Survey
Sustainable de-growth: Mapping the context, criticisms and future prospects of an
emergent paradigm
Joan Martínez-Alier a
, Unai Pascual b
, Franck-Dominique Vivien c
, Edwin Zaccai d,
⁎
a
Department of Economics and Economic History, Universidad Autonoma de Barcelona, Spain
b
Department of Land Economy, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom
c
Department of Economics, Université de Reims Champagne Ardenne, France
d
Institute for Environmental Management & Land Planning, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium
a b s t r a c ta r t i c l e i n f o
Article history:
Received 15 October 2009
Received in revised form 26 January 2010
Accepted 23 April 2010
Available online 25 May 2010
Keywords:
Sustainable development
Post-development
Sustainable economics
Ecological economics
De-growth
“Sustainable de-growth” is both a concept and a social-grassroots (Northern) movement with its origins in the
ﬁelds of ecological economics, social ecology, economic anthropology and environmental and social activist groups.
This paper introduces the concept of sustainable de-growth by mapping some of the main intellectual inﬂuences
from these ﬁelds, with special focus on the Francophone and Anglophone thinking about this emergent notion. We
propose hypotheses pertaining to the appeal of sustainable de-growth, and compare it to the messages enclosed
within the dominant sustainable development idea. We scrutinize the theses, contradictions, and consequences of
sustainable de-growth thinking as it is currently being shaped by a heterogeneous body of literature and as it
interacts with an ample and growing corpus of social movements. We also discuss possible future paths for the degrowth
movement compared to the apparent weakening of the sustainable development paradigm.
© 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction
The dominant economic paradigm rewards more instead of better
consumption and private versus public investment in man-made rather
than natural capital. Such triple self-reinforcing biases have been
locked in the social mentality to promote a promethean notion of
chrematistic growth. Associated with the neoliberal ‘mantra’ of the
supremacy of markets for fostering prosperity through ever growing
efﬁciency, the praxis of this economic model is built upon privatisation
of traditional public goods and services and reinforcing economic
globalisation through international governance structures maintained
through the likes of the IMF, WTO, and the World Bank. Even after
attempts from ecological economics and sister disciplines to demonstrate
the intrinsic limits of this model, we now face continuous
environmental and economic crises compounded by a growing
disjuncture between the real economy (in which the value of natural
capital is seldom recognised) and the ﬁctitious paper economy of
ﬁnance.
In a context of increased global environmental problems, the
“sustainable development” discourse (20 years after the Brundtland
Report, WCED, 1987) has been unable to produce the overarching
policies and radical change of behaviour needed at individual and
collective scales. We still live in a world of unchecked consumerism,
excessive materials use and fossil fuel addiction. As a result, there are
renewed calls to depart from the promethean economic growth
paradigm and to embrace a vision of sustainable de-growth,
understood as an equitable and democratic transition to a smaller
economy with less production and consumption. Such a system, in the
eyes of its proponents, would allow a “prosperous way down” (Odum
and Odum, 2006) or at least a soft landing rather than a crash due to
environmental collapse (Recio, 2008; Martínez-Alier, 2008, 2009;
Kallis et al., 2009). This paper puts into context and traces the concept
of “sustainable de-growth” and provides insights on the implications
of this paradigm.
“De-growth” stands here literally for the French word décroissance.
“Socially sustainable economic de-growth” (la décroissance économique
socialement soutenable) is a concept that is ﬁnding its way into
social ecology, human ecology, and ecological economics. The
discussion on de-growth that Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen started
three decades ago is again a topic for discussion in rich countries. This
concept is being catapulted in academic circles in conjunction with
wider social and environmental grassroots groups. Not only are
ecological economists working on the idea of sustainable de-growth
and its implications as an emergent paradigm to break locked-in
concepts inherited from the very malleable 1980s idea of sustainable
development (e.g., Martínez-Alier, 2009; Kerschner, 2010), but there
are also vigorous social debates in non-academic spheres, such as
within Northern social movements for environmental and social
Ecological Economics 69 (2010) 1741–1747
⁎ Corresponding author. Université Libre de Bruxelles, Institut de Gestion de
l'Environnement (IGEAT), Directeur du Centre d'Etudes du Développement Durable,
CP 130/02, 50 Av F. Roosevelt, 1050 Brussels, Belgium. Tel.: +32 2 650 4332.
E-mail address: ezaccai@ulb.ac.be (E. Zaccai).
