Library

By: Rolf F.H. Schroeder

This article sheds new light on the development of complementary currencies. Based on a comprehensive survey of the literature, the study questions conventional interpretations of these social innovations. The article challenges the view that money is the only feature that complementary currencies have in common. The author argues that in addition to the ways in which connectivity takes place, ...

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: 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: 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: Tuuli Hirvilammi

Welfare states are highly dependent on the economic growth paradigm. Especially in social democratic welfare states, growth dependence has historically been accompanied by the notion of a virtuous circle, which ensures that social policy measures do not conflict with economic growth. However, this policy idea ignores the environmental impacts that are now challenging human wellbeing and welfare...

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: Mira Pütz

Presentation [part of the standard session "Theories of Transformation"] In order to develop and implement socio-ecological (economic) policies the processes and structural conditions of representation in democracies today need to be rethought, re-imagined and changed. Citizens’ assemblies can help us to do just that, starting now. Presenters: Mira Pütz (Sciences Po) Language: English ...

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: Riccardo Mastini

Presentation [part of the standard session "Institutional Change 2"] The Green New Deal offers a powerful vision for how to deploy industrial policies to coordinate the overhaul of a country’s energy system and decarbonize its manufacturing and agricultural sectors. However given the elusiveness of absolute decoupling degrowth policies must accompany this transition. Presenters: Riccardo ...

By: Steffen Lange, Tilman Santarius, Johanna Pohl

This article investigates the effect of digitalization on energy consumption. Using an analytical model, we investigate four effects: (1) direct effects from the production, usage and disposal of information and communication technologies (ICT), (2) energy efficiency increases from digitalization, (3) economic growth from increases in labor and energy productivities and (4) sectoral change/te...

By: Louison Cahen-Fourot, Nelo Magalhães

This paper aims at integrating macroeconomic and institutional analyses of long run dynamics of capitalism with material flow analysis. We investigate the links between accumulation and socio-metabolic regimes by studying French capitalism from a material perspective since 1948. We characterize its social metabolism both in production- and consumption-based approaches. We show that the periodiz...

By: Milena Arias Schreiber, Ida Wingren, Sebastian LInke

The EU Blue Growth agenda is being implemented at a time when European coastal fisheries and traditional fishing communities are struggling to survive or have already vanished from areas where they used to flourish. Driven by the strong conviction that current disadvantaged and vulnerable coastal fishers still have a central role to play in rural development, local level initiatives are cal...

By: Timmo Krüger

Presentation [part of the standard session "Regional Transformations"] Buen Vivir goes beyond criticism and rejection. It has an utopian surplus. European activists adopted it to make positive visions thinkable and expressible. The fluctuating relevance of Buen Vivir can be traced back to the course of political struggles both in the Andean countries and in Europe. Presenters: Timmo Krüge...

By: Andy Stirling, Benjamin K. Sovacool, Patrick Schmid, Goetz Walter, Gordon MacKerron

Two of the most widely emphasized contenders for carbon emissions reduction in the electricity sector are nuclear power and renewable energy. While scenarios regularly question the potential impacts of adoption of various technology mixes in the future, it is less clear which technology has been associated with greater historical emission reductions. Here, we use multiple regression analyse...

By: Norie Tamura, Hein Mallee

Presentation [part of the standard session "Regional Transformations"] Embedding human lives again into the local ecosystem may help to reverse overexploitation and to foster degrowth lifestyles. To discuss transition strategies for alternative lifestyles, we analyze two niche developments in Japan: the fishery-forest movement and the self-employed forestry movement. Presenters: Norie Tam...

By: Matthias Haberl, Isabella Szukits

Workshop Südwind works since many years about the supply chain of mobile phones. Current initiatives range from modular design over certain procurement strategies of public institutions to refurbishment and proper recycling. Still on local and regional levels many small initiatives can do and are doing interesting steps in the right direction and we want together to elaborate more on it. And...

By: Andro Rilović

Presentation [part of the standard session "Theories of Transformation"] This paper will demonstrate why, when envisaging degrowth transitions and strategies for achieving them, it is essential to seriously engage with arguments concerning the limitations of the State in enacting radical systemic change, emanating from the long and fruitful history of anarchist thought. Presenters: Andro ...

By: Alexandra Köves

Workshop System maps are a good visualization of mental constructions different groups hold on Degrowth. Based on our previous research results we propose 30 factors that we deem the most important in a Degrowth transition. In this workshop we involve the participants in a participatory system mapping exercise where they can arrange and rearrange the components of a potential Degrowth societ...

By: Brent Bleys, Jonas Van der Slycken

Economic welfare measures (EWM) such as the ISEW and the GPI are often argued to lack a sound theoretical foundation. However, we observe that the initial EWM were jointly inspired by Hicksian and Fisherian income. Welfare's experiential nature is Fisherian-inspired, whereas seeing the consumption of community capital (e.g. the ecosystem) as a cost is Hicksian-inspired. As most scholars do no...

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...