The best the degrowth literature has to offer served on a silver platter. That’s how I would describe The Future is Degrowth: A Guide to a World beyond Capitalism (June 2022) by Matthias Schmelzer, Andrea Vetter, and Aaron Vansintjan.[1] Reading it, I felt like Neo in The Matrix learning everything there is to know about Kung Fu all at once – “I know degrowth.” 

This kind of synthesis was long overdue. The degrowth literature has grown rather large and I cannot think of a single text that maps it all. Research on degrowth used to be my favourite guide to degrowth but there is only so much you can do in a 20-page article (plus, the literature has more than doubled since it was published in 2018). Degrowth: A vocabulary for a new era (2014) is a good pot luck of perspectives but lacks coherence and depth due to its multi-author, short-entry format. I tried my best in The political economy of degrowth (2019) but the end result is rather cumbersome. 

In The Future is Degrowth, the authors have achieved a colossal Spring cleaning of the field. Sufficiency, dépense, commoning, pluriverse, unequal exchange, conviviality, self-determination, and many more (I have counted more than sixty concepts throughout the book). With such an exhaustive span, this book is to degrowth what the IPCC is to climate science: the best available literature review on the topic. 

But warning: this book is not for the academically faint hearted. If you’re looking for a wide-audience introduction to degrowth, this is not one of them, and I would rather recommend The Case for Degrowth [G. Kallis, S. Paulson, G. D’Alisa, F. Demaria], a shorter, less demanding way of covering the basics. If you’ve never heard of the topic at all, Less is more [Jason Hickel], Post Growth: Life after capitalism [Tim Jackson], and Degrowth [Giorgos Kallis] are also good places to start. 

The Future is Degrowth is rather long (more than 100,000 words) but neatly organised. The literature is chiselled into six tidy lists: 3 dimensions and 7 critiques of growth, 5 currents and 3 principles of degrowth, 6 clusters of proposals, and 3 strategies for change. The book itself is divided in seven chapters. After a long introduction (12% of the total book length), the first two chapters deal with understanding economic growth and its critics (that’s about half of the book). The remaining chapters follow Erik Olin Wright’s famous triad: Chapter 4 is about the desirability of degrowth (11%), Chapter 5 about its viability (13%), and Chapter 6 about its achievability (11%). This leaves us with a short concluding chapter (5%) titled “The future of degrowth.” 

With such a monumental piece of work, I could not resolve myself to write a short review, which would feel like summarising all seasons of Game of Thrones in a single tweet. This book deserves a proper dissection, and so I will here process chapter by chapter, taking all the space needed to summarise its content and, in the end, analyse its (many) strengths and (very few) weaknesses.    

Chapter 1: Introduction 

Investing that much time into the (admittedly fringe) concept of degrowth might seem a waste of hours, and yet it isn’t. The concepts and theories mobilised to criticise economic growth and design an alternative to it will take you through all the classic questions of political economy and political ecology. This is not only about growth and degrowth, nor is it a book only about economics. This is the ultimate ride through contemporary debates on climate justice, the origin of value, animal ethics, class struggles, work, property, money, technology, and many more. 

“In this book, our goal has been to show that degrowth poses a set of key questions that all emancipatory alternatives need to address, which are often ignored. Degrowth offers answers to them as well. If people want to know how to address the challenges of ecological destruction, the ideology of capitalism, or the industrial, hierarchical, and imperial mode of production, degrowth is much more advanced than many other realms of debate – and this includes many of the debates on the left” (p.297). Degrowthers have spent the last 20 years pondering these questions, and have come up with quite a few useful insights. 

If you care about gender equality, you need to read about degrowth. If you care about class conflicts, workplace alienation, financial crises, corruption, and democracy – you need to read about degrowth. That’s where the subtitle of the book finds its meaning: a guide to a world beyond capitalism. These are actually the very last words of the book: “we need to break free from the capitalist economy. Degrowth gives us the tools to bend its bars” (p.297). If you think capitalism (or whatever you like to call today’s dominant economic system) has run its course and needs replacement, read on. 

Chapter 2: Economic growth 

One cannot understand degrowth without understanding what economic growth is. Forget about the flat, one-dimensional definition of growth as an increase in Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Economic growth is much more than that. It is (1) an idea, (2) a social process, and (3) a material process.

First, growth is an ideological construction. This is the point Matthias Schmelzer made in his PhD thesis “The hegemony of growth”, which showed that it was not until the 1950s (twenty years after the invention of GDP) that the idea of growth became dominant.[2] Growth is also a social process of “dynamic stabilization.” Just like a bike that finds its balance with speed, the economy needs to grow in order to remain stable, growth acting as a promise that pacifies social conflicts and creates consent for certain kinds of politics. And finally, growth is a material process. An economy is like a super-organism with a giant societal metabolism and growth is “the flows of energy and matter that are passing through societies – extracted in some useful form, put to work or consumed, and eventually emitted as waste” (p.62).

Since economic growth is both an idea, a social process, and a material process, an agenda for social change cannot only focus on changing GDP as an indicator, which would be akin to changing the dashboard of a car running full speed towards a cliff. Escaping from the growth paradigm requires to deconstruct growth as an idea, to problematise the role it plays in broader power dynamics, and to carefully understand its relation with nature. Quite a project indeed: going against growth means reinventing most of what we know about modern economies.  

Chapter 3: Critiques of growth 

After reading so much degrowth stuff, I’m used to skim the critique section because it’s usually always the same. Except here it isn’t. The authors have conducted a remarkable synthesis (the chapter is 100-page long) and summarised it into seven critical strands (ecological, socio-economic, cultural, anticapitalist, feminist, anti-industrialist, anti-development), each opening towards a different curative concept (sufficiency, alternative hedonism, conviviality, dépense, care, convivial technologies, pluriverse). Each of these strands exist on their own, but what makes degrowth special is that it hosts the seven of them in a kind of ultimate, growth-bashing Megazord. “Degrowth’s strength is its holistic view. [It] relies not on a single strand of growth critique but has, from its very inception, braided the seven emancipatory strands discussed in this chapter together into a cohesive, well-developed, and broad critique of growth” (p.177).

Critique n°1

According to the ECOLOGICAL CRITIQUE, economic growth “destroys the ecological foundations of human life and cannot be transformed to become sustainable” (p.78). The economy, like any physical system, is subject to the natural laws of physics. And so, the bigger an economy, the more difficult it becomes to reduce its biophysical throughput. “Any society that relies on compound rate of economic growth will eventually face ultimate limits, which manifest themselves in the breakdown of the complex ecosystems upon which growth relies” (p. 83). This ecological critique leads to a defence of sufficiency (the nemesis of ecologically destructive growth), “a reduction in the consumption of raw materials, energy, and land which nevertheless offers a basis for well-being” (p.93).    

Critique n°2

According to the SOCIO-ECONOMIC CRITIQUE, economic growth “mismeasures our lives and thus stands in the way of well-being and equality of all” (p.78). Essentially, GDP growth is not necessary (and sometime even counterproductive) for the betterment of quality of life. This is a return to Herman Daly’s concept of “uneconomic growth”: above a certain income level, further growth bears more costs than benefits. They explain this “Easterlin paradox” in five steps: (1) more is not always better, (2) especially since happiness is determined by relative income levels (moving everyone up is not changing relative position), (3) GDP is a poor measure of well-being, (4) the neoliberal turn of the 1980s has undercuts the foundation of welfare, and (5) secular stagnation and the rise inequality smothers the collective benefits of growth. This critique “sees the end of economic growth not as a threat, but as an opportunity for new forms of well-being and a good life for all” (p.94), for an alternative hedonism.

Critique n°3

According to the CULTURAL CRITIQUE, economic growth “produces alienating ways of working, living, and relating to each other and nature” (p.78). Modern, industrial life simply sucks. The workplace has turned into a domain of alienation (especially for those having “bullshit jobs” [David Graeber]), consumers drown under a stressful avalanche of options, stripped of their autonomy by pervasive advertisement, and culture as a whole is slowly turning into an accelerating competition for who owns the most stuff (which again, doesn’t make us happy). This line of critique denounces the reductive definition of humans as Homo economicus and warns against emergence of modern growth subjects. This critique leads to a call for conviviality: “forms of social organization that enable mutual dependencies, the negotiation of interpersonal relationships, and good coexistence” (p.116). 

Critique n°4

According to the CRITIQUE OF CAPITALISM, economic growth “depends on and is driven by capitalist exploitation and accumulation” (p.78). Owners of capital constantly reinvest surpluses in order to maximise profits, which accelerates the wheel of capital accumulation resulting in more environmental degradation and wider inequality. The so-called ‘growth’ is based on an appropriation of unpaid labour and energy from humans and non-human nature – an “accumulation by dispossession” [David Harvey]. “[W]ithout unpaid inputs – both from people (unpaid domestic work or neo-colonial exploitation, but also public bailouts) and the raw materials and energy of nature – production costs would rise so far that profits would fall and accumulation would come to a standstill” (p.124). This critique leads to the concept of dépense which “offers a way to go beyond a purely productivist conception of the economy” (p.128), and to the idea of “self-determined post-scarcity society” (p.128) where one would regain the “autonomy to collectively create public abundance” (p.129) while collectively deliberating and setting limits.