0921-8009/$ – see front matter © 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.ecolecon.2010.04.017
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Ecological Economics
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ecolecon
justice. Altogether there is a ﬂourishing literature directly associated
with this perspective.1
It is not simple to capture the meaning of sustainable de-growth in a
nutshell. Such explicit opposition to the motto of sustained growth does
not imply an exact opposition to economic growth. It advocates instead
a fundamental change of key references such as the collective
imagination (changement d'imaginaire) and the array of analysis,
propositions and principles guiding the economy. According to Serge
Latouche (2003: 18), perhaps the main intellectual Francophone
reference on de-growth,2
a society of de-growth should be understood
as a “society built on quality rather than on quantity, on cooperation
rather than on competition […] humanity liberated from economism for
which social justice is the objective. […] The motto of de-growth aims
primarily at pointing the insane objective of growth for growth. Degrowth
is not negative growth, a concept that would be contradictory
and absurd, meaning stepping forward while going backward.”
Latouche (2006a:16) goes further to point out that de-growth is not a
concept and that there is no theory of de-growth, as it does not
correspond to a ready-made system. Instead, Latouche describes it as
“political slogan with theoretical implications” (ibid).
Supporters of de-growth consider that the attractiveness of this
motto comes largely from the failure of traditional economic and
political systems and their associated ideologies (e.g., capitalism,
socialism, social-liberalism and possibly sustainable development as
well). For example, according to Ariès (2005:75), de-growth provides
an ‘explosive word’ to pulverize current pro-growth ideologies, hence,
an easy way to state that growth is not the solution but a part of the
problem. However, there is not a single referential text about
sustainable de-growth that has yet found its way to the wider
academic and political arena, as was the case with the Brundtland
Report or the Rio Declaration for Sustainable Development in 1992.3
It
can be argued that sustainable de-growth is both a banner associated
with social and environmental movements and an emergent concept
in academic and intellectual circles, they are interdependent and affect
each other.
The paper is structured as follows. Section 2 contextualizes the idea
of sustainable de-growth by describing the origins and the main
contributions of de-growth thinking in Francophone society which has
so little permeated into English speaking countries. This connects to
but cannot be totally identiﬁed with the idea of sustainable de-growth
as emerging in the wider international academic and social movement
spheres. Section 3 addresses the origins of the ecological–economic
idea of sustainable de-growth in order to better understand its
broadening resonance within ecological economics and in particular in
relation to the concept of the steady state economy. Since there are
some aspects that signiﬁcantly differ between the original French degrowth
movement and the wider notion of sustainable de-growth as
used by some ecological economists, Section 4 delineates and
discusses such differences. Then in Section 5 we reﬂect on the limits
and weakening that the sustainable development paradigm à la
Brundtland is currently undergoing and we juxtapose this situation
with the potential role of the idea of sustainable de-growth. The paper
concludes by opening new avenues in order to enhance the inﬂuence
of de-growth thinking in environmental and social policy change.
2. Sources, proﬁle and characteristics of de-growth à La Française
Some de-growth analyses can be traced and also paralleled with
ecological economics. However, there are also some genuine speciﬁcities
of the French de-growth movement that must be acknowledged in
order to draw an accurate picture of how it originated and how it
connects to the wider notion of sustainable de-growth more broadly.
The French de-growth approach has signiﬁcant historical intellectual
roots. Beginning in the mid-1930s in a society coping with the
trauma of the First World War and the economic crisis of 1929,
Jacques Ellul and Bernard Charbonneau published a manifesto in
which they criticized modernity and asked for a ‘revolution of
civilisation’ (see: Troude-Chastenet, 1998). Before the British economist
Ernst “Fritz” Schumacher's (1973) publication of Small is
Beautiful, Charbonneau (1969) denounced what he called “gigantism"
(i.e. the big city, the big factory, the accumulation of capital, the
development of advertising and bureaucracy, etc.) and the power of
technique as the key of modernity, a theme further studied and
developed by Ellul (1988). Technique, as deﬁned by Ellul, refers to the
totality of methods rationally arrived at and having absolute efﬁciency
in every ﬁeld of human activity. It produces alienation effects for all
people in all the aspects of their life to the extent that the modern man
ends up becoming the instrument of his own instruments. In the view
of Ellul and Charbonneau, the solution was striving for an ascetic
society where quality of life and solidarity among people, instead of
productivity and individualism, become the dominant social values.
This perspective was not only abstract; the two friends regularly
organized study-camps for young people in mountainous regions of
France and Spain. At this time, Ellul also came up with the motto
“think globally, act locally”.
According to Latouche (2006a), the contemporary de-growth
movement à la française is born at the junction of two movements:
one coming from political ecologists, e.g., Grinevald (1975, 2006) and
Gorz (1975, 1988, 2007), and emphasizing the effect of productivism
in critical environmental problems, and the other coming from the
criticism to the concept of development, e.g., Latouche (1986, 1989,
1993, 1999), Partant (1978, 1988) and Rist (1996).
