Beyond economic growth. Introduction to post-growth economics.

Our favourite group: The Post-Growth Institute

Main proposed alternatives:

• Degrowth
• Buen Vivir ; Good Living
• Steady-State Economy

Key Citations

Short Citations

"As living systems mature they shift from an early (juvenile) stage that favours quantitative growth to a later (mature) stage of growing (transforming) qualitatively rather than quantitatively."

- Daniel Christian Wahl [1]

Long Citations

“Sustainability does not mean zero growth. Rather, a sustainable society would be interested in qualitative development, not physical expansion. It would use material growth as a considered tool, not a perpetual mandate. […] it would begin to discriminate among kinds of growth and purposes for growth. It would ask what the growth is for, and who would benefit, and what it would cost, and how long it would last, and whether the growth could be accommodated by the sources and sinks of the earth."

- Meadows, Meadows & Randers [2]

“It seems that our key challenge is how to shift from an economic system based on the notion of unlimited growth to one that is both ecologically sustainable and socially just. ‘No growth’ is not the answer. Growth is a central characteristic of all life; a society, or economy, that does not grow will die sooner or later. Growth in nature, however, is not linear and unlimited. While certain parts of organisms, or ecosystems, grow, others decline, releasing and recycling their components which become resources for new growth. ... It appears that the linear view of economic development, as used by most mainstream and corporate economists and politicians, corresponds to the narrow quantitative concept of economic growth, while the biological and ecological sense of development corresponds to the notion of qualitative growth. In fact, the biological concept of development includes both quantitative and qualitative growth.” 

— Fritjof Capra and Hazel Henderson [3]

"In its physical dimensions the economy is an open subsystem of the earth ecosystem, which is finite, nongrowing, and materially closed. As the economic subsystem grows it incorporates an ever greater proportion of the total ecosystem into itself and must reach a limit at 100 percent, if not before. Therefore its growth is not sustainable. The term "sustainable growth" when applied to the economy is a bad oxymoron—self-contradictory as prose, and unevocative as poetry."

- Herman Daly (VALUING THE EARTH:Economics, Ecology, Ethics. By Herman E. Daly and Kenneth N. Townsend. MIT Press, 1993)

Key Resources

• Video: Who Killed Economic Growth?. The thesis of Richard Heinberg.

• Article: Against wasted politics: A Critique of the Circular Economy. By Francisco Valenzuela and Steffen Böhm. Ephemera, volume 17(1): 23-60

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