Critique n°5

According to the FEMINIST CRITIQUE, economic growth “is based on gendered over-exploitation and devalues reproduction” (p.78). In a “capitalocentric” society [J.K. Gibson-Graham], “the vital reproductive work of society – which is largely carried out by women, in particular Indigenous and Black women, and women of colour – remains fundamentally unacknowledged, invisible, devalued, and precarious” (p.133). They use the iceberg analogy to argue that “what is usually identified as ‘the economy’ – commodities, labour, and investment – is in fact only the tip of the iceberg, beneath which lies an economy that is invisible, reproducing and sustaining life, and which makes the market economy possible in the first place” (p.135). “‘[R]eproductive’ activities (subsistence labour, the ‘under-developed’ world, the home, nature, and femininity) are subordinated to ‘productive’ activities (wage labour, Western civilization, the public sphere, and masculinity)” (p.138). This critique opens up to the corrective concept of care and of a caring economy geared towards supporting life.

Critique n°6

According to the CRITIQUE OF INDUSTRIALISM, economic growth “gives rise to undemocratic productive forces and techniques” (p.78). “The development of productive forces and technology in modern societies have become authoritarian, alienating, and restrictive of self-determination” (p.143). Technological ‘progress’ is not a neutral process and the kind of innovations incentivised under a growth-based, capitalist economy is not necessarily beneficial to all. The car, for example, holds a “radical monopoly” [Ivan Illich] over choices of mobility, smothering alternative modes of transport, and centralised sources of energy like nuclear electricity can indirectly restructure society towards “more alienated, authoritarian, militarized, and highly centralized social systems” (p.149). This leads to a call for a post-industrial society, made of non-authoritarian, non-alienating, and non-exploitative technologies, often referred to as “convivial tools” or “low-tech.”  

Critique n°7

According to the SOUTH-NORTH CRITIQUE, economic growth “relies on and reproduces relations of domination, extraction, and exploitation between capitalist centre and periphery” (p.78). The “imperial mode of living” [Ulrich Brand & Markus Wissen] of Northern citizens is sustained via an unfair and unsustainable appropriation of labour and natural resources through processes of “unequal exchange.” Economic growth is a form of neo-colonialism. What Western countries call ‘development’ is the imposition of a growth-oriented, industrialist and capitalist lifestyle in the global South (the so-called Westernisation of the world), against alternative visions of prosperity like buen vivir (South America), ubuntu (South Africa), and swaraj (India). This critique leads to a call for the defence of a pluriverse where all communities should have autonomy in pursuing their own visions of prosperity. 

Additionally to these seven critical strands, the chapter ends by reviewing five other critiques of growth from outside the degrowth discourse: conservative critiques (exemplified by Meinhard Miegel in Germany), green fascism (Alain de Benoist in France, Björn Höcke in Germany, Ecopop in Switzerland, the Five-Star Movement in Italy), anti-modernism (the documentary Planet of the Humans), and environmentalism of the rich. The authors argue that degrowth is quite different from these critiques: “the core of degrowth, with its emphasis on ecological justice, a critique of all forms of exploitation and hierarchies, and a vision of solidarity, points to the very opposite of conservative, anti-modern, or regressive growth critiques […] degrowth’s vision, proposals, and strategies […] fundamentally contradict anything resembling these regressive growth critiques” (p.177). 

Chapter 4: Visions 

“Degrowth is not only a critique of the present but also a proposal and a vision for a better future” (p.180), and this chapter clarifies what the degrowth utopia looks like. To do so, it identifies five currents within the degrowth spectrum (institution-oriented, sufficiency-oriented, commoning or alternative economy, feminist, post-capitalism and alter-globalisation) which “provide different, partly complementary, and partly disputed answers to the question of what a degrowth society looks like” (p.181). 

Current n°1

The institution-oriented current “aims to overcome the political fixation on growth and the transformation of previously growth-dependent and growth-driving institutions through reforms and policies of sufficiency” (p.181-82). As they write, “this is the current most likely to become a government position” (p.181), a green-liberal society with eco-social taxes and regulations, in the line of Kate Raworth’s “doughnut economy” and its application in the city of Amsterdam, or in line with discussions about post-growth at the European Parliament. 

Current n°2

The sufficiency-oriented current aims “to radically reduce resource consumption through the creation of local and decommercialized subsistence economies, do-it-yourself initiatives, and ‘voluntary simplicity’ and thus focuses on practices outside the consumer-driven capitalist market in the here and now” (p.183). This is the position of the German economist Niko Paech, the Italian Movimento per la Decrescita Felice, the Global Ecovillage Network, parts of Transition Towns, and one symbolised by Can Decreix, the small utopian commune in the South of France that hosts a yearly Degrowth Summer school. 

Current n°3

The commoning or alternative economy current focuses on “the construction of alternative infrastructures, cooperatives based on solidarity, and non-capitalist forms of collective production and livelihood” (p.185-86). Examples include community-supported agriculture, solidarity networks, Wikipedia, community garden, peer-to-peer production networks, and alternative currencies. What they all have in common is the principle of “commoning” as a democratic mode of governance in a spirit of “taking back the economy.” 

Current n°4

The feminist current seeks “to place reproductive activities and care – which form the basis for society and life in general – at the centre of the economy and economic thinking and aims to overcome the separation between production and reproduction” (p.188). This is the line defended by the Feminisms and Degrowth Alliance, which calls for a radical reduction of working time, a redistribution of care activities, and the demise of patriarchal structures.

Current n°5

The post-capitalist and alter-globalization currents strive “to undo the domination of the market, socialize key sectors of the economy, and reduce social relations of domination” (p.189). Let’s mention here the recent alliance between eco-socialists and degrowthers, as an example of a broader convergence for a post-capitalist degrowth. This current focuses on “reappropriating and socializing wealth” (p.190), for example via worker-controlled enterprises, social housing, and universal basic income schemes. 

Then comes the moment we’ve all been waiting for: defining degrowth. To do so, they look at the commonalities between the five currents of degrowth, which allow them to pin point three common principles, three “dimensions of the degrowth vision” (p.206): 

“A degrowth society, we propose, is one which, in a democratic process of transformation (1) enables global ecological justice – in other words, it transforms and reduces its material metabolism, and thus also production and consumption, in such a way that its way of life is ecologically sustainable in the long term and globally just; (2) strengthens social justice and self-determination and strives for a good life for all under the conditions of this changed metabolism; and (3) redesigns its institutions and infrastructure so that they are not dependent on growth and continuous expansion for their functioning” (p.195). 

Let’s unpack these principles a bit further. The first one is ecological justice, “the vision of an ecologically sustainable and socially more equal world” (p.196). This is degrowth in the literal sense of the term (“a planned contraction of economic activity”; “a reduction of production and consumption among the affluent,” p.196) for the sake of global justice: the lowering of footprints among the wealthiest towards a “solidary mode of living” that can reverse exploitative North-South relations.   

The second principle is about social justice, self-determination, and a good life. By social justice, they mean “undoing broader structures of domination such as class society, racism, colonialism, (hetero-)sexism, ableism and other forms of exclusion” (p.203). Self-determination, following Cornelius Castoriadis, has to do with collective democracy and individual autonomy. And finally, a good life is the search for a holistic understanding of prosperity, a form of “alternative hedonism” [Kate Soper] including notions of “resonance” [Hartmut Rosa] (“meaningful and good self-world relationships,” p.205), conviviality (“thriving coexistence and collective self-determination,” p.205), and time prosperity (“more self-determined time,” p.206). 

The third principle is growth independence. “A degrowth society is a society that, through a democratic process, transforms its institutions and infrastructures so that they are not dependent on growth and continuous expansion for their functioning” (p.206). It involves dismantling certain growth-inducing material infrastructures and technical systems like the car-based system, transforming growth-dependant social institutions like the financing of the welfare state, cleansing mental infrastructures from the belief that more is always better, and more generally ensuring that the economic system as a whole can “prosper without growth” [Tim Jackson].

And if you’re looking for a shorter definition, here is one: “the democratic transition to a society that – in order to enable global ecological justice – is based on a much smaller throughput of energy and resources, that deepens democracy and guarantees a good life and social justice for all, and that does not depend on continuous expansion” (p.4).

Chapter 5: Pathways to degrowth 

The depiction of the degrowth society offered in Chapter 4 is a lovely utopia, but how to make it happen? As an answer to that daunting question, this chapter inventories “the most characteristic policy proposals” (p.215) of the degrowth literature, which they divide in six pathways.

Pathway n°1: Democratization, solidarity economy, and commoning

The goal is the commonization of the economy. Decommodifying certain things like labour, natural resources, schools, hospitals, and knowledge as to manage them in a democratic manner following the principles of “commoning,” commons being “social practices through which self-organized communities govern certain goods, resources, or territories, according to self-designed rules and institutions” (p.217). 

The idea of a solidarity economy refers to “cooperatives and other smaller companies oriented towards the common good” (p. 219) which conduct business based on cooperation instead of competition and which put purpose before profit. They mention the Austrian “economy for the good common good” as an example of “socio-ecologically oriented entrepreneurial activity” (p. 220). 

Economic democracy aims “to contain and dismantle the high concentration of economic power in a few corporations” and “enable all people to participate in economic activities” (p. 221). It includes the re-municipalization of basic services like water and banking, the reappropriation of private enterprises into collective forms of ownership. This involves participatory planning in multi-stakeholder assemblies following models such as “participatory economy” or “democratic confederalism.” 

Pathway n°2: Social security, redistribution, and caps on income and wealth 

The central proposal is the “unconditional autonomy allowance” [Vincent Liegey and others], a mix of universal basic income (in national currency and/or alternative currencies) and “universal basic services” to ensure that goods and services such as housing, food, water, energy, local transport, and communication (or anything else democratically determined as essential) are made available to all regardless of their purchasing power.  

In parallel to this “guaranteed basic provisioning or income for all,” degrowth aims at “taxing the rich out of existence” (p. 228) through income and wealth caps, and a more fundamental “overhaul of the private property regime” that restricts property of land, buildings, and intellectual property. The goal is to achieve “a more egalitarian society, and thus a mode of living based on solidarity that does not transgress ecological boundaries globally” (p. 228). 