The ﬁrst key line of thought is associated largely with the inﬂuential
work of Georgescu-Roegen, considered “the father of de-growth”
(Clémentin and Cheynet, 2003:11). De-growth, as the English translation
of décroissance, is associated with the notion of “declining” as used
by Georgescu-Roegen's (1975:369) paper “Energy and economic
myths” in which he debated the report on “Limits to Growth” by
Meadows et al. (1972) and the thesis about the steady state economy
championed by Herman Daly (1971, 1974). Georgescu-Roegen's thesis
about the necessity to understand thermodynamics to think adequately
on economics was endorsed and discussed by important French authors
like André Gorz (1975) and René Passet (1979), who was another
pioneer in Ecological Economics (Røpke, 2004). The French translation
and edition by Grinevald and Rens of a selection of Georgescu-Roegen's
1979 writings with the title “Demain la décroissance” (“De-growth for
Tomorrow”), a book reprinted in extensive versions in 1995 and 2006,
had a very important impact in his popularity in the academic and social
movement circles in the Francophone world.4
The second source of inspiration of the French de-growth movement
is less inﬂuenced by ecological economic thinking. Ivan Illich (1973,
1974, 1981) is probably the main reference for the culturalist
1
Examples are recent books, e.g., Bernard et al. (2003), Ariès (2005, 2007), Di Méo
(2006), Latouche (2006a, 2007a,b) and Cheynet (2008), academic papers, e.g.; Duval
(2006), Grinevald (2006), Flipo (2008), Harribey (2007, 2008), Latouche (2003, 2006b,
2007c) and even a new journal (Entropia) that are having a signiﬁcant intellectual
impact in France and also in some Spanish speaking countries (Pallante, 2005; Ecología
Política, 2008).
2
His texts about de-growth have been rarely translated into English. See: Latouche
(2004a, 2007c).
3
Such texts are still far from closing the discussion on the meaning of sustainable
development as it is continuously re-deﬁned and applied in endless contexts (Zaccaï,
2002; Hopwood et al., 2005).
4
Grinevald's role in the diffusion of Georgescu-Roegen's ideas in the Francophone
world must be stressed. The two men met in Geneva in 1974 and a strong friendship
began at this time. From the mid-1970's, a series of Grinevald's papers (1975, 1976)
began to introduce Georgescu-Roegen's ideas in France, Switzerland and Belgium. This
was also favoured by the invitation to Georgescu-Roegen as a visiting professor at the
University of Strasbourg in 1977–1978. Georgescu-Roegen, who spoke perfectly French,
approved the use of Décroissance in Grinevald's and Rens' edition of his work.
1742 J. Martínez-Alier et al. / Ecological Economics 69 (2010) 1741–1747
intellectual criticising the notion of development, inﬂuenced by the
work of the anthropologist Marshall Sahlins (1972), whose analysis
attempted to modify the vision of afﬂuence and scarcity adopted by
most economists after Adam Smith. Illich (1994) also acknowledged the
importance of Ellul's ideas and criticized modern institutions, including
education and medicine, arguing that they tend to create and multiply
impediments to people's autonomy. Illich instead promoted a vision of a
‘modern subsistence society’ as a way of life in a post-industrial
economy where people would be less dependent on the market and the
State and technology would be developed to generate what he coined as
‘genuine use values’ (Illich, 1981).
This second, culturalist pillar of the de-growth movement requires to
transpose Sahlins' idea of primitive societies onto modern Northern
societies.5
But this is often criticized. In response, the de-growth
movement argues against the ‘imaginary economics’ that sustains the
‘growth fetish’ existing in the dominant economic development
paradigm (for example, that of the World Bank) by commodifying
relations among humans and between humans and nature (Latouche,
2006a:38). In this vein, it is argued that the main problem with the idea
of sustainable development is not with the idea of sustainability but
with that of development itself. This resonates with existing ‘postdevelopment’
criticisms (Zaccaï, 2003).6
Hence, it can be said that the
de-growth movement adheres to the idea of establishing other social
ideals rather than calling for development as such. In doing so, it urges
re-examination of the dominant economic values of afﬂuent societies. In
this context, de-growth thinking is centred on the question of how to be
able to enjoy a ‘good life’, an ancient philosophical goal which ﬁnds an
echo in Georgescu-Roegen's (1975:353) concept of “enjoyment of life”.
