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117-524: In mainstream development theory , the 'underdevelopment' of states, regions or cultures is as a problem to be solved. Populations and economies are considered 'underdeveloped' if they do not achieve the levels of wealth through the industrialisation associated with the Industrial Revolution , and the ideals of education, rationality, and modernity associated with the Enlightenment . In contrast,

234-549: A North American requires 12.5 gHa. Each inhabitant of North America uses 22.3 times as much land as a Bangladeshi. According to the same report, the average number of global hectares per person was 2.1, while current consumption levels have reached 2.7 hectares per person. For the world's population to attain the living standards typical of European countries, the resources of between three and eight planet Earths would be required with current levels of efficiency and means of production. For world economic equality to be achieved with

351-400: A big push model in infrastructure investment and planning was necessary for the stimulation of industrialization, and that the private sector would not be able to provide the resources for this on its own. Another influential theory of modernization is the dual-sector model by Arthur Lewis . In this model Lewis explained how the traditional stagnant rural sector is gradually replaced by

468-476: A living wage , maximum income caps, declining caps on resource use and emissions , not-for-profit cooperatives , holding deliberative forums , reclaiming the commons , establishing ecovillages , and housing cooperatives . To address the common criticism that such policies are not realistically financeable, economic anthropologist Jason Hickel sees an opportunity to learn from modern monetary theory , which argues that monetary sovereign states can issue

585-474: A June 2020 paper published in Nature Communications , a group of scientists argue that "green growth" or " sustainable growth " is a myth: "we have to get away from our obsession with economic growth—we really need to start managing our economies in a way that protects our climate and natural resources, even if this means less, no or even negative growth." They conclude that a change in economic paradigms

702-676: A complete rejection of the growth paradigm and a move to a degrowth paradigm. There are also fundamental limits to technological solutions in the pursuit of degrowth, as all engagements with technology increase the cumulative matter-energy throughput . However, the convergence of digital commons of knowledge and design with distributed manufacturing technologies may arguably hold potential for building degrowth future scenarios. Scientists report that degrowth scenarios, where economic output either "declines" or declines in terms of contemporary economic metrics such as current GDP , have been neglected in considerations of 1.5 °C scenarios reported by

819-517: A critical view against established sciences and the promotion of local grassroots movements. Also, postdevelopment argues for structural change in order to reach solidarity , reciprocity , and a larger involvement of traditional knowledge . Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. ( Brundtland Commission ) There exist more definitions of sustainable development, but they all have to do with

936-457: A finite and ecologically strained context is deemed intrinsically unsustainable. Development based on growth in a finite, environmentally stressed world is viewed as inherently unsustainable. Critics of degrowth argue that a slowing of economic growth would result in increased unemployment , increased poverty , and decreased income per capita. Many who believe in negative environmental consequences of growth still advocate for economic growth in

1053-440: A finite world leads to disasters of all kinds, ecological salvation lies in the stationary state. ... The crucial error consists in not seeing that not only growth, but also a zero-growth state, nay, even a declining state that does not converge toward annihilation, cannot exist forever in a finite environment. ... [T]he important, yet unnoticed point [is] that the necessary conclusion of the arguments in favor of that vision [of

1170-461: A growing modern and dynamic manufacturing and service economy . Because of the focus on the need for investments in capital, the Linear Stages of Growth Models are sometimes referred to as suffering from ‘capital fundamentalism’. Modernization theory observes traditions and pre-existing institutions of so-called "primitive" societies as obstacles to modern economic growth. Modernization which

1287-410: A lot among cultures. The institutes which voice the concern over underdevelopment are very Western-oriented, and postdevelopment calls for a broader cultural involvement in development thinking. Postdevelopment proposes a vision of society which removes itself from the ideas which currently dominate it. According to Arturo Escobar , postdevelopment is interested instead in local culture and knowledge,

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1404-426: A more environmentally friendly way, but on the whole the higher consumption negates this effect. There are people like Julian Simon however who argue that future technological developments will resolve future problems. Human development theory is a theory which uses ideas from different origins, such as ecology , sustainable development , feminism and welfare economics . It wants to avoid normative politics and

1521-400: A particular threshold where production becomes less resource-intensive and more sustainable. This means that a pro-growth, not an anti-growth policy is needed to solve the environmental problem. But the evidence for the environmental Kuznets curve is quite weak. Also, empirically spoken, people tend to consume more products when their income increases. Maybe those products have been produced in

1638-499: A plea for resource reallocation, aiming to halt unsustainable practices of transforming certain entities into resources, such as non-renewable natural resources. Instead, the focus shifts towards identifying and utilizing alternative resources, such as renewable human capabilities. The ecological footprint measures human demand on the Earth's ecosystems by comparing human demand with the Earth's ecological capacity to regenerate. It represents

1755-423: A provision of human needs through disaccumulation, de-enclosure, and decommodification. It also reconciles with social movements and seeks to recognize the ecological debt to achieve the catch-up , which is postulated as impossible without decolonization. In practice, decolonial practices close to degrowth are observed, such as the movement of Buen vivir or sumak kawsay by various indigenous peoples. There