Pathway n°3: Convivial and democratic technology

Degrowth is “characterized by a differentiated view of technology and the democratization of technological development (e.g., moratoria on high-risk research and technologies). The question degrowth puts at the centre is: “Which technology should society use? And for what, by whom, how, and how much of it? And who decides?” (p.229). 

The central concept is “convivial technology” (inspired by Ivan Illich’s Tools for conviviality), which they define in five central values: connectedness (promoting healthy social relations), accessibility (free use and autonomous control), adaptability(reparability and compatibility with other tools), bio-interaction (sustainable impacts on the living world), and appropriateness(needs fulfilling). In a nutshell: technological development should be needs-oriented and not market-oriented. (Examples of such tools for conviviality include tool-lending libraries, repair cafés, do-it-yourself spaces, hacker spaces, maker spaces, and fab labs.) 

Pathway n°4: Revalorization and redistribution of labour 

Degrowth aims at fundamentally transforming work. Here is the agenda in one sentence: “a radical reduction in working hours without lower pay groups losing income; access for all to good, non-alienated, and meaningful work; a valorization of reproductive and care work and the distribution of this work among all; collective self-determination in the workplace; and, finally, the strengthening of worker’s rights and autonomy through the provision of basic services, independent of people’s employment” (p.232). 

The goal is to reduce “bullshit jobs” (that are useless) and “batshit jobs” (that are harmful) and liberate time for more meaningful activities. They hint to radical reduction in working time (e.g., 21 hours) in parallel to a revalorisation of low wages (working less without a pay cut for low-wage workers) and a redistribution of care work between people and gender. 

Pathway n°5: Democratizing social metabolism

Democratising social metabolism means to deliberate on what should grow and what should degrow. The “phasing out and simultaneous expansion of different sectors, technologies, resource-uses, or economic activities – would no longer be left to the market, competition, and prices (but rather) democratically and politically deliberated at regional, national, and global levels” (p.238). In a spirit of collective self-limitation, citizens must decide which sectors should be downscaled (the authors nominate coal and gas, aviation, cars, weapon manufacturing and the military, advertising, lobbying, planned obsolescence, fast fashion, border security, and large parts of the financial industry and animal farming), and which sectors should be further developed.  

For the shrinking part, they mention a few instruments such as caps on resource use (targeting in priority excess consumption by the rich), moratoria on new construction projects, and ecological tax reforms. They also call for a direct appropriation of key means of production: “certain industries must be expropriated and transferred to common ownership in order not to stand in the way of socio-ecological change” (pp.243-44). By seizing control of the workplace, people could decide to dismantle certain infrastructures (coal mines and nuclear power plants) and retrofit others (car factories converted into bike production). 

Pathway n°6: International solidarity 

The global North must live simply so that the global South may simply live, or put another way: degrowth in richest countries to enable sustainable prosperity in poorest nations. To do that, one must cancel odious debts, support Indigenous peoples in their struggle for rights, reform land ownership as to protect peasant livelihoods, transition away from industrial agriculture, remove unfair trade rules that disadvantage the global South, organise financial and technological transfers to offset climate debts and compensate for the consequences of colonialism, restrict international movements of capital, create a democratic international monetary system, put a stop to land grabbing practices, and abolish international organisations like the World Bank and the IMF. 

Chapter 6: Making degrowth real  

After chapter 4 about the desirability of degrowth, and chapter 5 about its viability, this chapter tackles the tricky question of achievability: How can we imagine the transformation to a degrowth society? The authors answer that question in three steps, following the three logics of transformation from Erik Olin Wright’s Envisioning real utopias (interstitial, symbiotic, and ruptural). 

Strategy n°1. Nowtopias: Autonomous spaces and laboratories for the good life

This part is about interstitial strategies, initiatives emerging in the cracks of dominant institutions. As examples, they mention the Catalan Integral Cooperative. “Interstitial strategies, such as this cooperative, seek to experiment with new institutions, infrastructures, or forms of organization. They are laboratories in which new social practices are intentionally developed, tried out, and practised. They emerge within and despite the old system and prefigure post-capitalist relations on a small scale” (p.256). They also point to degrowth Summer schools and climate camps which “offer people an experience of a communal, self-determined, and sufficient lifestyle through collective self-organization, shared care work, and the use of exclusively renewable energies and compost toilets” (p.257). Other examples include “collective enterprises, community-supported agriculture, alternative media, urban gardens, childcare and alternative schooling, collective kitchens and food recuperation, housing projects and squats, occupations, municipal energy projects, time banks or regional currencies, repair cafés or open-source hardware” (p.257). 

Strategy n°2. Non-reformist reforms: Changing institutions and policies

The term “non-reformist reform” is often associated to André Gorz (1923-2007), who made a difference between neo-capitalist reforms that only keep the system running and non-reformist reforms that involve more structural changes. For example, a slight increase of the minimum wage might not change much in the daily functioning of capitalism, but a switch to a 3-day working week might be more disruptive. Same logic for the introduction of a radically progressive tax on wealth, which uses the usual tax system, but at levels that will radically alter social dynamics. It is symbiotic because transformation starts from within and moves with the system. One can use the existing political infrastructure to legalise local currencies, which would allow new grassroots experiments, and perhaps in the end radically transform the system as a whole. It is here that they connect to the Green New Deal for Europe and the Global Green New Deal, which they consider ally initiatives. 

Strategy n°3. Counter-hegemony: Building people power against the growth paradigm 

The final logic of transformation deals with opposing the current system. They mention the German Ende Gelände (meaning here and no further), which “was probably the first major action of civil disobedience to take place in close connection with the degrowth movement” (p.267), among others such as the blockage of the North Dakota Pipeline, peasant resistance against industrial agriculture in Brazil, indigenous pacific islanders blocking coal shipping in Australia, among countless other movements of resistance against extractivism, aviation, megaprojects, and structural adjustment. These actions of civil disobedience, which Naomi Klein gathers under the term “blockadia,” raise awareness among the public about the wrongdoings of capitalism, and create space to envision a world where nature is not treated like an all-you-can-eat buffet, where the livelihoods of Southern citizens are not sacrificed for the welfare of rich consumers, and where democracy is not trampled by the lobbying power of transnational corporations. 

Chapter 7: The future of degrowth  

This chapter has a more relaxed structure than the rest of the book. There are two main messages I found important. The first one is a reflection about the pandemic, which the authors consider a partial form of degrowth. “For the sake of argument, the politics to fight the pandemic can be interpreted as a deliberate and planned shutdown of large parts of the economy, with the goal of furthering the common good (flattening the curve and thus saving lives), thereby differentiating between sectors that were essential for the provisioning of basic goods and services and those that were less so. To achieve this shutdown and cushion its effects, governments introduced policies that had long been deemed impossible – furloughing workers, protecting livelihoods, ordering planes to stay grounded, securing employment through short-term work allowances, investing in care, or intervening directly in the production process by nationalizing crisis-ridden companies and health facilities or planning the production of health equipment – all by using the government’s sovereign power of money creation. These and many other far-reaching interventions were initially backed by large majorities, and they led to (temporary) significant reductions in emissions and material throughput” (pp.285-86). 

The second message has to do with gaps in the degrowth literature, and “important challenges that have been only partially addressed in the book.” They name four of them. 

The first concerns class and race. Within the degrowth literature, they argue, “there is a tendency to mainly focus on ecological issues and to do so from a class-blind and consumer-focused perspective that downplays social issues and fundamentally depoliticizes degrowth” (p.289). Acknowledging that most people engaging in the degrowth debate are white from privileged social contexts in the global North, they call for better linking proposals to ongoing struggles such as those around rent and housing, the phasing out of fossil fuels, feminist struggles around care work, and trade union struggles.

The second has to do with geopolitics and imperialism. “Degrowth advocates have not adequately tackled the geopolitical ramifications of the transition that they envision. This includes the relationship between growth, the state, imperialism, and militarization, and the political-economic effects degrowth would have on international relations and on communities in the Global South in particular” (p.291). 

Third, information technology. What is the relation between degrowth and digitalization? And how the transition to information capitalism will transform the degrowth agenda? Instead of rejecting industrial technologies in bulk, degrowth “needs to analyse how platform cooperativism which refers to efforts to build new, cooperatively owned platforms to replace for-profit social media and entrepreneurial platforms – could be integrated into the degrowth vision” (p.294). 

And finally, they deplore certain silences about democratic planning. “Degrowth should engage more explicitly with the question of planning. Curiously, while ‘planning’, ‘design’, or ‘coordination’ are often mentioned in degrowth discussions, the reality of planning itself – its primary actors, whether it is centralized or decentralized, participatory or imposed – is rarely engaged with” (p.295). 

In conclusion 

The book is remarkable in several aspects and slightly disappointing in others. On the up side, and in contrast to the usual male-focused story of degrowth thinking, the authors give female authors the attention they deserve. “The feminist degrowth current is neglected in many accounts, in large part because feminist arguments have had to struggle for recognition in the degrowth discourse. Nevertheless, many of the most prominent degrowth concepts were anticipated at least since the 1970s in feminist economics and critical theory, as well as in the subsistence approach” (p.188). 

Perhaps I was expecting too much of Chapter 4: Visions, but I found it a bit too abstract. General concepts such as ecologicaland social justice, self-determination, the good life, and growth independence are powerful, but how do they translate in practice? And by practice, I mean very simple things like, how to organise childcare, run a pension scheme, or create a new business. These are practical questions, and they need practical answers. (In defence of the authors, most of them do not exist in the literature yet, which is a good enough excuse for why they’re not in the book.)  