This search for happiness comes in a variety of forms, depending on
the cultural context. In Northern countries, as in Ellul and Charbonneau's
view, it is associated with an attitude of frugality or “voluntary simplicity”
(Latouche, 2006a:101, 2007c:182). It is also linked with calls for a
disassociation with consumerism as prerequisite for voluntary simplicity,
which in turn requires reducing the time allocated to and the sharing of
labour, better selecting technical innovations and re-localising economic
activities (Latouche, 2004a,b; Recio, 2008). From a more environmental
perspective, the de-growth movement calls for a decrease in material and
energy consumption in countries that exceed their “allowable ecological
footprint” (Ridoux, 2006:92) and acknowledges the allowance for
Southern countries or societies, where ecological impacts are low relative
to their biocapacity, to increase their material consumption and thus
their ecological footprint, an idea explicitly favoured by GeorgescuRoegen
(1975:378).7
3. Sustainable de-growth in ecological economics and its relations
to the steady state economy
Aside from, or coupled with the modern notion of de-growth à la
française, it is possible to ﬁnd de-growth precursors in Europe in the
19th Century such as John Stuart Mill and William Stanley Jevons. But it
was the highly inﬂuential works of the early 1970s by Howard T. Odum
(1971), Dennis Meadows and collaborators (1972) and Ernst “Fritz”
Schumacher (1973), to some extent inspired by the Gandhian
economist J.C Kumarappa's “Economy of Permanence”,8
and the ideas
from the 1950s and 1960s of Karl William Kapp, Nicholas GeorgescuRoegen,
Kenneth Boulding, Herman Daly and Robert Ayres, which
together created enough intellectual nourishment to form the ﬁeld of
ecological economics. All of these authors understood the economy in
physical terms and many suggested the need for social change criticising
mainstream economics and its focus on chrematistic growth.
In this context, as mentioned in the previous section, GeorgescuRoegen
(1975) had already started the discussion on economic degrowth.
After the Brundtland's report, Georgescu-Roegen (1993)
championed the idea that the term sustainable growth is an
oxymoron; the term sustainable development, he argued, can only
make sense if development is associated with no growth in the scale
of the economy. However, ecological economics and industrial
ecology have been attesting to correlations between the use of
materials and energy and economic growth.
The use of non renewable fossil fuels and of the products of current
photosynthesis asshown in theincreased HANPP (human appropriation
of net primary production) (Imhoff et al., 2004), attest to the increasing
scale of the economy in its physical dimension. From an ecological
perspective, de-growth implies physical de-growth or downsizing
economic throughput as measured by material and energy ﬂows. The
debate rests on how much downsizingis necessary for sustainability and
whether there is an optimal scale of the economy.
On these questions, the modern de-growth movement disagrees
with the steady state economy (SSE) line of thought held by many
ecological economists. While the de-growth movement is mainly
associated with the Francophone world, SSE is articulated mostly in
North America. For instance the Center for the Advancement of the
Steady State Economy (CASSE) outreaches the messages in favour of
SSE as implying a “relatively stable, mildly ﬂuctuating product of
population and per capita consumption” in the economy (Czech and
Daly, 2004: 254). In practice this implies aiming at stabilizing the
economy in the short run (in the political and economic sense of
approximately one decade) around a slightly varying level of capital
stock, non growing human labour (population) level as well as an
almost constant rate of throughput and the production of socially
valuable goods and services under a given technological framework.
In the view of SSE, technological progress would increase the ratio of
GDP per unit of throughput although limited by (i) rebound effects
(see e.g., Polimeni et al., 2008), (ii) investments in innovation which
spurs economic growth (Czech, 2003) and ultimately (associated with
a geological long-run period) by (iii) the law of thermodynamics
(Georgescu-Roegen, 1993). What is then the differences and linkages
between the SEE and de-growth standpoints?
Against John Stuart Mill and Herman Daly's (1971, 1974) views on
the need for a steady state economy, Georgescu-Roegen fervently
argued in favour of retracting consumption levels in countries such as
the US which he understood was already consuming excessively and
would inexorably end up in a situation now described as “descend
capitalism” (Odum and Odum, 2006:28).9
However, according to Daly
(1992) an optimal scale of the economy is one that is sustainable
therefore not eroding the environmental carrying capacity over time
and one where at the margin, economic activity provides the same
5
Sahlins (1972) argued against the idea that primitive societies are symbols of
misery. Instead he considers that they are afﬂuent societies because they satisfy their
frugal needs with a few hours of work, thus avoiding increasing production and
exchanges in response to unsatisﬁed needs, which would ultimately create social
divisions between rich and poor.
6
A symposium was organized in Paris in 2002, with the support of UNESCO, titled
“Défaire le développement. Refaire le monde” (Appfel-Marglin et al., 2003). Illich,
Latouche and Rist were present at this meeting. ‘Post-development’ has had a greater
international resonance than de-growth, see e.g., Rahnema and Bawtree (1997). See
also Zaccaï (2003) for an analysis linking post-development, development, and
ecological critics, focusing especially on the work of Wolfgang Sachs.
7
According to Latouche (2005:64) it is reasonable that Africans with small
ecological footprints “be given an unquestionable right to increase it in order to put
up a certain kind of growth, in the form of increasing consumption and production,
within a more equitable approach to the global share of resources” (own translation).
See also Latouche (2007b) for similar statements.
8
See: Govindu and Malghan (2005).