1872-598: A reduction of energy consumption. It describes (chapters 4–5) degrowth toward a steady state economy as possible and probably positive. The study ends with the words: "The case for a transition to a steady-state economy with low throughput and low emissions, initially in the high-income economies and then in rapidly growing economies, needs more serious attention and international cooperation. Technologies designed to reduce resource use and improve efficiency are often touted as sustainable or green solutions. Degrowth literature, however, warns about these technological advances due to

1989-546: A similar process by which industry develops a technology past the point of usefulness, so much so that industry's efforts effectively sabotage its stated aims. Thus, according to Illich, intensive schooling stupefies, high speed transport immobilizes, and hospitals kill, among others. Illich believed that past this critical threshold, the product of industry served to deprive people of their native ability to subsist, to learn, move and heal autonomously, leaving them more ignorant, isolated and sick than if industry had not reached beyond

2106-414: A stationary state] is that the most desirable state is not a stationary, but a declining one. Undoubtedly, the current growth must cease, nay, be reversed. [Emphasis in original] When reading this particular passage of the text, Grinevald realised that no professional economist of any orientation had ever reasoned like this before. Grinevald also realised the congruence of Georgescu-Roegen's viewpoint and

2223-435: Is a concept that has been promoted by the degrowth community when envisioning an alternative set of social relations and economic organization. It builds upon the political philosophies of localism and is based on values such as diversity, ecologies of knowledge, and openness. Open localism does not look to create an enclosed community but rather to circulate production locally in an open and integrative manner. Open localism

2340-510: Is a direct challenge to the acts of closure regarding identitarian politics. By producing and consuming as much as possible locally, community members enhance their relationships with one another and the surrounding environment. Degrowth's ideas around open localism share similarities with ideas around the commons while also having clear differences. On the one hand, open localism promotes localized, common production in cooperative-like styles similar to some versions of how commons are organized. On

2457-473: Is a good way to make people active in society so that they can provide labor more easily and act as consumers and savers. There have been also many critics of the basic needs approach. It would lack theoretical rigour, practical precision, be in conflict with growth promotion policies , and run the risk of leaving developing countries in permanent turmoil. Neoclassical development theory has it origins in its predecessor: classical economics . Classical economics

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2574-427: Is a wide range of policy proposals associated with degrowth. In 2022, Nick Fitzpatrick, Timothée Parrique and Inês Cosme conducted a comprehensive survey of degrowth literature from 2005 to 2020 and found 530 specific policy proposals with "50 goals, 100 objectives, 380 instruments". The survey found that the ten most frequently cited proposals were: universal basic incomes , work-time reductions, job guarantees with

2691-415: Is absurd as a goal of economic activity and development. Instead, under what he refers to as Buddhist economics , we should aim to maximize well-being while minimizing consumption. In January 1972, Edward Goldsmith and Robert Prescott-Allen—editors of The Ecologist —published A Blueprint for Survival , which called for a radical programme of decentralisation and deindustrialization to prevent what

2808-406: Is also reflected in the work of Immanuel Wallerstein , a famous dependency theorist. Wallerstein rejects the notion of a Third World, claiming that there is only one world which is connected by economic relations ( World Systems Theory ). He argues that this system inherently leads to a division of the world in core, semi-periphery and periphery . One of the results of expansion of the world-system

2925-424: Is based on ideas and research from economic anthropology , ecological economics , environmental sciences , and development studies . It argues that modern capitalism's unitary focus on growth causes widespread ecological damage and is unnecessary for the further increase of human living standards . Degrowth theory has been met with both academic acclaim and considerable criticism. Degrowth's main argument

3042-575: Is best achieved. Such theories draw on a variety of social science disciplines and approaches. In this article, multiple theories are discussed, as are recent developments with regard to these theories. Depending on which theory that is being looked at, there are different explanations to the process of development and their inequalities. Modernization theory is used to analyze the processes in which modernization in societies take place. The theory looks at which aspects of countries are beneficial and which constitute obstacles for economic development . The idea

3159-556: Is consistent with their higher consumption patterns rather than their absolute numbers." The legacy of colonialism can be said to play a role in why overdevelopment has been largely unconsidered due to the "almost exclusive focus on 'underdevelopment' and the underdeveloped world that has characterized development studies and associated disciplines for so long needs". Mainstream development work aims at fighting poverty, sickness and crisis in 'underdeveloped' regions. This sentiment of "metropolitan responsibility for distant human suffering"

3276-470: Is essentially a follow-up to structuralist thinking, and shares many of its core ideas. Whereas structuralists did not consider that development would be possible at all unless a strategy of delinking and rigorous ISI was pursued, dependency thinking could allow development with external links with the developed parts of the globe. However, this kind of development is considered to be "dependent development", i.e., it does not have an internal domestic dynamic in

3393-543: Is evident in the case of caviar production in the Caspian Sea . Supporters of degrowth contend that reducing demand is the sole permanent solution to bridging the demand gap. To sustain renewable resources, both demand and production must be regulated to levels that avert depletion and ensure environmental sustainability. Transitioning to a society less reliant on oil is crucial for averting societal collapse as non-renewable resources dwindle. Degrowth can also be interpreted as

3510-529: Is focused on how social capital and instructional capital can be deployed to optimize the overall value of human capital in an economy. Amartya Sen and Mahbub ul Haq are the most well-known human development theorists. The work of Sen is focused on capabilities : what people can do and be. It is these capabilities, rather than the income or goods that they receive (as in the Basic Needs approach), that determine their well-being. This core idea also underlies