I wasted a large chunk of my (short) career on the issue of green growth. The decoupling literature is a black hole of abstract, technical subtleties with very little useful insights for how to actually reduce environmental pressures. The authors wisely manage not to get suck in that debate, affirming that the question of decoupling GDP from nature is rather absurd: “the point, instead, is to move towards an economy in which well-being can increase while environmental damage rapidly declines, thereby decoupling prosperity from ecological impact and thus also from economic growth” (p.92). That’s brilliant and I hope it inspires many to stop wasting time dissecting the silly models of a few ecologically-illiterate economists. 

Another small deception, this time about Chapter 2: Economic growth. The authors do not engage at all with neoclassical theories of growth. This being said, I also didn’t do it in The political economy of degrowth because it felt incredibly time-consuming for not much reward. In fact, this time-saving omission is perhaps another form of wisdom, as it prevents us from getting bogged down in a framework that has proved absolutely useless in understanding the crisis we’re in and how to get out of it. 

Concerning Chapter 5: Pathways to degrowth, I would have liked to see a clearer division between ends and means. In Exploring degrowth proposals (2022), we tried to organise the degrowth toolbox by linking instruments (means) to specific objectives (ends). This is difficult but not impossible. If we want degrowth to become a useful framework for organising a just transition, we must present our proposals in a modular fashion, and not as an all-or-nothing bundle (again, easier said than done).  

Anyway, I’m just being greedy. The author of The Future is Degrowth: A Guide to a World beyond Capitalism have already done plenty and produced a masterpiece, which is now officially my favourite book on the topic. Bravo!  

[1] Matthias Schmelzer wrote his PhD thesis The Hegemony of Growth (2016), co-edited the books Degrowth in Movement(s) (2020) and History of the Future of Economic Growth (2017), and co-authored Research on degrowth (2018). Andrea Vetter co-authored (with Matthias) Degrowth/Postwachstum zur Einführung (2019), the book on which The Future is Degrowth is based and has published a remarkable article on degrowth and convivial technology (2018), based on her PhD dissertation. She co-initiated the website degrowth.info and (together with Matthias) organised several conferences on degrowth. Aaron Vansintjan wrote his PhD dissertation on resistance to gentrification (A piece of land is a piece of gold, 2020), edited Giorgos Kallis’ In defense of degrowth (2018), and published a considerable amount of online articles on the topic. 

[2] For more about the history of GDP: Gross Domestic Problem: The Politics Behind the World’s Most Powerful Number (2013), The Little Big Number: How GDP came to rule the world and what to do about it (2015), Mismeasuring our lives: Why GDP doesn’t add up (2010), Replacing GDP by 2030: Towards a Common Language for the Well-being and Sustainability Community (2019), GDP: A brief but affectionate history (2014), The Power of a Single Number: A Political History of GDP (2016), The Great Invention: The Story of GDP and the Making (and Unmaking) of the Modern World (2014).

“The answer isn’t degrowth. The answer is abundance,” writes William Rinehart, senior research fellow at The Center for Growth and Opportunity of Utah State University. On its webpage, the organisation advertises itself as “world-class research” providing “real-world solutions,” which is tragically ironic since it published one of the most scientifically ungrounded, starry-eyed pieces I’ve read in a while.

The article is about a $90 million wildlife crossing project in Los Angeles, a bridge built on top of a road to allow animals to cross safely. “Only rich societies can build this kind of infrastructure,” the author writes explaining that the project was primarily financed by private donations. “Rich societies can do a lot more for their citizens” because they have “more fiscal capacity.” “Wealthier societies can also spend more to mitigate the effects of climate change,” for example by building dam and investing in carbon removal technology, and they can also “afford the disruption that comes with adapting to climate change.” So, in the end, the only problem that really requires solving is this: “how to make everyone wealthy enough to be able to do this?” 

 “The largest economies have been able to decouple their growth from emissions,” the author claims referencing a blog post from Our World in Data. “The United States is back down to the emission levels of the early 1990s,” he argues, citing another graph from the same blog. Now, it doesn’t take too much effort to notice that these footprints are production-based, meaning that they do not account for imported emissions. In fact, the very same webpage shows another graph with consumption-based emissions, and guess what, it contradicts the author’s claim. The United States has increased its carbon footprint from 5.03 billion tonnes in 1990 to 5.63 tonnes in 2019. If you think stabilising emissions is a victory, you haven’t really understood what mitigating climate change means. It means reducing emissions (for example, by 50-52% in 2030 according the US Nationally Determined Contribution, and by much more if you’re serious about limiting global warming to 1.5°C). 

And here is another wrinkle: decarbonising your economy is not enough to make it ecologically sustainable because greenhouse gas emissions are only one among several environmental pressures. Take material footprint, for example. The 2018 US economy weights 7.2 billion tons of materials or 29.7 tonnes per capita, and this footprint is 35% bigger in 2019 than it was in 1992. Again, if you think this is fine because GDP has increased by so much more during the period (which is true, it increased by 97%), you haven’t really grasped the concept of planetary boundaries. Mitigation means reduction. Regardless of how fast we increase GDP, it’s game over if we don’t manage to rapidly decrease the quantity of resources we use and the impact this use has on ecosystems. 

Anyone who has worked on the economics of climate change knows that these reductions are not only necessary but also urgent. Reducing emissions in 2050 after a massive overshoot is no victory. Climate mitigation must happen before the carbon budget is exhausted (if you don’t understand this sentence, it is due time you read the IPCC report). “The only way to make Earth a better place is by joining abundance and ingenuity,” writes the author. This is a touching tagline for mugs and t-shirts, and would probably sell well in business schools and corporate conferences, but it’s hogwash. The only way to make Earth a better place, starting with avoiding climate breakdown, is to reduce levels of resource use and emissions right now. Whatever does that, and whatever you want to call it (degrowth, post-growth, prosperous descent, sufficiency, the simpler way, the donut economy, etc.) is the solution we need. 

After a decade spent pondering the issue, I see no other solution than reducing levels of production and consumption in high-income countries. You might find a thousand reasons to be sceptical of degrowth (my preferred term for this downscaling of production and consumption), but asking us to demonstrate that it will actually decrease emissions is absurd. We argue that producing and consuming less will reduce material use and emissions (pretty straightforward), but you argue that producing and consuming more will reduce material use and emissions.

Who should inherit of the burden of proof? If rich economies want to get down to sustainable levels of resource use and emissions, the fastest, most fail-safe way is to fly less planes, drive less cars, eat less meat, build less roads, etc. – unless unproven so. (Before you get all worked up shuffling Our World in Data graphs, be aware there are at least 835 empirical studies on that topic, and none so far has managed to bring proof that high-income countries can keep countries while bringing down their footprints to a sustainable level fast enough.)  

What the author considers a “defeatist mindset” I call biophysical pragmatism. I’m not the only one; there is actually a full chapter on demand-side strategies in the latest IPCC report which argues that sufficiency is our best shot at stopping global warming. Will this lower GDP? Yes. Does this mean misery? No, simply because a targeted reduction of consumption levels (especially for the richest) can reap a double dividend in terms of sustainability and well-being. Here is what the IPCC says about it: 

“Consumption reductions, both voluntary and policy-induced, can have positive and double-dividend effects on efficiency as well as reductions in energy and materials use. […] Less waste, better emissions control and more effective carbon policies lead to better governance and stronger democracies. Systems-dynamics models linking strong emissions-reducing policies and strong social equity policies show that a low-carbon transition in conjunction with social sustainability is possible, even without economic growth. […] Such degrowth pathways may be crucial in combining technical feasibility of mitigation with social development goals” (Chap 5, p.32). 

Degrowth is indeed a “world of less” when it comes to material and energy use, but it is a world of more in terms of equality, democracy, health, and well-being. This is what Jason Hickel, which William Rinehart criticises in this article, means when he writes that less is more or describe degrowth as radical abundance. 

But what about big cats, coyotes, deer, lizards, snakes, and all the other creatures who, without their $90 million bridge, won’t be able to cross the road? Well, first, if you reduce demand in mobility and especially car-use (a demand-side sufficiency strategy), you won’t even need to build such bridges because you won’t have that many roads. What’s the point of building fiscal capacity to pay to repair stuff you could avoid breaking in the first place? Degrowth is the ultimate ingenuous solution since it treats the problem at the source.

And even though you would still need to build such a bridge, I don’t see why you would need to grow the economy as a whole – including advertising, gadgets, financial products, bigger cars, etc. – just to scrap a few dollars through taxation and philanthropy to build your bridge. In fact, degrowing certain sectors will liberate materials, energy, and labour time for activities that are perhaps less lucrative but that contributes to wellbeing (including your bridge).

Let me quote the IPCC report again (Chap 5, p.17): what we need is to abandon the “global high-carbon, consumption and GDP growth oriented economy” to transition to a “low-carbon energy services, well-being, and equity-oriented economy.” 

***

The history of science is not kind to feeble theories, and that’s a good thing. In the very same month the IPCC publishes an 8-year in the making, almost 3,000-page report, I find it scientifically insulting that someone dares cobbling a few graphs together in defence of a crackpot hypothesis whose scientific legitimacy has fallen close to Flat Earth theory. Of course, this is science, and if you want to prove that rich countries can both produce and consume more while radically reducing their resource use and emissions, you’re welcome to try. You won’t be the first one to try and you won’t be the first one to fail. But it will take more than a flimsy blogpost to do so.  

