What is, and isn’t, degrowth?*

Dr Julien-François Gerber and MA student Arca Arguelles-Caouette discuss degrowth.

Julien-François (J): There is something very obvious about degrowth: we need to decrease our use of resources and rethink the kind of society we want. At a very basic level that’s what degrowth is about. But it’s also about redistributing resources better. We need to have a collective discussion about what is required and what is unnecessary.

Arca (A): I agree. But it also involves collective, bottom-up activism; initiatives and every-day practices that are already happening. I think it’s also an invitation to critically rethink our lifestyles and our societies. And it problematizes growth as tied to deeply racial, gendered and extractive hierarchies and dependencies.

Degrowth brings in a new unit of analysis which moves away from the rational individual to really thinking about communities. And this brings in more thinking about who is included and excluded in communities.

J: I agree. What I like about the word ‘degrowth’ is that it strikes at the core of capitalist modernity: the idea that more is better, that we need more stuff, more technological progress, that it’s never enough. Degrowth is meant to trigger discussion about this, to go beyond the notion of sustainable development. For degrowthers, sustainable development is an oxymoron because ‘development’ is typically associated with endless growth, something that can never be sustainable.

A: I would also argue that sustainable development and degrowth build from a different logic; for one thing degrowth criticizes growth and it also goes beyond the agency of the individual. Degrowth also advocates values or ethics around well-being which can include sharing, caring, nurturing, horizontality: it re-questions our social relationships.

J: Many degrowthers would also embrace the circular economy, but they would add that we also need to problematize growth. Many circular economy thinkers believe that we can continue to expand the economy as long as we recycle; degrowth argues that we also need to stop unnecessary consumption and production.

A: Indeed. Degrowth doesn’t just look at consumption but also at the problem of production: why do we still have extractive economies, or overdimensioning, over-producing and over-consuming systems?

J: Right. Degrowth is not just about less consumption and less production while everything else remains the same. That already has a name, it’s called a recession. Degrowth is not a recession; it’s a rethinking of the economic and social structures that we live in. A: Do you have any examples of degrowth in practice?

J: There’s a lot to learn from historical and non-western societies that were often non-growing. Cuban agriculture of the 80s is a more contemporary example: all its relationships with the ex-USSR were cut and it had to completely rethink the way it organized its economy. It was the largest-scale transition to agro-ecology witnessed so far and it was pretty successful. Sustainability indicators were going up, agroecological production was doing well and health indicators were also on the up. Unfortunately, at the end of the 90s it went back to a normal growthbased model.

A: My research looks at the reappropriation and sharing of peasantdriven technology on the peasant cooperative L’Atelier Paysan in France. Related to degrowth are the ideas that knowledge(s) and know-hows should be accessible to everyone. The peasant farmers learn how to build, assemble, fix and repair. They create and test tools and technologies that are adapted to their farming grounds and their practices, and advocate more ecological and resilient farming models. This is a concrete case of degrowth in an industrialized country. However, degrowth is also relevant in the global South.

J: Yes, that’s true. Many of the fundamental degrowth ideas come from the global South. For example, what the Sri Lankan scholar, Ananda Coomaraswamy, said about postindustrialism in 1914 resembles degrowth. Two of the forefathers of degrowth, Ernst Schumacher and Ivan Illich, were both influenced by an Indian economist, Joseph Kumarappa, who was very much a degrowth thinker. The critique of growth also applies to many sectors of so-called developing countries, where the ideology of growth has taken solid root. Having said that, the first economies that need to degrow are the industrialized economies as they account for the lion’s share of the global use of resources.

Did the people you worked with in France have links with the degrowth movement there?

A: Most of my encounters were with peasant farmers. Our discussions did not explicitly talk about degrowth, but more on thinking critically about technology. Some of the peasant farmers I met were also interested in less intensive, organic farming and in practices that are less harmful to the soil.

I’m trying to expand my understanding by following some of the ideas put forward by feminist political ecology scholars. These scholars ask questions about who can access and use technologies, where they are used and who’s included in their development. Degrowth should include such contributions and think about who is included in the notion of community.

J: We also need to look at transition. This is difficult because we are living in a period with one globally dominant system: capitalism. Based on Erik Olin Wright’s ideas about societal transformations, I believe degrowth needs ‘interstitial politics’: building autonomous degrowth pockets within capitalism which would slowly expand and connect with each other. This requires organizing in different ways and necessarily involves social struggles. One possible motor for change is the environmental justice movement. This is one of the most powerful socio-political forces right now which is literally fighting the impacts of growth. There is a natural alliance between environmental justice and degrowth.

A: Yes, I agree. Environmental justice understands that climate change, for example, affects people differently and that it deepens social inequalities. Degrowth needs to understand this and move away from the universalist view of humanity.

J: Clearly, as a young movement, degrowth still has a lot to clarify, which I find challenging and exciting.

New books

Encounters after the Soviet Collapse: The contemporary Chinese presence in the former Soviet Union border zone

This special issue of the journal Problems of Post-Communism is co-edited by ISS Associate Professor, Dr Oane Visser, Dr Irna Hofman (Oxford University) and Dr Artemy Kalinovsky (University of Amsterdam). It focuses on encounters and perceptions between China and the states along its north-western border to provide deeper insights into the character and consequences of China's involvement in this post-Soviet border region.

Activating space for sustainable development

The Task Team on Civil Society Organization (CSO) Development Effectiveness and Enabling Environment has produced a report on the commissioned study into 'What factors in a country’s environment help or hinder effective CSO participation in SDG-related processes and how is this practically felt/experienced?' Carried out by ISS, the study focused on identifying factors in a country’s environment that help and hinder CSO participation in Sustainable Development Goal-related processes.