3627-415: Is forced from outside upon a society might induce violent and radical change, but according to modernization theorists it is generally worth this side effect. Critics point to traditional societies as being destroyed and slipping away to a modern form of poverty without ever gaining the promised advantages of modernization. Structuralism is a development theory which focuses on structural aspects which impede

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3744-483: Is highly critical of free market capitalism , and it highlights the importance of extensive public services , care work , self-organization , commons , relational goods , community , and work sharing . Degrowth theory partly orients itself as a critique of green capitalism or as a radical alternative to the market-based, sustainable development goal (SDG) model of addressing ecological overshoot and environmental collapse. A 2024 review of degrowth studies over

3861-406: Is imperative to prevent environmental destruction , and suggest a range of ideas from the reformist to the radical, with the latter consisting of degrowth, eco-socialism and eco-anarchism . In June 2020, the official site of one of the organizations promoting degrowth published an article by Vijay Kolinjivadi, an expert in political ecology, arguing that the emergence of COVID-19 is linked to

3978-474: Is in contrast to for instance Marxism which states that sectors should develop equally. According to Rostow's model, a country needed to follow some rules of development to reach the take-off: (1) The investment rate of a country needs to be increased to at least 10% of its GDP , (2) One or two manufacturing sectors with a high rate of growth need to be established, (3) An institutional, political and social framework has to exist or be created in order to promote

4095-507: Is maintained in society and ways in which primitive societies can make the transition to more advanced societies. Other scientists who have contributed to the development of modernization theory are: David Apter , who did research on the political system and history of democracy; Seymour Martin Lipset , who argued that economic development leads to social changes which tend to lead to democracy; David McClelland , who approached modernization from

4212-471: Is reminiscent of imperialist and colonial movements from Europe and North America as they "became entwined within global networks of exchange and exploitation in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries." This colonial mindset frames the fixation with the Global North coming to the aid of 'distant others'. This view could be countered with an equal attentiveness to the problems of 'overdevelopment' and

4329-526: Is shaped by divisions of labour, the pursuit of product niches and the general evolution of discourses and ideologies that embody precepts of capitalism. "Circular and cumulative causation within the economy then ensures that capital rich regions tend to grow richer while poor regions grow poorer." Responses to overdevelopment include the de-growth movement, sustainable development , anti-development and other local or indigenous resistance movements. One such method being put into place in different regions around

4446-444: Is supported by several other studies which state that absolute decoupling is highly unlikely to be achieved fast enough to prevent global warming over 1.5 °C or 2 °C, even under optimistic policy conditions. Major criticism of this view points out that Degrowth is politically unpalatable, defaulting towards the more free market green growth orthodoxy as a set of solutions that is more politically tenable. The problems with

4563-414: Is that development assistance targeted at those particular aspects can lead to modernization of 'traditional' or 'backward' societies. Scientists from various research disciplines have contributed to modernization theory. The earliest principles of modernization theory can be derived from the idea of progress , which stated that people can develop and change their society themselves. Marquis de Condorcet

4680-577: Is that an infinite expansion of the economy is fundamentally contradictory to the finiteness of material resources on Earth. It argues that economic growth measured by GDP should be abandoned as a policy objective. Policy should instead focus on economic and social metrics such as life expectancy , health , education , housing , and ecologically sustainable work as indicators of both ecosystems and human well-being. Degrowth theorists posit that this would increase human living standards and ecological preservation even as GDP growth slows. Degrowth theory

4797-633: Is the commodification of things, like natural resources , labor and human relationships . The basic needs model was introduced by the International Labour Organization in 1976, mainly in reaction to prevalent modernization- and structuralism-inspired development approaches, which were not achieving satisfactory results in terms of poverty alleviation and combating inequality in developing countries. It tried to define an absolute minimum of resources necessary for long-term physical well-being . The poverty line which follows from this,

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4914-505: Is the amount of income needed to satisfy those basic needs. The approach has been applied in the sphere of development assistance, to determine what a society needs for subsistence, and for poor population groups to rise above the poverty line. Basic needs theory does not focus on investing in economically productive activities. Basic needs can be used as an indicator of the absolute minimum an individual needs to survive. Proponents of basic needs have argued that elimination of absolute poverty

5031-402: Is the most well-known example of the linear stages of growth model. Walt W. Rostow identified five stages through which developing countries had to pass to reach an advanced economy status: (1) Traditional society, (2) Preconditions for take-off, (3) Take-off, (4) Drive to maturity, (5) Age of high mass consumption. He argued that economic development could be led by certain strong sectors; this

5148-425: Is there no empirical evidence supporting the existence of a decoupling of economic growth from environmental pressures on anywhere near the scale needed to deal with environmental breakdown", and that reported cases of existing eco-economic decouplings either depict relative decoupling and/or are observed only temporarily and/or only on a local scale, arguing that alternatives to eco-economic decoupling are needed. This

5265-758: Is through action by the state. Third world countries have to push industrialization and have to reduce their dependency on trade with the First World , and trade among themselves. The roots of structuralism lie in South America , and particularly Chile . In 1950, Raul Prebisch went to Chile to become the first director of the Economic Commission for Latin America . In Chile, he cooperated with Celso Furtado , Aníbal Pinto , Osvaldo Sunkel , and Dudley Seers , who all became influential structuralists. Dependency theory