Peut-on croître sans polluer ? C’est l’affaire Galilée du XXIe siècle. Quoi de mieux que le rapport du GIEC sur l’atténuation du changement climatique pour éclairer la question du « découplage », cette hypothèse d’une dissociation entre croissance du PIB et émissions de gaz à effet de serre. Direction le Chapitre 2 où une partie est dédiée au sujet (voir : Le découplage dans le rapport AR6 du GIEC). Cette partie mobilise 21 études scientifiques et la grande majorité d’entre elles sont sceptiques. Le découplage y est décrit comme « insuffisant » avec des taux de réduction « bien trop faibles », et la croissance verte comme une stratégie « trompeuse » et « malavisée » qui « repose en partie sur la foi ». 

Même Klaus Hubacek, l’auteur de cette section sur le découplage n’y croit pas. Dans l’article principal qu’il utilise dans le rapport du GIEC, lui et ses co-auteurs parviennent à la conclusion suivante : 

« le découplage absolu [dans les 24 pays où l’étude l’observe] est insuffisant pour éviter de consommer le budget d’émissions de CO2 restant pour limiter le réchauffement planétaire à 1,5°C ou même à 2°C et pour éviter un effondrement potentiel du climat. Des efforts considérables sont nécessaires pour réduire les émissions mondiales conformément aux objectifs de l’Accord de Paris, et il semble de plus en plus évident que même un découplage absolu généralisé et rapide pourrait ne pas suffire à atteindre ces objectifs sans une certaine forme de décroissance économique. […] Même si certains pays ont atteint un découplage absolu, ils continuent à ajouter des émissions dans l’atmosphère montrant ainsi les limites de la ‘croissance verte’ et du paradigme de la croissance. Même si tous les pays découplent en termes absolus, cela pourrait ne pas être suffisant pour éviter un changement climatique dangereux ».

Voilà l’essentiel : les rares pays qui font l’expérience d’un découplage ne parviennent qu’à stabiliser leurs émissions à des niveaux trop élevés ou bien à les réduire de manière insuffisante.

Certains diront que le Résumé à l’Intention des Décideurs du rapport sur l’atténuation affirme que :

« au moins 18 pays ont maintenu des réductions d’émissions de GES mesurées par la production ainsi que de CO2 mesurées par la consommation pendant plus de 10 ans. […] Certains pays ont réduit leurs émissions de GES basées sur la production d’un tiers ou plus depuis leur pic, et d’autres ont atteint plusieurs années de taux de réduction consécutifs d’environ 4 %/an, comparables aux réductions mondiales dans les scénarios limitant le réchauffement à 2°C (>67 %) ou moins. Ces réductions n’ont que partiellement compensé la croissance des émissions mondiales. (confiance élevée) ». 

Il faut savoir que le résumé du GIEC est un document politique qui résulte de délibérations entre États, un processus qui tend à diluer certains messages. L’étude des 18 pays en question est bien moins optimiste. La réduction médiane entre 2005 et 2015 n’est que de 2.4 %, des réductions « très loin de la décarbonisation mondiale profonde et rapide du système énergétique qu’impliquent les objectifs de l’Accord de Paris », selon Corinne Le Quéré, l’autrice principale de l’article. L’étude montre d’ailleurs que ces réductions sont en partie expliquées par un ralentissement de la croissance économique dans les pays concernés, et que « si le PIB retrouve une forte croissance, les réductions de la consommation d’énergie pourraient s’affaiblir ou s’inverser » (voir : Is green growth happening ?). 

Les conclusions de Klaus Hubacek et de Corinne Le Quéré, deux des experts les plus respectés sur le sujet, s’accordent avec le reste de la littérature : une poignée de pays a réussi à stabiliser ses émissions à des niveaux extrêmement élevés, avec des périodes temporaires de réduction minuscules concernant seulement une partie de leurs activités. Dire que la croissance de ces pays s’est « verdie » parce que leurs émissions ont diminué de quelques pourcents reviendrait à dire que j’ai « gravi » l’Everest après avoir parcouru les premiers mètres. Dans les faits, ce n’est pas faux, mais c’est tout de même fallacieux – une sorte de greenwashing macroéconomique.

Cette croyance en un découplage magique du PIB est devenue un discours de l’inaction pour refuser de mettre en cause le mode de vie insoutenable des pays à haut-revenu. C’est une vérité difficile à nier : la croissance économique rend plus difficile la réduction des émissions par rapport à un scénario de décroissance où le volume de la production et de la consommation diminue. En effet, les biens et services les plus faciles à verdir sont ceux qu’il n’est pas nécessaire de produire, et donc plus nous pouvons réduire la consommation, plus il sera facile de réduire les émissions (c’est d’ailleurs le message du Chapitre 5 dans le rapport du GIEC. Voir : Sufficiency means degrowth et Le GIEC ouvre la voie d’une décroissance soutenable et conviviale).

Comme souvent, une vague de climato-rassuristes essayera de faire taire le message scientifique du GIEC en citant à tue-tête les affirmations ambiguës de son résumé politique. Ils parleront de bonnes nouvelles pour légitimer une stratégie qui ne marche pas et qui nous mène droit vers un cataclysme climatique que nous aurions pu éviter. En plein procès de Galilée, il va falloir choisir entre science et politique climato-sceptique, c’est-à-dire entre la stratégie de la décroissance soutenable et celle d’un découplage imaginaire. La science nous dit que, tout comme le soleil ne tourne pas autour de la Terre, la poursuite de la croissance économique dans les pays riches n’est pas compatible avec la stabilité climatique. La croissance verte n’est qu’une « promesse non tenue », comme le dit António Guterres, secrétaire général des Nations unies, une de ces « promesses vides qui nous mettent fermement sur la voie d’un monde invivable ». 

It took me a while but I finally digested the 107 pages of Chapter 5: Demand, services and social aspects of mitigation in the last IPCC report on Mitigation of climate change. This chapter is worth the read if only because it’s the first one fully dedicated to demand-side strategies. What I find remarkable is its conceptual width, including a few ideas that are usually considered too radical in these kind of venues. But just like the rest of the report, it is long and – as academic writing too often is – full of abstract jargon and somnolent prose. What I want to do in this article is to explain why Chapter 5 is more radical (in the good sense of the term) that you may think.  

What does “demand” mean? 

The chapter uses a variety of demand-related terms like deep demand reduction, low demand scenarios, reduced demand, demand-side options, and demand-side measures. Before we get into the details, it is essential to grasp what this demand refers to. Back to economics 101: supply has to do with production and supply-side measures aims at changing patterns of production. In climate discussions, these often revolve around shifting to renewable energy, making production more resource efficient, and deploying carbon removal technologies. Demand, on the other hand, has to do with consumption and demand-side measures[i]target lifestyle choices, institutions, and cultural norms. 

The report divides demand-side measures into three kinds: avoid, shift, and improve.[ii] Avoid consists in consuming less of something; shift means substituting one type of consumption for another; and improve is the greening of an existing type of consumption. If we’re talking about cutting the carbon footprint of food, I can avoid waste, shift to a vegan diet, and improve my cooking equipment. So, this is the central focus of the chapter: What can we avoid, shift, and improve in our consumption to reduce emissions? 

This question may not seem like much but it is. For several decades, the focal point of climate discussions was the decoupling of production and emissions. With hindsight, it seems rather silly we wasted that much time obsessing over the greening of a production that could have been avoided in the first place. After years of wrecking our brains on the design of hydrogen planes, electric cars, and cultured meat, we realise that it would have been much more effective to just fly less, use public transport more, and go vegan. This is how eureka-ish Chapter 5 is.  

Whose demand is it? 

The problem of the supply approach is that it invisibilises inequality. When we say that we should improve the carbon efficiency of a plane, we sideline the matter of who is actually flying and why. From the perspective of demand, however, the question of unequal levels of consumption becomes crucial. Forget about efficiency (for now) because climate mitigation is first and foremost of a question of sufficiency, namely “measures and daily practices that avoid demand for energy, materials, land and water while delivering human wellbeing for all within planetary boundaries,” as defined in the SPM. And that’s where the concept of basic needs and well-being for all within planetary boundaries takes all its revolutionary meaning. In an unequal world with a limited carbon budget, we should discuss who is entitled to consume what. If you think this question is too polemical or philosophical for an IPCC report, think again. Here is perhaps the one single most important paragraph from Chapter 5 (pp. 29-30), which I will split in five smaller parts. 

 “The distinction between necessities and luxuries helps to frame a growing stream of social sciences literature with climate policy relevance (Arrow et al. 2004; Ramakrishnan and Creutzig 2021).” 

We’re not used to talk about necessities and luxuries in climate politics. Usually, we assume that the entirety of our consumption can be greened. Except, now we know that it cannot (this is point I made regarding the limits to greening growth in a previous article). The failure of decoupling strategies, and the accelerating urgency of avoiding climate breakdown put us in the unfamiliar position of having to choose between sustaining current levels of consumption or preserving climate stability. This reminds me of some of the last words of The Limits to Growth, already fifty years ago: “As soon as a society recognizes that it cannot maximize everything for everyone, it must begin to make choices. Should there be more people or wealth, more wilderness or more automobiles, more food for the poor or more services for the rich?” This is the choice we’re facing now. 

[…] “Given growing public support worldwide for strong sustainability, sufficiency, and sustainable consumption, changing demand patterns and reduced demand are accompanying environmental and social benefits (Jackson 2008; Fedrigo et al. 2010; Schroeder 2013; Figge et al. 2014; Spangenberg and Germany 2016; Spengler 2016; Mont et al. 2020; Burke 2020).”

Let me translate in plain English: consuming less and differently is good for people and the planet. This is what (Jackson 2008, p.21) calls the double dividend: “If the consumer way of life is both ecologically damaging and psychologically flawed, then the possibility remains that we could live better by consuming less and reduce our impact on the environment at the same time.” 