9
Interestingly although, Daly and Georgescu-Roegen agreed on the desirability of a
decrease in the human population, an uncomfortable topic for some de-growth
theorists who are mostly anti-Malthusian within the Marxist left. However,
Georgescu-Roegen and Daly were not in agreement on the issue of universal freedom
for population migration. While this was supported by Georgescu-Roegen, Daly's
proposal (shared by Boulding) of tradeable birth-permits was, in its turn, not favoured
by Georgescu-Roegen (Kerschner, 2010).
1743J. Martínez-Alier et al. / Ecological Economics 69 (2010) 1741–1747
level of productive beneﬁt to society compared to the cost of
degrading ecosystem services from further growth in throughput.
Against the apparent confrontation between the notions of SEE
and de-growth, one can also see them as being compatible and
complementary. As Kerschner (2010) points out, economic degrowth
rather than a goal in itself could be understood as the
industrialized North's path towards a globally equitable SSE. Degrowth
in throughput in the global North, and a decrease in world
population (after an estimated peak around 2050) might lead towards
a steady state economy. This situation could be deﬁned as a quasi-SSE
resting in a dynamic equilibrium which may still be approximated
even if never totally achieved as a goal (Daly, 2007 in Kerschner,
2010). That is, some sectors of the economy could grow while others
would decline within a steady state framework.
The two intellectual currents of sustainable de-growth and steady
state economy thus might be seen to agree with theidea thatsocieties will
ﬁnd it problematic to undergo sudden de-growth, for instance in terms of
GDP, or perhaps to a lesser extent in terms of energy and materials of say,
30–40% even if for GHG emissions science mostly argues in favour of this
option in the very short run (Martínez-Alier, 2009). The option would
thus be for ‘some de-growth’ and then a mildly ﬂuctuating steady state,
avoiding rebound effects as technological efﬁciencies increase.
The corollary is that neither economic growth nor de-growth can be
seen sustainable. Instead the goal may be to attain after a post- degrowth
transition a globally equitable steady state economy as the
sustainable alternative in a practical, policy-relevant time frame. This
vision may fruitfully open the prospect for political synergism between
the de-growth and steady state camps and for de-growth grass-root
movements' embrace of the notion of a globally equitable quasi-steady
state economy while keeping their stand against Georgescu-Roegen's
growthmania or Latouche's tyranny of growth (see: Kerschner, 2010).
Taking a supplementary argument, the de-growth camp would, in
addition to physical critical issues, argue that downsizing is not just a
matter of physically reducingthroughput asit alsoinvolves decolonizing
minds from economism (Latouche, 2006a,b). This echoes in most
ecological economists' views that conventional economic accounting is
false not only as it disregards the physical and biological aspects of the
economy but because it cannot reﬂect societal well-being.10
For the most part, however, while sustainable de-growth in
ecological economics still centers on the development of physical
indicators and measuring well being and sustainability, there is
perhaps less emphasis on questioning the notion of ‘need’, the subject
of a heated debate in the 1930s and broached in Keynes's texts. The
de-growth movement can be seen as promoting the debate of ‘needs’
in ecological economics and follow the path of Manfred Max-Neef
(1991) as a result of taking into account environmental issues and the
global distribution of wealth (Vivien, 2008).
It is also possible that the emergence of the de-growth discourse
on the Aristotelian ‘good life’ (as the World Social Forum proclaims)
guided by oikonomia rather than chrematistics will affect ecological
economics approaches when tackling the idea of sustainable degrowth
(Martínez-Alier, 2009). Some of these thoughts resonate and
are shared by international environmental and social movements.
This is particularly true for those social movements organized around
the idea of environmental justice with a clear objective of an economy
that sustainably fulﬁls the food, health, education and housing needs
of all people and provides for as much joie de vivre as possible.11
4. Comparing de-growth à La Française with sustainable de-growth
in ecological economics
The preceding section has shown some common objectives and
ideas between the de-growth movement and the ecological-economic
idea of sustainable de-growth. It has also discussed ways by which degrowth
and a quasi-steady state economy may be fruitfully made
compatible through a common framework. However, it is important
to note that the main thinkers of de-growth à la française develop
points of view and references that are still quite different from those
generally found within ecological economics.12
A ﬁrst speciﬁcity of the de-growth movement (à la française) refers
to the fact that in its origins from the 1930s to the 1970s, the French
intellectual context was strongly inﬂuenced by Marxism.13
Not
surprisingly, French de-growth thinkers consider economic questions
to be political questions. In their writings, we ﬁnd the aspiration to get
rid of capitalism which destroys man and nature, but without
explicitly aspiring to construct a ‘radiant socialism’ (see e.g., Ariès,
2005). Instead their keyword is autonomy: autonomy of individuals,
small groups, regions, and the like.
