Degrowth
Degrowth is an academic and activist movement advocating for a planned reduction of energy and resource throughput in high-income economies to bring human activity back within planetary boundaries, while simultaneously reducing inequality and improving well-being. The term translates the French décroissance, popularized by Serge Latouche in his 2007 book Farewell to Growth (Petit traité de la décroissance sereine). 1
Core definition and distinction from recession
Jason Hickel and Giorgos Kallis, two of the movement’s most prominent contemporary theorists, define degrowth as:
“A planned reduction of energy and resource throughput designed to bring the economy back into balance with the living world in a way that reduces inequality and improves human well-being.”
Crucially, degrowth is not a recession. A recession is an unplanned, chaotic contraction that increases unemployment, inequality, and suffering. Degrowth is a deliberate, managed transition that maintains or improves livelihoods through redistribution, reduced working hours, universal public services, and a shift from GDP growth to well-being metrics. 2
Intellectual foundations
- Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen: The Romanian economist whose The Entropy Law and the Economic Process (1971) is credited by Latouche as the “main theoretical source of degrowth.” Georgescu-Roegen argued that economic production irreversibly degrades low-entropy resources into high-entropy waste, making indefinite material growth thermodynamically impossible. 3
- Serge Latouche: French economist and philosopher who systematized degrowth as a political project. He argued for “decolonizing the imaginary” from growth-dependence and proposed eight interdependent “R’s” (re-evaluate, re-conceptualize, restructure, redistribute, re-localize, reduce, re-use, recycle). 4
- Giorgos Kallis: Ecological economist whose Degrowth (2018) provides the academic synthesis. Kallis argues that degrowth is not about sacrifice but about “living well with less” — a shift from quantitative accumulation to qualitative flourishing.
- Jason Hickel: Economic anthropologist who frames degrowth as a decolonial project. He argues that growth in the Global North relies on appropriation of resources and labor from the Global South, and that “green growth” perpetuates these colonial arrangements. Hickel advocates for de-accumulation, de-enclosure, and de-commodification. 5
The decoupling debate
The central empirical dispute between degrowth advocates and mainstream sustainability policy is whether absolute decoupling of GDP from material throughput and emissions is possible at the required speed and scale. Degrowth proponents cite Hickel & Kallis (2020) and Vadén et al. (2020) to argue that:
- Absolute decoupling of GDP from material footprint has never been achieved at a global scale
- Absolute decoupling of GDP from emissions is possible in principle (renewable energy) but cannot be achieved quickly enough to stay within 1.5°C carbon budgets if the economy continues growing at historical rates
- Therefore, reducing material throughput — not just improving efficiency — is necessary
Critics respond that this underestimates the pace of technological change, overstates the rigidity of consumption patterns, and ignores the political infeasibility of deliberately contracting wealthy economies. 6
Policy program
Degrowth policy proposals typically include:
- Reduced working hours (without loss of pay) to share work and reduce production pressure
- Universal basic services (healthcare, education, housing, transport) de-linked from market income
- Progressive wealth and carbon taxation
- Debt jubilees or monetary reform to reduce growth-dependence of the financial system
- Support for cooperative, localized, and commons-based production
- A moratorium on new fossil fuel infrastructure and resource extraction
Contested status
Contested. Degrowth faces criticism from multiple directions:
- From the right: It is dismissed as anti-progress, Malthusian, or a recipe for authoritarian rationing
- From the left: Some Marxists argue that degrowth ignores the need for the Global South to develop, and that the problem is capitalism’s distribution, not growth itself
- From mainstream economics: Most economists reject the claim that decoupling is impossible and view degrowth as politically unfeasible and unnecessarily costly
- Empirical: The movement lacks real-world examples of planned contraction at scale, making its claims about maintaining well-being during throughput reduction largely theoretical
The IPCC and IPBES have acknowledged degrowth as a policy option worth considering, but neither has endorsed it as a primary strategy. 7
Cross-domain connections
- limits-to-growth: The 1972 Club of Rome report is the intellectual ancestor; degrowth is the policy movement that takes its findings seriously
- post-scarcity-economics: The opposing pole — post-scarcity argues technology can dissolve limits; degrowth argues limits require planned contraction
- malthusianism: Degrowth is accused of being neo-Malthusian; its defenders distinguish it by emphasizing redistribution and well-being rather than population control
- universal-basic-income: UBI is often proposed as a degrowth-compatible policy to maintain livelihoods during reduced working hours
- post-normal-times: Degrowth operates in the post-normal space where facts are uncertain (decoupling rates), values are in dispute (growth vs. sustainability), stakes are high, and decisions are urgent
See Also
- limits-to-growth
- post-scarcity-economics
- universal-basic-income
- malthusianism
- intergenerational-equity-litigation
Sources
- Degrowth — Wikipedia
- 2022 — What does degrowth mean? A few points of clarification — Jason Hickel (2021)
- What’s wrong with degrowth? Nothing. | degrowth.info