[…] “Beyond a threshold, increased material consumption is not closely correlated with improvements in human progress (Kahneman and Deaton 2010; Vita et al. 2019b, 2020; Frank 1999; Steinberger and Roberts 2010; Oishi et al. 2018; Xie et al. 2018; Wang et al. 2019; Roy et al. 2012).”

This is called the saturation hypothesis (also the Easterlin Paradox or the wellbeing-consumption paradox), which is summarised elsewhere in Chapter 5: “vital dimensions of human well-being correlate with consumption, but only up to a threshold” (p.19). If you need to go somewhere and you suddenly get access to a bike, you’re happy. If you get a second bike, you’ll perhaps be happy still, but not as much as the first time. If you get a third bike, you won’t bother even using it because you already have two. If you get 10 more bikes, you’ll actually be annoyed because you won’t know where to put them. After a certain threshold (here of bikes), the wellbeing you derive from them will saturate. This individual commonsense we experience every day is also true for a country as a whole. Past a certain threshold of GDP per capita, further economic growth will not improve wellbeing. 

This idea of a satiation threshold divides consumption in two kinds: one below the threshold that should then be increased, and one above that we can afford to decrease. If you’re malnourished, you’re under-consuming and you need to consume more to reach a sufficiency level; if you’re suffering from obesity, you’re likely to be over-consuming and your wellbeing strategy will consist in consuming less. Because meat has a high carbon footprint, eating less of it will reap a double dividend: emissions will go down while health improves. Now, imagine that the quantity of meat or the carbon budget associated with its consumption is limited, should we rather let the malnourished eat the meat or feed it to those above the satiation point? Thing is, every natural resource is fundamentally limited, which finally means this: in a finite world, the too-much of “people far above Decent Living Standards levels” (p.18) quickly becomes the not-enough of others.  

[…] “Policies focusing on the “super-rich,” also called the “polluter elite,” are gaining attention for moral or norms-based as well as emissions-control reasons (Kenner 2019; Pascale et al. 2020; Stratford 2020; Otto et al. 2019) (see Section 5.2.2.3). Conspicuous consumption by the wealthy is the cause of a large proportion of emissions in all countries, related to expenditures on such things as air travel, tourism, large private vehicles and large homes (Preston 2010[iii]; Gore 2015; Sahakian 2018; Osuoka and Haruna 2019; Lynch et al. 2019; Roy and Pal 2009; Hubacek et al. 2017; Jorgenson et al. 2017; Gössling 2019; Kenner 2019; Roy et al. 2012).”

The “polluter elite” is a term coined by Dario Kenner when launching a database of rich people holding significant amounts of shares in polluting companies (see Carbon Inequality: The Role of the Richest in Climate Change). The climate problem with wealth is not only a matter of lifestyle but also of investment. Wealthy individuals only consume part of their income, the rest being invested in various projects, many of them disastrous for the planet. Shareholders tend to defend their financial returns by sidelining social and ecological concerns while organising production, which is why the most lucrative activities are often the least socially and ecologically sustainable. Driven by short-term, financial objectives, these actors have an incentive to boost sales. The more money they get in return, the more they can re-invest, giving them an even bigger control over production

Of course, lifestyle emissions matter too. The term “super-rich” comes from an article in Nature by Otto et al. (2019) which estimates the footprint of a typical super-rich household at around 129.3 tCO2e per year. Lynch et al. (2019, p.1) calls the consumption of super yachts, large homes, luxury vehicles and private jets criminal since “they disrupt the normal regeneration and reproduction of ecosystems by generating excessive ecological disorganization.” The paragraph references an 2015 Oxfam report showing that the richest 10% of people in the world are responsible for around 50% of global emissions. Because the rich emit so much more than the rest, a widening of inequality drives total emissions up, as shown by Jorgenson et al. (2017) for the case of the United States. Unless it’s not obvious already, the essential point to grasp here is that rich people must consume less.[iv]

[…] “Since no country now meets its citizens’ basic needs at a level of resource use that is globally sustainable, while high levels of life satisfaction for those just escaping extreme poverty require even more resources, the need for transformative shifts in governance and policies is large (O’Neill et al. 2018; Vogel et al. 2021).” 

This sentence is ambiguous, so let me rephrase. We live in a world where poverty remains and those with unmet needs require more resources to satisfy them. We also live in an ecologically-constrained world struggling to cut emissions as fast as possible. In that context, by reducing consumption in the global North (and more generally for all of those who are over-consuming), one could free some of these resources for the people who need it the most. Ensuring basic needs and well-being for all necessarily implies limiting consumption in high-income regions and wealthy households in order to enable resource-poor countries and households to reach decent standards of living. In other words, degrowth in the global North is a prerequisite for sustainable development in the global South. 

Reducing demand is degrowth 

Does that mean that Chapter 5 is a call for degrowth? The answer is a resounding yes. Degrowth as a planned and democratic reduction of production and consumption in rich countries to lower environmental pressures and inequalities while improving well-being is precisely what Chapter 5 is about. Some of its authors may not like the term, but the idea remains: reducing demand is degrowth. I mean, there is even a direct mention of the term in the chapter. 

“Consumption reductions, both voluntary and policy-induced, can have positive and double-dividend effects on efficiency as well as reductions in energy and materials use (Mulder et al. 2006; Harriss and Shui 2010; Grinde et al. 2018; Spangenberg and Lorek 2019; Figge et al. 2014; Vita et al. 2020). Less waste, better emissions control and more effective carbon policies lead to better governance and stronger democracies. Systems-dynamics models linking strong emissions-reducing policies and strong social equity policies show that a low-carbon transition in conjunction with social sustainability is possible, even without economic growth (Kallis et al. 2012; Jackson and Victor 2016; Stuart et al. 2017; [D’Alessandro et al. 2020]; Huang et al. 2019; Victor 2019; Chapman and Fraser 2019; Gabriel and Bond 2019). Such degrowth pathways may be crucial in combining technical feasibility of mitigation with social development goals (Hickel et al. 2021; Keyßer and Lenzen 2021)” (Ch.5 p.32). 

Degrowth, as an overall strategy to downsize economic activities to a more sustainable scale, necessarily involves voluntary and policy-induced consumption reductions. Many of the sixty demand-side options that the chapter presents are part of the degrowth agenda. The five most effective avoid-related interventions to reduce emissions have to do with ditching cars and flying less. The ten most effective shift ones concern public transport, vegan and vegetarian diets, lower carbon meats, organic food, active mobility, and local food. The improve options (electric cars, renewable electricity, refurbishment and renovation, heat pump) also play an important part in the degrowth discourse. 

Of course, it’s one thing to recommend going vegan and another to call for an overhaul of capitalism (as degrowth does). And here the chapter is conceptually shy. It calls for a radical reduction in demand but falls short in exploring its system-wide implications. From a degrowth perspective, renewable electricity is more desirable in the form of low-tech and community-owned infrastructure. Electric cars can be useful in replacing un-avoidable private vehicles like delivery trucks, taxis, and ambulances, but should not be treated as a way to sustain a car-based transport system. The refurbishment and renovation of housing is an urgent task, and so it should be entrusted to partly state-financed, not-for-profit businesses. Public transport should be treated a social right and organised following the logic of Universal Basic Services. 

“Decent Living Standards (DLS) serves as a socio-economic benchmark as it views human welfare not in relation to consumption but rather in terms of services which together help meet human needs (e.g. nutrition, shelter, health, etc.), recognising that these service needs may be met in many different ways (with different emissions implications) depending on local contexts, cultures, geography, available technologies, social preferences, and other factors” (p.17). 

Difficult here not to think of Manfred Max-Neef’s Matrix of Fundamental Human Needs or of Amartya Sen’s concept of “capabilities.” Decent living standards are not a matter of money but rather a matter of capabilities, only some of which depend on money. The pursuit of endless economic growth in nations who have already crossed the satiation threshold is a misguided development strategy. This strategy can also be counter-productive if the things we sacrifice to increase production (free time, scarce materials, a limited carbon budget) are actually much more valuable for well-being that the increase in income we get for them. A development strategy that focuses on health, conviviality, and sustainability is much more adapted to secure prosperity than a monomaniac focus on money points – or in IPCC words: “development targeted to basic needs and well-being for all entails less carbon-intensity than GDP-focused growth” (p.15). 

“Equitable & democratic societies which provide high quality public services to their population have high well-being outcomes at lower energy use than those which do not, whereas those which prioritize economic growth beyond moderate incomes and extractive sectors display a reversed effect (Vogel et al. 2021)” (p.27). 

This is why the authors of Chapter 5 plead for “prioritizing human well-being and the environment over economic growth” (p.17). Now, let that statement sink for a second for that it has radical implications. Prioritizing people and planet over profits means that regardless how lucrative an activity is, its raison d’être should systematically be evaluated based on its social utility and ecological sustainability. From this principle comes a corollary that is equally simple yet far more provocative: we will have to shut down a large swatch of today’s economic activities. Entire sectors like advertising, real-estate management, and financial services, products like SUVs, private jets, and personal data, should simply cease to exist. Radically reducing demand means dismantling a large part of our economy. 

“These five drivers of human behaviour either contribute to the status-quo of a global high-carbon, consumption, and GDP growth oriented economy or help generate the desired change to a low-carbon energy-services, well-being, and equity oriented economy (Jackson 2017; Cassiers et al. 2018; Yuana et al. 2020)” (p.17). 

So, my fundamental point is this: we should not treat demand-side strategies as mere lifestyle tweaks. They go deeper than that. To enable the radical reduction Chapter 5 talks about, and in order to secure our ability to “prosper without growth” (Jackson, 2017) or to guarantee basic needs and well-being for all within planetary boundaries, as IPCC authors would say, we need to completely rethink our economic system. We need to transition from a growth-oriented economy to a low-carbon energy-services, well-being and equity-oriented economy – a “post-growth economy” (Cassiers et al., 2018).  

