide socio-economic processes for degrowth, dealing with societal values and economic degrowth as a whole, with panels on cultural change, change of institutions and democracy. Most of the articles in this special issue were originally presented at this conference. Research on degrowth is growing, and a second scientific conference will take place in Barcelona in March 2010, organized by the editors of this special issue (http://www.degrowth.eu). It is becoming an established field of research.
In this review article we first offer our own definition of what does degrowth include, clearing out some misinterpretations. We then review and connect the latest contributions in the field presented in this special issue, before relating the debate on degrowth, which started as a concern for environmental sustainability, to the context set by the global economic crisis of 2008–09.
Section snippets
What is degrowth: definitions and misconceptions
Sustainable degrowth may be defined as an equitable downscaling of production and consumption that increases human well-being and enhances ecological conditions at the local and global level, in the short and long term. The adjective sustainable does not mean that degrowth should be sustained indefinitely (which would be absurd) but rather that the process of transition/transformation and the end-state should be sustainable in the sense of being environmentally and socially beneficial. The
The latest contributions to the field
This Special Issue brings together several novel contributions that approach the question of degrowth from a variety of perspectives and foci, theoretical, modelling and empirical. We might divide the contributions into 3 + 1 groups (the last consisting of a single contribution). The first group (Hueting, d'Alessandro and colleagues, van den Bergh, Kerschner, Spangenberg and Alcott) discusses whether current growth patterns are (un)sustainable and offer different perspectives on what degrowth
Crisis or opportunity? Degrowth in the context of the economic crisis of 2008–2009
The Paris Conference took place when the economic crisis of 2008–09 was yet about to start (although our contributors were asked to revise their articles and reflect on the implications of the crisis). As Kallis, Martinez-Alier and Norgaard [43] argue, the crisis is a result of unsustainable growth. Irresponsible borrowing and the cultivation of fake expectations in the housing market were not accidents, but a systemic failure of a system struggling to keep up with growth rates that could not
Acknowledgements
Deep thanks to all conference participants, reviewers, authors, Filka Sekulova and Don Huisingh, as well as conference co-organisers Fabrice Flipo and Denis Bayon for their help and support, and to Bob Thomson and Jana Timm for translations.
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