A second intellectual speciﬁcity of de-growth à la française is its
constant reference to economic anthropology. For instance Gorz (1973)
focused mainly on the invention of modern work structures and the
division of labour while Grinevald (1975, 2006) discusses the
construction of the Industrial Revolution's idea and, as an extension,
the way the actual paradigm of development came to the fore. Together
with Latouche (2005), the position of the French de-growth thinkers
can be interpreted as being anti-economics in the sense that economics
is viewed as the ‘dismal science’ from which we need to escape.
However, the idea of de-growth economics is still little developed. This
is to a large extent the reason why the ecological economics critique of
neoclassical economics is keenly supported by the advocates degrowth
à la française. As a result we would argue that there might be a
need in the de-growth camp to better clarify the distinction between
the idea of ‘stepping out of economics’, (Latouche, 2006a:169) and
’stepping out of economism’ (Ariès, 2005:77; Ridoux, 2006:38).14
Except for the international conference on “Economic de-growth
for ecological sustainability” held in Paris in April 2008 (see: Mylondo,
2009; Schneider et al., 2010), the main theoretical debates between
de-growth à la française and economics have been held within the
French Régulation economic school15
mostly seen in the work by
Guibert and Latouche (2006) who try to update Marxist theories. The
main debates focus on unemployment, especially on the impact of the
reduction of labour time on the creation of jobs, and on the
importance of public services, the latter being an important political
subject in France (Di Méo and Harribey, 2006).
The recent recognition of the existence of Régulation theory by
ecological economics (Zuindeau, 2007) is a ﬁrst step to create, even in
an indirect way, a dialogue between ecological economics and the
French de-growth movement. The global economic crisis and the
growth of unemployment are elements that can contribute to this
dialogue. Let us add here that it has been noticed ever since the
“Limits to Growth” report that renouncing growth means using more
regulation and fostering ethical progress. The disadvantaged cannot
10
Interestingly, a much cited recent report by the blue ribbon Commission on the
Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress, with Nobel laureates
Joseph Stiglitz and Amartya Sen and created in 2008 on a French government's
initiative, echoes these ideas, admittedly with some delay.
11
An example is that of the use of the Quechua expression sumak kawsay (good
living) in the new Constitution of Ecuador of 2008.
12
Until recently there was poor intellectual communication across the English
Channel on the French meaning of "De-growth". For instance in Jackson (2009), the
concept is rarely mentioned.
13
Marx is an important reference to understand the work of intellectuals such as
Ellul, Gorz, and Latouche; even if these authors may criticize Marxism, for different
reasons.
14
Latouche for instance sometimes embraces the use of economic incentives such as
eco-taxes to alter human behaviour, a recommendation which is not very different
from proclaiming the usefulness of market based instruments to curve environmental
degradation.
15
Régulation theory is a particular approach of the institutionalist movement, mainly
interested in macroeconomic issues, which appeared in France at the end of the 1970s.
See: Zuindeau (2007).
1744 J. Martínez-Alier et al. / Ecological Economics 69 (2010) 1741–1747
just wait and hope for the trickle-down effects from economic growth.
Actual sharing of beneﬁts and thus of property rights between North
and South is needed for a fairer notion of sustainable development.
This profound observation can be illustrated in many contexts, but
also sheds light on the political difﬁculties of the de-growth
enterprise.
As mentioned earlier, de-growth à la française is fundamentally a
movement aiming at changing the nature of modern society
(Latouche, 2006b). The theoretical principles form only one pillar of
the movement. There are two others key pillars: an activist one,
supported by social grass-root movements (see special issue in
Ecología Política, 2008), and a political one which is occupied in
France by two hotly debated questions, i.e. is de-growth a left- or
right-wing movement? Is it necessary to create a de-growth political
party? (Latouche, 2006a:269; Cheynet, 2008:135). The three pillars
are not strictly linked nor integrated in a political programme, a clear
doctrinal corpus, or a register of actions and experiences. This locates
the de-growth movement from far from a De-growth Internationale.
5. The lifecycle of the sustainable development paradigm: a fading
adage?
In the social arena, the campaigners for de-growth tend to actively
shy away from the notion of sustainable development a la Brundtlànd
report, and even more in its ecological modernization interpretation
endorsed by ‘green companies’, viewing it as a false and unfeasible
project that delays the urgent changes needed, as for instance in the
case of global climate change.
There are a number of reasons for the weakening of the appeal of
the concept of sustainable development that has largely dominated
ecological economics and wider environmental and social discourses
over the past two decades (Zaccaï, 2002; Hopwood et al., 2005; Vivien,
2008). This weakening no doubt contributes to the success of
ﬂourishing works and initiatives under the banner of de-growth.
This section looks at the future of de-growth as a potential emergent
paradigm appealing to many sectors of society in lieu of the concept of
sustainable development.