***

Chapter 5: Demand, services and social aspects of mitigation is an ode to degrowth. “Degrowth” may only be mentioned 7 times in the whole mitigation report, but idea is all over the chapter. This is about time. After thirty years of ineffective climate politics, finally a new idea makes it to the top of the pile.  Instead of bickering about decoupling, passively waiting for a quasi-magical greening of GDP, we can finally switch to Plan B. Let’s forget about income and talk about needs; let’s ditch average per capita aggregates, and address inequality head on; let’s stop taking demand as granted and let’s reinvent the ways we satisfy our needs. The task is huge but now at least we know: we need to invent ourselves a new economic system.

[i] The Annex I: Glossary (p.13) defines demand-side measures as “policies and programmes for influencing the demand for goods and/or services. In the energy sector, demand-side mitigation measures aim at reducing the amount of greenhouse gas emissions emitted per unit of energy service used.” 

[ii]  The A-S-I approach is not new, it was developed in Germany in the early 1990s as a way to reduce the environmental impact of transport to improve quality of life in cities (as far as I know, it was first officially mentioned in a report of the German parliament’s Enquete Commission in 1994).

[iii] The reference is missing in the bibliography, but I suppose they refer to Brand and Preston (2010), a study of transport emissions in the UK showing that the highest 20% of emitters are responsible for 61% of all emissions – they call it the 60-20 emission rule. 

[iv] This point actually made it to the Executive Summary of Chapter 5 (“Wealthy individuals contribute disproportionately to higher emissions and have a high potential for emissions reductions while maintaining decent living standards and well-being,” p.4) and to the Summary for Policymakers (C. 10.4: “Addressing inequality and many forms of status consumption and focusing on wellbeing supports climate change mitigation efforts”).

It’s the Galileo affair of the 21st century: Has economic growth in developed countries decoupled from environmental pressures? For the last decade, the prevailing (yet unproven) answer was: yes, it has – high-income nations have greened their growth which means that they can now increase their GDP while reducing their emissions. This illusion of a scientific consensus has served as the backbone of most environmental policies in the world. 

But what if we’re wrong about decoupling? I’ve been defending this claim since Decoupling debunked (2019) and I never felt as right as now after reading the IPCC “Mitigation of Climate Change” report. What I intend to show in this paper is that the reassuring claim that decoupling is feasible, as one may read in the Summary for Policymaker and hear in the media, is scientifically ungrounded, and this based on the very analysis provided by the IPCC report.  

Decoupling in the full report

The term “decoupling” is found in 83 pages of the 2,913-page full report (41 pages being in the bibliography).[i] Most of the discussion happens in Chapter 2: Emission trends and drivers, sub-section 2.3.3 Decoupling of emissions from economic growth(pp. 37-39). This sub-section is made of only five paragraphs and so I will here dissect them one by one. 

“There has been a long-standing discussion on whether environmental impacts such as carbon emissions and use of natural resources can be decoupled from economic growth. It is controversial whether absolute decoupling can be achieved at a global scale (Ward et al., 2016; Hickel and Kallis, 2020). However, a number of studies found that it is feasible to achieve decoupling at the national level and have explored the reasons for such decoupling (Ward et al., 2016; Zhao et al., 2016; Schandl et al., 2016; Deutch, 2017; Roinioti and Koroneos, 2017; Li et al., 2019; Vadén et al., 2020; Habimana Simbi et al., 2021; Shan et al., 2021).” 

What I find most surprising about this opening paragraph is that it starts with the critics of green growth. This is new. For as long as I can remember, discussions on decoupling always started from the assumption that green growth was possible, and that it was just a matter of finding the most effective way to achieve it. But now it seems the burden of proof has changed camp. Decoupling is unfeasible, unless proven so – this in itself is already progress.   

The two studies selected to represent critics of green growth are unambiguous on the matter. Ward et al. (2016) conclude that “growth in GDP ultimately cannot be decoupled from growth in material and energy use” and that “it is therefore misleading to develop growth-oriented policy around the expectation that decoupling is possible.” Along the same line, Hickel and Kallis (2020)conclude that “there is no empirical evidence that absolute decoupling from resource use can be achieved on a global scale.” They also affirm that “absolute decoupling from carbon emissions is highly unlikely to be achieved at a rate rapid enough to prevent global warming over 1.5°C or 2°C,” which lead them to write that “green growth is likely to be a misguided objective.”

Concerning the structure of the paragraph, the text is almost identical to Hubacek et al. (2021, pp. 1-2), which is understandable since Klaus Hubacek is lead author of Chapter 2 (together with three of his co-authors on that particular paper, one of them also lead author and the two others contributing authors). The only difference between the two documents is the choice of references. Here is the passage in the original article: “Although it is controversial whether absolute decoupling can be achieved at a global scale (Hickel and Kallis 2021; Ward et al. 2016; Schandl et al. 2016; Haberl et al. 2020; Parrique et al. 2019), a number of studies found some evidence for decoupling at the national level.”

I cannot explain why the authors of Chapter 2 decided to only include the two first references. The omission of  Haberl et al. (2020) is particularly odd since it’s the largest literature review of the empirical literature on decoupling, and also because it is referenced several times elsewhere in the report (Ch.1 p.41, p.44; Ch. 2 p.47; Ch.3 p.26; and Ch.4 p.68). For example, one can read in Chapter 4 (p.68) that “while some literature indicates that absolute decoupling of economic growth and GHG emissions has occurred in some countries (Le Quéré et al. 2019), a larger systematic review found limited evidence of this (Haberl et al. 2020)” (Ch.4 p.68). (I will comment on Le Quéré et al. 2019 later on.) 

Let’s now look at the actual scientific proof behind the initial claim. The second sentence of the paragraph references nine studies who supposedly show that it is feasible to achieve decoupling at the national level. My contention is that they don’t. Out of the nine studies, two of them argue the exact opposite (Ward et al. 2016; Vadén et al. 2020), three only find local proof of – mostly relative – decoupling (Roinioti and Koroneos 2017; Habimana Simbi et al. 2021; Shan et al. 2021), two are not even about decoupling (Zhao et al. 2016; Li et al. 2019), and one is not a research article but only a short commentary whose message is rather ambiguous on the matter (Deutch 2017). This leaves us with only one study that actually fits the claim it is referenced for (Schandl et al. 2016). 

Let’s review all of them, starting with the two who actually argue against the feasibility of green growth. The conclusion from Ward et al. (2016) is unequivocal: “Our model demonstrates that growth in GDP ultimately cannot plausibly be decoupled from growth in material and energy use, demonstrating categorically that GDP growth cannot be sustained indefinitely.” This leads them to conclude that “it is ultimately necessary for nations and the world to transition to a steady or declining GDP scenario” (basically a degrowth claim). Same situation for Vadén et al. (2020). After reviewing 179 articles on decoupling, they conclude that even though some papers present evidence of absolute impact decoupling (mainly between CO2 and GDP), there is “no evidence of economy-wide, national/international absolute resource decoupling” and “no evidence of the kind of decoupling needed for ecological sustainability.” Hence their conclusion: “in the absence of robust evidence, the goal of decoupling rests partly on faith.” 

The findings of three cited decoupling studies do not correspond to the claim that it is feasible to achieve decoupling at the national level. Roinioti and Koroneos (2017) look at Greece from 2003 and 2013 and only find an absolute decoupling for three years (2005, 2007, and 2008). Habimana Simbi et al. (2021) study 20 African countries between 1984 and 2014. They find that CO2 emissions increased by 2.11% over the period, and that “the industrial structure and emission efficiency contributed to the reduction of CO2 emissions but were inadequate to offset the positive contribution of population and economic growth.” Finally, Shan et al. (2021) study the link between economic growth and CO2 emissions in 294 Chinese cities for the years 2005, 2010, and 2015, finding “varying degrees of decoupling”: 11% achieved absolute decoupling and 65% relative decoupling. In the end, the authors write that “although there was slow emission growth or even an emission decline in decoupled cities, they kept adding CO2 to the atmospheric and increasing CO2 concentration.” 

There are two articles that are not even on the topic of decoupling. Zhao et al. (2016) study the environmental impacts of a fleet of 30 commercial delivery trucks in the United States (the article does not use the word “decoupling” or “green growth”). Same for Li et al. (2019) who look at the impacts of demographic structure on CO2 emissions in China with no mention of decoupling whatsoever. And there is Deutsch (2017), not a scientific study but a 2-page commentary reflecting on decoupling in the United States and China, which actually warns against investing too much hope in decoupling: “the decline [in energy and carbon intensity] is insufficient to avoid significant average global temperature increase in the second half of this century. It is misleading to suggest that, while this trend may create jobs and benefit to the United States, it will successfully avoid the risks of climate change.”  

So far, we have ruled out eight studies out of nine, which leaves us with Schandl et al. (2016). The first important thing to understand about this study is that it is a prospective modelling exercise. What it models is a hypothetical scenario that assumes the introduction of a global carbon price. Modelling hypothetical scenarios is uncertain enough, but one where one assumes the world would suddenly introduce a global carbon price significantly more so. 

But let’s nonetheless look at the results. “Our research shows that while relative decoupling can be achieved in some scenarios, none would lead to an absolute reduction in energy or material footprint, while carbon footprint could be reduced in absolute terms.” Concerning carbon, the most ambitious scenario (one with a global carbon price starting at $50 per tonne and rising to $236 in 2050) only manages to stabilise global carbon emission at their 2015 levels (so it’s a case of absolute decoupling where GDP increases while emissions remain stable). 

My contention is that this opening paragraph is deceiving because it offers no evidence that it is feasible to achieve decoupling at the national level. But let’s see how the rest of the section unfolds. 