5382-558: The Arts and Crafts movement (1819–1900), in the United States by Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862), and in Russia by Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910). Degrowth movements draw on the values of humanism , enlightenment , anthropology and human rights . The world's leaders are correctly fixated on economic growth as the answer to virtually all problems, but they're pushing it with all their might in

5499-556: The IPCC and the IPBES "suggest that degrowth policies should be considered in the fight against climate breakdown and biodiversity loss, respectively". The movement has included international conferences promoted by the network Research & Degrowth (R&D). The First International Conference on Economic Degrowth for Ecological Sustainability and Social Equity in Paris (2008) was a discussion about

5616-561: The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), finding that investigated degrowth scenarios "minimize many key risks for feasibility and sustainability compared to technology-driven pathways" with a core problem of such being feasibility in the context of contemporary decision-making of politics and globalized rebound- and relocation-effects. However, structurally realigning 'economic growth' and socioeconomic activity determination-structures may not be widely debated in both

5733-476: The carrying capacity of the earth and its natural systems and the challenges faced by humanity. Sustainable development can be broken up into environmental sustainability , economic sustainability and sociopolitical sustainability. The book Limits to Growth , commissioned by the Club of Rome , gave huge momentum to the thinking about sustainability. Global warming issues are also problems which are emphasized by

5850-426: The savings rate and investments. The constraints impeding economic growth are thus considered by this model to be internal to society. According to the linear stages of growth model, a correctly designed massive injection of capital coupled with intervention by the public sector would ultimately lead to industrialization and economic development of a developing nation . The Rostow's stages of growth model

5967-548: The standard of living which they enjoy. When underdeveloped countries try to remove the Core's influence, the developed countries hinder their attempts to keep control. This means that poverty of developing nations is not the result of the disintegration of these countries in the world system , but because of the way in which they are integrated into this system. In addition to its structuralist roots, dependency theory has much overlap with Neo-Marxism and World Systems Theory , which

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6084-436: The " rebound effect ", also known as Jevons paradox . This concept is based on observations that when a less resource-exhaustive technology is introduced, behavior surrounding the use of that technology may change, and consumption of that technology could increase or even offset any potential resource savings. In light of the rebound effect, proponents of degrowth hold that the only effective "sustainable" solutions must involve

6201-507: The "main theoretical source of degrowth". Likewise, Italian degrowth theorist Mauro Bonaiuti considered Georgescu-Roegen's work to be "one of the analytical cornerstones of the degrowth perspective". E. F. Schumacher 's 1973 book Small Is Beautiful predates a unified degrowth movement but nonetheless serves as an important basis for degrowth ideas. In this book he critiques the neo-liberal model of economic development, arguing that an increasing "standard of living", based on consumption

6318-588: The CT ("Comprehensive Technology") scenario, predicting exceptional technological development and gradual decline, were found to align most closely with data observed as of 2019. In September 2022, the Club of Rome released updated predictive models and policy recommendations in a general-audiences book titled Earth for all – A survival guide to humanity. The degrowth movement recognises Romanian American mathematician , statistician and economist Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen as

6435-522: The Decline: Entropy – Ecology – Economy'). Georgescu-Roegen, who spoke French fluently, approved the use of the term décroissance in the title of the French translation. The book gained influence in French intellectual and academic circles from the outset. Later, the book was expanded and republished in 1995 and once again in 2006; however, the word Demain ('tomorrow') was removed from the book's title in

6552-499: The French debates occurring at the time; this resemblance was captured in the title of the French edition. The translation of Georgescu-Roegen's work into French both fed on and gave further impetus to the concept of décroissance in France—and everywhere else in the francophone world—thereby creating something of an intellectual feedback loop. By the 2000s, when décroissance was to be translated from French back into English as

6669-546: The Institute of International Economics which were believed to be necessary for the recovery of Latin America from the economic and financial crises of the 1980s . These themes are known as the Washington consensus , a termed coined in 1989 by the economist John Williamson . Postdevelopment theory is a school of thought which questions the idea of national economic development altogether. According to postdevelopment scholars,

6786-460: The Meadows Reports) are not strictly the founding texts of the degrowth movement, as these reports only advise zero growth , and have also been used to support the sustainable development movement. Still, they are considered the first studies explicitly presenting economic growth as a key reason for the increase in global environmental problems such as pollution, shortage of raw materials, and

6903-841: The SDG process are political rather than technical, Ezra Klein of the New York Times claims in summary of these criticisms, and degrowth has less plausibility than green growth as a democratic political platform. However, in a recent review of efforts toward Sustain Development Goals by the Council of Foreign Relations in 2023 it was found that progress toward 50% of the minimum viable SDG's have stalled and 30% of these verticals have reversed (or are getting worse, rather than better). Thus, while it may be true that Degrowth will be 'a difficult sell' (per Ezra Klein) to introduce via democratic voluntarism,

7020-572: The Second International Conference on degrowth, discussions encompassed concepts like implementing a maximum wage and promoting open borders. Degrowth advocates an ethical shift that challenges the notion that high-resource consumption lifestyles are desirable. Additionally, alternative perspectives on degrowth include addressing perceived historical injustices perpetrated by the global North through centuries of colonization and exploitation, advocating for wealth redistribution. Determining