Although some progress may be detected for particular objectives
arising from the sustainable development paradigm, the general
picture with regard to environmental pressure, even when depicted
by ofﬁcial agencies, continues to look bleak at global and even regional
levels (OECD, 2008; EEA, 2009). The ﬁnal words of the summary of the
Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA, 2005) make explicit that the
changes that could reverse the increasing damages to ecosystems and
biodiversity are not under way. The international ofﬁcial objectives of
halting biodiversity loss in 2010 are not being achieved in Europe and
elsewhere. Regarding the issue of global climate change the latest
ﬁndings indicate, report after report, towards more severe and
bleaker assessments if the current weak policies for tackling the
problem are not modiﬁed. Lack of agreement on GHG emission
reductions at Copenhagen in December 2009 is in stark contrast to the
main objectives suggested by the IPCC, such as peaking global CO2
emissions within the next years and decreasing them by 80% by 2050
in rich countries. Actual known trends in energy consumption signal
that the world is moving in another direction. At the emission rates of
2007, leading to an increase of approximately 2 extra ppm per year,
the concentration of CO2 at 450 ppm in the atmosphere might be
reached within 30 years. These are inescapable uncomfortable facts
(Walker and King, 2008).
These ﬂagrant shortcomings cast a profound doubt on the
achievement, within current policies of the double convergence path
promoted by sustainable development: convergence between ecological,
social and economic dimensions of development and
(contraction and) convergence between the impacts of Northern
and Southern countries in order to be more environmentally sound
and economically just.
In social terms progress toward meeting the Millennium Development
Goals is signiﬁcantly slower than expected (UN, 2008). In
industrialized and rapidly industrializing countries growth in material
and energy consumption appears unsustainable in the long run, and
other countries ofﬁcially aspire to the same model. During the 1990s,
this pessimistic conclusion was tempered by the idea that we had to
allow some time for policies to be enacted and to show results, as such
structural changes could not be made overnight. At the Johannesburg
World Summit on Sustainable Development in 2002 and during the
years following it, the difﬁculty of obtaining overall results was
somewhat concealed by partial success stories, or ‘positive initiatives’
put in the forefront as an effort to maintain commitment, i.e., ‘Type II’
at Johannesburg akin to ’best practice’ in EU environmental programs.
Nowadays skepticism has increased about the usefulness of a
sustainable development discourse which, more than 20 years after
its launching and universal support, still leaves us largely with the
same problems as, or worse than, at the start of the sustainable
development era.
On the other hand, the notion of development has gained
support when differentiating it from economic growth (e.g., Escobar,
1992; Sachs, 1992; Noorgard, 1994). A notable advancement in
separating development from economic growth is due to the
visibility of the Human Development Index. Moreover, there is a
strong body of cultural criticism (embodied in the term “postdevelopment”)
of the notion of development that denounces the
identiﬁcation of development to the still dominant fetish of
economic growth within the mindset of development economists
and policy makers. The de-growth movement vigorously supports
the “post-development” critique. Its emergence is a sign of for a low
tide in the idea of sustainable development, or at least of a
rethinking of its usefulness.16
In the context of the economic crisis of 2008–09, the terms crisis,
recession and downturn resound frantically in the media, while the
term sustainable development has somehow been eclipsed in the
storm of ﬁnance ﬂuxes. The new global economic context tends to
make many actors reconsider their notion of development. In a way,
the de-growth movement had already anticipated the potential
intertwined social, economic and environmental crises such as the
ones in which we are immersed, in contrast to the idea of ‘soft landing’
and convergence dominant in the mindset of sustainable development
advocates.
In eyes of de-growth proponents, economic growth, even if
disguised as sustainable development, will lead to social and
ecological collapse. It is thus better to promote different social values
and to start adapting to forced de-growths that are likely to occur, in
order to ﬁnd a prosperous way down (Odum and Odum, 2006). To a
certain extent we are witnessing here a turn of paradigms, as these
have their own lifecycles dependent on the soundness of the theories
and analysis conveyed by the concepts and also on what happens in a
society.
6. Concluding remarks: what future for sustainable de-growth as
a driver of change?
For many reasons expressed in this paper, the forces originating
from the intellectual French de-growth movement and the wider
sustainable de-growth concept echoed by some ecological economists
are gaining attraction against the mainstream ideas ingrained in the
sustainable development paradigm. But, beyond a cluster of theoretical
works and local grass-root initiatives, can ecological economics
16
Of course, the culturalist critique of development is not only French (see for
instance Ashish Nandy's inﬂuential work in India).
