Degrowth

Degrowth (French décroissance) is both an academic research programme and a political movement arguing that continued GDP growth in high-income countries is biophysically unsustainable and socially unnecessary. It calls for a democratically planned downscaling of production and consumption — especially in carbon- and resource-intensive sectors such as fossil fuels, private aviation, advertising, fast fashion, and arms — combined with redistribution, shorter working hours, and expanded public provisioning of housing, health, transport, and care.

The term was popularised in French intellectual circles in the early 2000s, drawing on earlier work by Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen on the entropy law and the economic process, André Gorz, Ivan Illich, and Serge Latouche. The first international degrowth conference was held in Paris in 2008, and the field has since produced a substantial peer-reviewed literature, including work by Giorgos Kallis, Jason Hickel, Federico Demaria, and Kate Raworth (whose doughnut economics framework overlaps with but is distinct from degrowth).

Core claims include:

• Absolute decoupling of GDP from material and energy use at the speed required by the Paris Agreement has not been empirically observed at the global scale.
• Well-being indicators (life expectancy, education, life satisfaction) saturate at moderate income levels, so further GDP growth in rich countries yields diminishing social returns.
• Growth-dependent institutions (pensions, debt servicing, employment) need structural redesign — through job guarantees, working-time reduction, and public banking — to function in a non-growing economy.

Degrowth is distinct from recession (which is unplanned and harmful) and from green growth (which retains GDP expansion as a policy goal). Critics, including many mainstream economists and ecomodernists, argue it is politically infeasible, would harm the Global South via reduced trade and aid, or underestimates technological substitution. The European Parliament hosted a Beyond Growth conference in May 2023, signalling growing engagement with the concept inside EU institutions, though no major government has adopted degrowth as official policy.