7137-584: The South to become more self-sufficient and would end the overconsumption and exploitation of Southern resources by the North. Supporters of degrowth view it as a potential method to shield ecosystems from human exploitation. Within this concept, there is an emphasis on communal stewardship of the environment, fostering a symbiotic relationship between humans and nature. Degrowth recognizes ecosystems as valuable entities beyond their utility as mere sources of resources. During

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7254-466: The South, even if not in the North. Slowing economic growth would fail to deliver the benefits of degrowth — self-sufficiency and material responsibility — and would indeed lead to decreased employment. Rather, degrowth proponents advocate the complete abandonment of the current (growth) economic model, suggesting that relocalizing and abandoning the global economy in the Global South would allow people of

7371-497: The West and is very ethnocentric , according to Sachs. The Western lifestyle may neither be a realistic nor a desirable goal for the world's population, postdevelopment theorists argue. Development is being seen as a loss of a country's own culture, people's perception of themselves and modes of life. According to Majid Rahnema , another leading postdevelopment scholar, things like notions of poverty are very culturally embedded and can differ

7488-466: The Western consumer lifestyle fails to make people notably happy, while causing increasingly dire ecological degradation . Overdevelopment is a crucial factor for the environment, the social realm, human rights , and the global economy . Leopold Kohr published The Overdeveloped Nations: The Diseconomies Of Scale in 1977. Over development is characterised by hyperconsumption . Ivan Illich describes

7605-478: The amount of biologically productive land and sea area required to regenerate the resources a human population consumes and to absorb and render harmless the corresponding waste . According to a 2005 Global Footprint Network report, inhabitants of high-income countries live off of 6.4 global hectares (gHa), while those from low-income countries live off of a single gHa. For example, while each inhabitant of Bangladesh lives off of what they produce from 0.56 gHa,

7722-542: The appropriate scale of action remains a focal point of debate within degrowth movements. Some researchers believe that the world is poised to experience a Great Transformation, either by disastrous events or intentional design. They maintain that ecological economics must incorporate Postdevelopment theories , Buen vivir , and degrowth to affect the change necessary to avoid these potentially catastrophic events. A 2022 paper by Mark Diesendorf found that limiting global warming to 1,5 degrees with no overshoot would require

7839-556: The authors referred to as "the breakdown of society and the irreversible disruption of the life-support systems on this planet". In 2019, a summary for policymakers of the largest, most comprehensive study to date of biodiversity and ecosystem services was published by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services . The report was finalised in Paris. The main conclusions: In

7956-627: The beginning of the 1980s, neoclassical development theory really began to roll out. One of the implications of the neoclassical development theory for developing countries were the Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) which the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund wanted them to adopt. Important aspects of those SAPs include: These measures are more or less reflected by the themes which were identified by

8073-418: The catchy banner for the new social movement, the original term "decline" was deemed inappropriate and misdirected for the purpose: "Decline" usually refers to an unexpected, unwelcome, and temporary economic recession , something to be avoided or quickly overcome. Instead, the neologism "degrowth" was coined to signify a deliberate political action to downscale the economy on a permanent, conscious basis—as in

8190-642: The causal factors which lead development to occur. As such, it neglects the social structures that have to be present to foster development. Economic modernization theories such as Rostow's stages model have been heavily inspired by the Harrod-Domar model which explains in a mathematical way the growth rate of a country in terms of the savings rate and the productivity of capital. Heavy state involvement has often been considered necessary for successful development in economic modernization theory; Paul Rosenstein-Rodan , Ragnar Nurkse and Kurt Mandelbaum argued that

8307-648: The consequences of the productivism and consumerism associated with industrial societies (whether capitalist or socialist ) including: A 2017 review of the research literature on degrowth, found that it focused on three main goals: (1) reduction of environmental degradation ; (2) redistribution of income and wealth locally and globally; (3) promotion of a social transition from economic materialism to participatory culture . The concept of decoupling denotes decoupling economic growth, usually measured in GDP growth , GDP per capita growth or GNI per capita growth from

8424-621: The construction of the Human Development Index , a human-focused measure of development pioneered by the UNDP in its Human Development Reports; this approach has become popular the world over, with indexes and reports published by individual counties, including the American Human Development Index and Report in the United States. The economic side of Sen's work can best be categorized under welfare economics , which evaluates

8541-491: The critique of SDG's and decoupling against green capitalism leveled by Degrowth theorists appear to have predictive power. Degrowth proponents argue that economic expansion must be met with a corresponding increase in resource consumption. Non-renewable resources, like petroleum, have a limited supply and can eventually be exhausted. Similarly, renewable resources can also be depleted if they are harvested at unsustainable rates for prolonged periods. An example of this depletion

8658-466: The critique of socialist feminists like Silvia Federici and Nancy Fraser claiming that capitalist growth builds on the exploitation of women's work. Instead of devaluing it, degrowth centers the economy around care, proposing that care work should be organized as a commons . Centering care goes hand in hand with changing society's time regimes. Degrowth scholars propose a working time reduction. As this does not necessarily lead to gender justice,