1745J. Martínez-Alier et al. / Ecological Economics 69 (2010) 1741–1747
formulate the conditions and propositions needed to successfully
make the changes advocated by the de-growth movement? The
answer can only be partial because of the fragmented body of analyses
already described and the incipient state of the political strategy of the
tenants of this movement. Nevertheless, this question is crucial for
considering the validity of concepts (i.e., sustainable development,
de-growth) that not only hold by their intellectual framing but also by
their capacity to contribute to the social changes that they advocate. In
this juncture we formulate the following propositions.
While Europe already agreed (at least until Copenhagen in
December 2009) that CO2 should decrease by 20–30% of 1990 levels
by 2020 and that this is only a beginning, and while it is still
conceivable that the US and other countries might also join in a policy
of CO2 emission reductions, the rest of the environmental impact
indicators should also be reduced in proportions to be decided by
scientiﬁcally informed socio-political debates. As a contribution to a
research agenda, we believe that within ecological economics more
social analyses should be used to understand the conditions for
reaching these objectives. In addition, there is room for new technical
work about the proﬁle of a society with much less material
consumption, especially in countries where the path of industrialization
is still strongly following its course. One can notice at this point
that, contrary to many sustainable development ﬁelds of research,
there has not been yet much technical work in the de-growth
movement as reﬂected at the First International Conference on
Degrowth in Paris in April 2008.17
It can be assumed that by reducing the physical indicators of
throughput, the magnitude of macro-level chrematistic indicators such
as GDP would also be reduced. This may generate social disruptions
given our locked in social relations (e.g., urban transport infrastructures
linked to job locations) as suggested by Latouche (2004b), and evident
for many. Further, if the economy stops growing but labour productivity
does not decline, this would result in growing unemployment. It implies
that, to maintain the wellbeing of societies, there is a need to reduce the
legal working time or/and to delink citizens' revenue from wage
employment to a greater extent than is currently done.18
In any case, to
gain attraction in political and social debates, propositions pertaining to
the relations between de-growth, remuneration, employment and work
must be extensively discussed. Similarly, the implications of economic
de-growth for the monetary and ﬁnancial system must be analysed.
It is also pertinent to strive for a greater coherence on what is
meant by socially sustainable economic de-growth, both from a more
theoretical angle and as associated with grassroots social movements'
calls for local and individual action. This call for self-engagement is
not without links to the grassroots activism present in ecological
movements since the late 1960s. The strategy by which such local
initiatives may foster a wider social change in our time, for instance
through effective coalitions at the local, national and international
levels, remains unclear at the moment.
From an ecological economics perspective, for sustainable degrowth
to be successful one important step would be to provide a
platform on which social movements from the North and the South,
including conservationists, trade unions, small farmers movements
and those movements from the South that defend a low environmental
impact economy, can converge. For example, there can be a
conﬂuence of conservationists concerned with the loss of biodiversity,
of the many people concerned with climate change who push for
renewable energy, of the socialists and trade unionists who strive for
more economic justice, of urban squatters who preach ‘autonomy’,
agro-ecologists, neo-rurals, and the large peasant movements, the
pessimists (or realists) on the risks and uncertainties of technical
change (post-normal science), and the movements of the environmentalism
of the poor including indigenous movements that demand
the preservation of the environment for livelihood (Martínez-Alier,
2008:32). However, it has to be understood under which conditions
such coalitions can provide more results than the sustainable
development approach, also largely based on coalitions (Zaccaï,
2002).
In a ﬁnal comparison between the two paradigms (de-growth
leading to a quasi-steady state, and sustainable development) there is
a clear disadvantage of the ﬁrst one by its confrontational position
towards the fundamental powers of our societies. As Ayres
(2008:290) puts it: “none of the important economic actors, whether
government leaders or private sector executives, has an incentive
compatible with a ‘no growth’ policy.”19
This certainly might explain
why to this point, we see very few institutional actors endorsing degrowth
and steady state discourse alike, as well as a lack of organized
political programs towards a de-growth transition, contrarily to
programs and strategies inspired by sustainable development. At the
same time an advantage of putting forward questions about scale,
downsizing, de-growth, or about the ethical aims of a society, instead
of skipping them out from technical and economic debates, could be
to provide us with more powerful tools in the face of the crises we
confront.
Last but not least, while the de-growth thinking clearly delinks the
notions of sustainability and growth, it is important to understand
that the notion of economic growth should not be reduced to the
growth of chrematistic measures of the economy such as GDP, even if
this is highly correlated with the reduction of material and energy
ﬂows or throughput. The concept of growth is in itself vague and
polymorphic, thus bringing such ambiguity to the term ‘de-growth.’
Unraveling the notion of growth in complex coupled ecologicaleconomic
systems should be a priority for enabling a fruitful dialogue
towards enriching the sustainable de-growth idea. Otherwise,
sustainable de-growth will not go beyond becoming a new ‘antifetish’,
becoming a fetish in itself nonetheless.
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank two anonymous reviewers for their
constructive comments. The usual disclaimer applies.
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