Academics from around the world explore the (positive) implications of a no-growth economy.

If economic growth and planetary survival are on an inexorable collision course – as Peak Oil, global warming, species extinctions and many other trends suggest – then what is the path forward?

In April 2008, more than 140 researchers in economics, the environmental sciences and social sciences from 30 countries converged on Paris for the first conference on “Economic Degrowth for Ecological Sustainability and Social Equity.” Now the proceedings from that epochal event are available online as a pdf file. The 322-page document is probably one of the best single collections of timely, authoritative writings on “steady state” or “no-growth economics.”



Photo by “nicorien,“http://www.flickr.com/photos/nicorien/118131870 via Flickr, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution, ShareAlike license.

The core question of the conference – and of a proto-movement with strong support in France, Italy and other European nations – is how to imagine a world that is not based on indefinite economic and material growth. “Is degrowth of industrialised countries possible in the present context?” asks the conference website. “What are the social and institutional conditions required for a fair and sustainable economic de-growth process?”

Of course, merely asking this heretical question immediately raises a host of additional questions: How should progress in achieving degrowth be measured? How does the global South regard degrowth? What effects would degrowth have on consumption, production and the distribution of wealth? How could degrowth, social equity and sustainability be achieved in a coordinated way?

In the context of conventional economics, even asking questions like these is considered incendiary. The fact that there is now a committed international corps of thinkers collaborating in trying to answer such questions is a hopeful sign indeed.

Browsing the conference proceedings yields a number of interesting articles:

“Why Environmental Sustainability Can Most Probably Not Be Attained with Growing Production”

“Conceptual Roots of Degrowth”

“Gastonomic Sciences: Slow Food Revolution versus Gene Revolution”

“Why Are We Growth-Addicted?”

“Less is More: The Influence of Aspirations and Priming on Well-being”

“The Finality of Degrowth and its Relation with Justice”

“The Degrowth Economy and Lifestyles”

For those who want a short introduction to degrowth, instead of wading through the long conference proceedings, consider Serge LaTouche’s essay in the French newspaper Le Monde.

The planet’s various ecological crises will surely have to get worse before the premises of the Degrowth conference will receive a fair and open hearing. Still, I am encouraged that a degrowth conversation has begun. I know that readers of OntheCommons.org are not timid or parochial, so you will probably enjoy the formal declaration that was ratified by conference participants:

We, participants in the Economic De-Growth For Ecological Sustainability And Social Equity Conference held in Paris on April 18-19, 2008 make the following declaration:

GDP

GNP

We therefore call for a paradigm shift from the general and unlimited pursuit of economic growth to a concept of “right-sizing” the global and national economies.

The paradigm shift involves degrowth in wealthy parts of the world.