8775-683: The currently available resources, proponents say rich countries would have to reduce their standard of living through degrowth. The constraints on resources would eventually lead to a forced reduction in consumption. A controlled reduction of consumption would reduce the trauma of this change, assuming no technological changes increase the planet's carrying capacity . Multiple studies now demonstrate that in many affluent countries per-capita energy consumption could be decreased substantially and quality living standards still be maintained. Degrowth ideology opposes all manifestations of productivism, which advocates that economic productivity and growth should be

8892-600: The degrowth community and in degrowth research which may largely focus on reducing economic growth either more generally or without structural alternative but with e.g. nonsystemic political interventions. Similarly, many green growth advocates suggest that contemporary socioeconomic mechanisms and metrics – including for economic growth – can be continued with forms of nonstructural "energy-GDP decoupling". A study concluded that public services are associated with higher human need satisfaction and lower energy requirements while contemporary forms of economic growth are linked with

9009-566: The destruction of ecosystems . The Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update was published in 2004, and in 2012, a 40-year forecast from Jørgen Randers , one of the book's original authors, was published as 2052: A Global Forecast for the Next Forty Years . In 2021, Club of Rome committee member Gaya Herrington published an article comparing the proposed models' predictions against empirical data trends. The BAU2 ("Business as Usual 2") scenario, predicting "collapse through pollution", as well as

9126-609: The developing country and thus remains highly vulnerable to the economic vagaries of the world market. Dependency thinking starts from the notion that resources flow from the ‘ periphery ’ of poor and underdeveloped states to a ‘ core ’ of wealthy countries, which leads to accumulation of wealth in the rich states at the expense of the poor states. Contrary to modernization theory , dependency theory states that not all societies progress through similar stages of development . Periphery states have unique features, structures and institutions of their own and are considered weaker with regards to

9243-419: The developing country is pursued in order to create an economy which in the end enjoys self-sustaining growth. This can only be reached by ending the reliance of the underdeveloped country on exports of primary goods (agricultural and mining products), and pursuing inward-oriented development by shielding the domestic economy from that of the developed economies. Trade with advanced economies is minimized through

9360-501: The eaves of colonialism and extractivism , perpetuating asymmetric power relationships between territories. Colonialism is understood as the appropriation of common goods , resources, and labor, which is antagonistic to degrowth principles. Through colonial domination, capital depresses the prices of inputs and colonial cheapening occurs to the detriment of the oppressed countries. Degrowth criticizes these appropriation mechanisms and enclosure of one territory over another and proposes

9477-432: The ecological crisis. The 2019 World Scientists' Warning of a Climate Emergency and its 2021 update have asserted that economic growth is a primary driver of the overexploitation of ecosystems, and to preserve the biosphere and mitigate climate change civilization must, in addition to other fundamental changes including stabilizing population growth and adopting largely plant-based diets , "shift from GDP growth and

9594-451: The economic growth of developing countries. The unit of analysis is the transformation of a country's economy from, mainly, a subsistence agriculture to a modern, urbanized manufacturing and service economy . Policy prescriptions resulting from structuralist thinking include major government intervention in the economy to fuel the industrial sector , known as import substitution industrialization (ISI). This structural transformation of

9711-402: The effects of economic policies on the well-being of peoples. Sen wrote the influential book Development as Freedom which added an important ethical side to development economics . De-growth Degrowth is an academic and social movement critical of the concept of growth in gross domestic product as a measure of human and economic development . The idea of degrowth

9828-477: The erection of all kinds of trade barriers and an overvaluation of the domestic exchange rate; in this way the production of domestic substitutes of formerly imported industrial products is encouraged. The logic of the strategy rests on the infant industry argument , which states that young industries initially do not have the economies of scale and experience to be able to compete with foreign competitors and thus need to be protected until they are able to compete in

9945-417: The expansion of those sectors. The Rostow model has serious flaws, of which the most serious are: (1) The model assumes that development can be achieved through a basic sequence of stages which are the same for all countries, a doubtful assumption; (2) The model measures development solely by means of the increase of GDP per capita; (3) The model focuses on characteristics of development, but does not identify

10062-574: The exploitation of women and nature in growth-based societies and proposes a subsistence perspective conceptualized by Maria Mies and Ariel Salleh . Synergies and opportunities for cross-fertilization between degrowth and feminism were proposed in 2022, through networks including the Feminisms and Degrowth Alliance (FaDA). FaDA argued that the 2023 launch of Degrowth Journal created "a convivial space for generating and exploring knowledge and practice from diverse perspectives". A relevant concept within

10179-650: The financial, social, cultural, demographic, and environmental crisis caused by the deficiencies of capitalism and an explanation of the main principles of degrowth. Further conferences were in Barcelona (2010), Montreal (2012), Venice (2012), Leipzig (2014), Budapest (2016), Malmö (2018), and Zagreb (2023). The 10th International Degrowth Conference will be held in Pontevedra in June 2024. Separately, two conferences have been organised as cross-party initiatives of Members of

10296-459: The framework of overdevelopment shifts the focus to the 'developed' countries of the global North , asking "questions about why excessive consumption amongst the affluent is not also seen foremost as an issue of development". By questioning how and why economic development is unevenly distributed around the world, one can evaluate the global North's role and responsibility as “overdevelopers” in producing global inequality. According to various surveys,

