Degrowth Handbook - Part II

Degrowth as a normative concept with practical and analytical applications only really entered mainstream political discourse in the last 20 years, but its roots go back further.

The 1970s saw the emergence of the first and arguably most important pillar of degrowth thinking, what is commonly referred to as the ‘bioeconomic’ pillar of degrowth. The bioeconomic pillar is more commonly referred to as the ‘limits to growth thesis’. Pioneered theoretically by Romanian bioeconomist Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen and modeled by the Club of Rome, the limits to growth thesis hinged on Georgescu-Roegen’s application of thermodynamics to the economic process, and the Club of Rome’s pioneering systems theory modeling, both of which produced the conclusion that continued economic growth on a planet with finite resources is impossible. Put simply, if you want an economy to grow forever, you’ll need to use more and more resources, and with limited stuff, stuff eventually runs out. This, degrowthers argue, is the root of the climate crisis. We will discuss the limits to growth thesis more coherently in a later segment of this handbook.

Another pillar of degrowth emerged from anthropology in the 1990s, more specifically, from the post-development school. Spearheaded by French anthropologist Serge Latouche, the influence of anthropology links back to the pluriverse, a concept we discussed in the first part of this handbook. The post-development school insists that the Western development model is flawed. By the Western development model, I’m referring to the policies of Western, liberal democratic countries- Europe, the USA, Australia, etc.- whose efforts to develop the “poor” or “developing” countries of the Global South consist of imposing our own modus operandi, namely encouraging (and often imposing) private investment, liberal economic values of utility maximization and the belief in the market as the optimum method of provisioning. Degrowthers suggest (but are not the first to suggest) that this model is chauvinistic and ultimately colonial in nature. Who gave us the right to insist that our model is the best model? Are our societies so perfect that we think our methods are sacrosanct? Globalisation has failed to increase the lot of the Global South, which remains broadly impoverished by continued economic subjugation to the West. Again, I will dedicate a section of this handbook to post-development and the pluriverse.

This leads to the third pillar of degrowth, which suggests that beyond a certain point, economic growth and material wellbeing (the ...