10413-447: The free market. The Prebisch–Singer hypothesis states that over time the terms of trade for commodities deteriorate compared to those for manufactured goods , because the income elasticity of demand of manufactured goods is greater than that of primary products. If true, this would also support the ISI strategy. Structuralists argue that the only way Third World countries can develop

10530-454: The future as Earth's finite stock of mineral resources is presently being extracted and put to use; and consequently, that the world economy as a whole is heading towards an inevitable future collapse. Georgescu-Roegen's intellectual inspiration to degrowth dates back to the 1970s. When Georgescu-Roegen delivered a lecture at the University of Geneva in 1974, he made a lasting impression on

10647-484: The goal of improving living standards leans on arbitrary claims as to the desirability and possibility of that goal. Postdevelopment theory arose in the 1980s and 1990s. According to postdevelopment theorists, the idea of development is just a 'mental structure' ( Wolfgang Sachs ) which has resulted in a hierarchy of developed and underdeveloped nations, of which the underdeveloped nations desire to be like developed nations . Development thinking has been dominated by

10764-436: The ideas of The Limits to Growth and Herman Daly 's steady-state economy in his article, "Energy and Economic Myths", delivered as a series of lectures from 1972, but not published before 1975. In the article, Georgescu-Roegen stated the following: [Authors who] were set exclusively on proving the impossibility of growth ... were easily deluded by a simple, now widespread, but false syllogism : Since exponential growth in

10881-507: The main intellectual figure inspiring the movement. In his 1971 work, The Entropy Law and the Economic Process , Georgescu-Roegen argues that economic scarcity is rooted in physical reality; that all natural resources are irreversibly degraded when put to use in economic activity; that the carrying capacity of Earth—that is, Earth's capacity to sustain human populations and consumption levels—is bound to decrease sometime in

10998-519: The money needed to pay for anything available in the national economy without the need to first tax their citizens for the requisite funds. Taxation, credit regulations and price controls could be used to mitigate the inflation this may generate, while also reducing consumption. The contemporary degrowth movement can trace its roots back to the anti-industrialist trends of the 19th century, developed in Great Britain by John Ruskin , William Morris and

11115-611: The opposite, with the contemporary economic system being fundamentally misaligned with the twin goals of meeting human needs and ensuring ecological sustainability , suggesting that prioritizing human well-being and ecological sustainability would be preferable to overgrowth in current metrics of economic growth. The word 'degrowth' was mentioned 28 times in the United Nations IPCC Sixth Assessment Report by Working Group III published in April 2022. Open localism

11232-497: The other hand, open localism does not impose any set of rules or regulations creating a defined boundary, rather it favours a cosmopolitan approach. The degrowth movement builds on feminist economics that has criticized measures of economic growth like the GDP as it excludes work mainly done by women such as unpaid care work (the work performed to fulfill people's needs) and reproductive work (the work sustaining life), first argued by Marilyn Waring . Further, degrowth draws on

11349-520: The overdeveloped world. Marxist work argues that an impact of global capitalism is to produce inequality. The two faces of capitalism are underdevelopment, occurring in the 'third world' and overdevelopment, occurring in Europe and North America. Consumption of commodities drives the overdeveloping form of capitalism in the global North. "Almost everything we now eat and drink, wear and use, listen to and hear, watch and learn come to us in commodity form and

11466-405: The particular places in question. Development theory 1800s: Martineau · Tocqueville  ·  Marx ·  Spencer · Le Bon · Ward · Pareto ·  Tönnies · Veblen ·  Simmel · Durkheim ·  Addams ·  Mead · Weber ·  Du Bois ·  Mannheim · Elias Development theory is a collection of theories about how desirable change in society

11583-477: The past 10 years showed that most were of poor quality: almost 90% were opinions rather than analysis, few used quantitative or qualitative data, and even fewer ones used formal modelling; the latter used small samples or a focus on non-representative cases. Also most studies offered subjective policy advice, but lacked policy evaluation and integration with insights from the literature on environmental/climate policies. The "degrowth" movement arose from concerns over

11700-444: The prevailing French usage of the term—something good to be welcomed and maintained, or so followers believe. When the first international degrowth conference was held in Paris in 2008, the participants honoured Georgescu-Roegen and his work. In his manifesto on Petit traité de la décroissance sereine ("Farewell to Growth"), the leading French champion of the degrowth movement, Serge Latouche , credited Georgescu-Roegen as

11817-484: The primary objectives of human organization. Consequently, it stands in opposition to the prevailing model of sustainable development . While the concept of sustainability aligns with some aspects of degrowth philosophy, sustainable development, as conventionally understood, is based on mainstream development principles focused on augmenting economic growth and consumption. Degrowth views sustainable development as contradictory because any development reliant on growth within

11934-559: The psychological side with his motivations theory; and Talcott Parsons who used his pattern variables to compare backwardness to modernity. The linear stages of growth model is an economic model which is heavily inspired by the Marshall Plan which was used to revitalize Europe's economy after World War II . It assumes that economic growth can only be achieved by industrialization . Growth can be restricted by local institutions and social attitudes , especially if these aspects influence

12051-616: The pursuit of affluence toward sustaining ecosystems and improving human well-being by prioritizing basic needs and reducing inequality." In an opinion piece published in Al Jazeera , Jason Hickel states that this paper, which has more than 11,000 scientist cosigners, demonstrates that there is a "strong scientific consensus" towards abandoning "GDP as a measure of progress." In a 2022 comment published in Nature , Hickel, Giorgos Kallis , Juliet Schor , Julia Steinberger and others say that both

12168-403: The redistribution of care work has to be equally pushed. A concrete proposal by Frigga Haug is the 4-in-1 perspective that proposes 4 hours of wage work per day, freeing time for 4 hours of care work, 4 hours of political activities in a direct democracy , and 4 hours of personal development through learning. Furthermore, degrowth draws on materialist ecofeminisms that state the parallel of

12285-421: The second and third editions. By the time Grinevald suggested the term décroissance to form part of the title of the French translation of Georgescu-Roegen's work, the term had already permeated French intellectual circles since the early 1970s to signify a deliberate political action to downscale the economy on a permanent and voluntary basis. Simultaneously, but independently, Georgescu-Roegen criticised

12402-453: The sustainable development movement. This led to the 1997 Kyoto Accord , with the plan to cap greenhouse-gas emissions . Opponents of the implications of sustainable development often point to the environmental Kuznets curve . The idea behind this curve is that, as an economy grows, it shifts towards more capital and knowledge-intensive production . This means that as an economy grows, its pollution output increases, but only until it reaches

12519-488: The theory of degrowth is decolonialism , which refers to putting an end to the perpetuation of political, social, economic, religious, racial, gender, and epistemological relations of power, domination, and hierarchy of the global north over the global south. The foundation of this relationship lies in the claim that the imminent socio-ecological collapse is caused by capitalism , which is sustained by economic growth . This economic growth in turn can only be maintained under

12636-507: The threshold of overdevelopment. Decay in the human condition appears because under industrial overdevelopment, "people are trained for consumption rather than for action, and at the same time their range of action is narrowed." Counterproductivity has been called "probably Illich's most original contribution". Excessive consumption causes negative environmental impacts in both 'overdeveloped' and 'underdeveloped' regions. "Findings indicate that there are significant differences across countries of

12753-599: The use of natural resources and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Absolute decoupling refers to GDP growth coinciding with a reduction in natural resource use and GHG emissions, while relative decoupling describes an increase in resource use and GHG emissions lower than the increase in GDP growth. The degrowth movement heavily critiques this idea and argues that absolute decoupling is only possible for short periods, specific locations, or with small mitigation rates. In 2021 NGO European Environmental Bureau called stated that "not only

12870-426: The world market economy , while the developed nations have never been in this colonized position in the past. Dependency theorists argue that underdeveloped countries remain economically vulnerable unless they reduce their connections to the world market. Dependency theory states that poor nations provide natural resources and cheap labor for developed nations , without which the developed nations could not have

12987-580: The world in the consumption quality of life of its citizens. Using the Human Development Index , which is composed of longevity, knowledge, and standard of living, data reveal that lives worsen from west to east, with the worst conditions in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. Additionally, environmental damage estimates, as determined by the EDI composite developed specifically for this investigation, demonstrate that wealthier nations create environmental degradation that

13104-525: The world is a population cap. Indigenous movements such as the Aloha ʻAina movement and the Zapatista Army of National Liberation movement, often have their own concepts of development, overdevelopment, and sustainability . Their versions of these concepts overlap with those of environmental activism, but differ in many important ways, many of which relate to the ideal interrelation of humans and environment in

13221-575: The wrong direction. In 1968, the Club of Rome , a think tank headquartered in Winterthur , Switzerland , asked researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for a report on the limits of our world system and the constraints it puts on human numbers and activity. The report, called The Limits to Growth , published in 1972, became the first significant study to model the consequences of economic growth. The reports (also known as

13338-480: The young, newly graduated French historian and philosopher, Jacques Grinevald , who had earlier been introduced to Georgescu-Roegen's works by an academic advisor. Georgescu-Roegen and Grinevald became friends, and Grinevald devoted his research to a closer study of Georgescu-Roegen's work. As a result, in 1979, Grinevald published a French translation of a selection of Georgescu-Roegen's articles entitled Demain la décroissance: Entropie – Écologie – Économie ('Tomorrow,

13455-548: Was a very influential classical economist as well, having written his General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money in 1936. Neoclassical development theory became influential towards the end of the 1970s, fired by the election of Margaret Thatcher in the UK and Ronald Reagan in the USA. Also, the World Bank shifted from its Basic Needs approach to a neoclassical approach in 1980. From

13572-471: Was developed in the 18th and 19th centuries and dealt with the value of products and on which production factors it depends. Early contributors to this theory are Adam Smith and David Ricardo . Classical economists argued – as do the neoclassical ones – in favor of the free market , and against government intervention in those markets. The ' invisible hand ' of Adam Smith makes sure that free trade will ultimately benefit all of society. John Maynard Keynes

13689-485: Was involved in the origins of this theory. This theory also states that technological advancements and economic changes can lead to changes in moral and cultural values. The French sociologist Émile Durkheim stressed the interdependence of institutions in a society and the way in which they interact with cultural and social unity. His work The Division of Labor in Society was very influential. It described how social order

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