“Table 2.3 shows the extent of decoupling of CBEs [Consumption-based emissions] and GDP [Gross Domestic Product] of countries based on CBEs from the Global Carbon Budget (Friedlingstein et al., 2020) and GDP data from the World Bank. Table 2.4 also presents countries’ degree of decoupling of PBEs [Production-based emissions] and GDP. These data allow a comparison of decoupling between GDP and both PBEs and CBEs. Absolute decoupling refers to a decline of emissions in absolute terms or as being stable while GDP grows (i.e., a decoupling index greater than 1); relative decoupling refers to growth of emissions being lower than growth of GDP (a decoupling index between 0 and 1); and no decoupling, which refers to a situation where emissions grow to the same extent or faster than GDP (a decoupling index of less than 0) (Wu et al., 2018).”

The table comes from Hubacek et al. (2021) “Evidence of decoupling consumption-based CO2 emissions from economic growth.” Before coming to that, however, let’s note an important sentence in the paragraph: absolute decoupling refers to a decline of emissions in absolute terms or as being stable while GDP grows. This is something most people do not realise about green growth: you can have so-called absolute decoupling without actually reducing emissions – we’ve seen this above in the case of these few Chinese cities who absolutely decoupled without actually reducing their emissions, or globally in the study by Schandl et al. (2016). Needless to say, in terms of mitigation, and especially for countries who already overshoot their carbon budgets, a stabilisation of emissions is no victory. 

Hubacek et al. (2021) look at 116 countries from 1990 to 2018, applying a structural decomposition analysis to understand the drivers behind changes in emissions. The table shown in the IPCC report displays the grouping of these countries based on their degree of decoupling during the 2015-2018 period. 

“During the most recent three-year period from 2015 to 2018, 23 countries (or 20% of the 116 sample countries) have achieved absolute decoupling of CBEs [Consumption-based emissions] and GDP, while 32 countries (or 28%) achieved absolute decoupling of PBEs [Production-based emissions] and GDP. 14 of them (e.g., the UK, Japan, and the Netherlands) also decoupled PBEs and GDP. Countries with absolute decoupling of CBEs tend to achieve decoupling at relatively high levels of economic development and high per capita emissions. Most of EU and North American countries are in this group. Decoupling was not only achieved by outsourcing carbon intensive production, but also improvements in production efficiency and energy mix, leading to a decline of emissions. Structural Decomposition Analysis shows that the main driver for decoupling has been a reduction in carbon intensity (that is change in energy mix and energy efficiency) from both domestic production and imports (Hubacek et al., 2021). Similarly, Wood et al., (2019c) found that EU countries have reduced their overall consumption-based GHG emissions by 8% between 1995 and 2015, mainly due to the use of more efficient technology. The literature also shows that changes in the structure of economy with a shift to tertiary sectors of production may contribute to such decoupling (Xu and Ang, 2013; Kanitkar et al., 2015; Su and Ang, 2016).”

“67 (or 58%) countries, including China and India, have relatively decoupled GDP and CBEs between 2015 and 2018, reflecting a slower growth in emissions than GDP. It is worth noting that the USA shows relative decoupling of emissions (both CBEs and PBEs) and GDP over the most recent period, although it strongly decoupled economic growth from emissions between 2005 and 2015. Thus decoupling can be temporary and countries’ emissions may again increase after a period of decoupling.”

(Little aside: focus on the last sentence: decoupling can be temporary and countries’ emissions may again increase after a period of decoupling. In Decoupling Debunked (2019), we called it the recoupling hypothesis: a country like the United States, for example, may experience an absolute decoupling during an energy transition from coal to gas, but once that transition is complete, GDP will recouple with greenhouse gas emissions because burning additional gas will generate additional emissions.) 

“Another 19 (or 16%) countries, such as South Africa and Nepal, have experienced no decoupling between GDP and CBEs from 2015 to 2018, meaning the growth of their GDP is closely tied with the consumption of emission-intensive goods. As a result, a further increase of GDP in these countries will likely lead to higher emissions, if they follow the historical trend without substantive improvement in efficiency of production and energy use.” 

I will proceed in two steps. First, I will comment on the results of the Hubacek et al. (2021) study, and then I will address the second part of the first paragraph which references four other studies supposedly bringing additional proof. In Hubacek et al. (2021), 23 countries[ii] achieve absolute decoupling of emissions and GDP. But what does that mean in actual emission reduction? Answer: not much. “In developed countries, CBE peaked at 15 GtCO2 in 2007 with a subsequent 16% decline until 2016 and a slight rebound of 1.6% until 2018” (ibid. p.4). We have here again a case of emissions semi-stabilising at a too-high level, which brings the authors to write that these countries “cannot serve as role models for the rest of the world” given that their decoupling “was only achieved at very high levels of per capita emissions.” 

In the discussion section of the paper, the authors conclude that “absolute decoupling is insufficient to avoid consuming the remaining CO2 emission budget under the global warming limit of 1.5°C or even 2°C and avoid potential climate breakdown (Hickel and Kallis, 2020). Overwhelming efforts are needed to reduce global emissions in line with Paris Agreement targets, and the evidence seems to be mounting that even widespread and rapid absolute decoupling alone might not suffice to achieve these goals without some form of economic degrowth (Hickel et al., 2021; Keyßer and Lenzen 2021; Stoknes and Rockström, 2018)” (ibid. p.7). 

They go even further in the last paragraph of the conclusion: “Even though some countries have achieved absolute decoupling, they are still adding emissions to the atmosphere thus showing the limits of ‘green growth’ and the growth paradigm. Even if all countries decouple in absolute terms, this might still not be sufficient to avert dangerous climate change. Therefore, decoupling can only serve as one of the indicators and steps toward fully decarbonizing the economy and society” (ibid. p.9).

Let us now look at the four other studies mentioned at the end of the first paragraph. Wood et al. (2019c) is a fairly niche study, which estimates emission transfers between OECD and non-OECD countries. Concerning OECD countries, consumption-based emissions are slightly higher in 2015 than they were in 1995 (another case of decoupling without emissions cut). Xu and Ang (2013) is also quite specific. It survey 80 papers on structural decomposition analysis of energy-related CO2 emissions from 1991 to 2012, but do so before the invention of consumption-based emissions indicators, which limits the usefulness of its results. Kanitkart et al. (2015) is a prospective case-study evaluating two different climate targets for India, and Su and Ang (2016) conduct a Structural Decomposition Analysis (SDA) to rank 30 geographical regions in China based on their emission performance. Let’s remember the claim these studies are referenced to: changes in the structure of economy with a shift to tertiary sectors of production may contribute to such decoupling. I find it odd that none of these studies actually look at the developed country who absolutely decoupled their consumption-based emissions. 

Let’s continue and analyse the final paragraph of the Decoupling of emissions from economic growth section.  

“It is important to note that a country’s degree of decoupling changes over time. For example, 32 countries achieved absolute decoupling from 2010 to 2015 but only 10 of them remained decoupled over the next three years. More importantly, although absolute decoupling has reduced annual emissions, the remaining emissions are still contributing to an increase in atmospheric carbon concentration. Absolute decoupling is not sufficient to avoid consuming the remaining CO2 emission budget under the global warming limit of 1.5°C or 2°C and to avoid climate breakdown (Stoknes and Rockström, 2018; Hickel and Kallis, 2020). Even if all countries decouple in absolute terms this might still not be sufficient and thus can only serve as one of the indicators and steps toward fully decarbonizing the economy and society.” 

Before commenting on that paragraph, allow me a little aside on Stoknes and Rockström (2018), which argues that Sweden, Finland and Denmark have achieved what the authors calls “genuine green growth” (a requirement of a yearly 5% improvement in carbon productivity). A recent study by Tilsted et al. (2021) revisited their results showing that Denmark had only achieved the 5% threshold a couple of years between 2000 et 2017, and that all the other Nordic countries remained far under the 5% threshold when their imported emissions where accounted for. Today, and given the results of the AR6, we know that 5% yearly reduction in emissions are not enough, and so we realise that the Nordic countries are far from having achieved a green growth compatible with the 1.5°C climate threshold.  

Back to the paragraph. It basically says that absolute decoupling in itself is not an effective mitigation strategy if it doesn’t actually decrease emissions. This is a point I have made a few times here already, and this is probably the most precious message of this whole discussion. Economic growth makes it more difficult to reduce emissions compared to a degrowth scenario where the volume of production and consumption gets smaller. This is not rocket science: the goods and services the easiest to green are the ones you don’t have to produce, and so the more of them we can downshift with demand-side measures, the easiest it will be to cut emissions.  

This marks the end of the section on decoupling but there are two other places in Chapter 2: Emission trends and drivers that we need to look at, starting with the paragraph dedicated to decoupling in the Executive Summary of the chapter: 

 “A growing number of countries have achieved GHG emission reductions longer than 10 years – a few at rates that are broadly consistent with climate change mitigation scenarios that limit warming to well below 2°C (high confidence). There are about 24 countries that have reduced CO2 and GHG emissions for longer than 10 years. Reduction rates in a few countries have reached 4% in some years, in line with rates observed in pathways that likely limit warming to 2°C. However, the total reduction in annual GHG emissions of these countries is small (about 3.2 GtCO2eqyr-1) compared to global emissions growth observed over the last decades. Complementary evidence suggests that countries have decoupled territorial CO2 emissions from Gross Domestic Product (GDP), but fewer have decoupled consumption-based emissions from GDP. This decoupling has mostly occurred in countries with high per capita GDP and high per capita CO2 emissions” (Ch.2 p.5, bold in original) 

In light of the available scientific evidence, this opening sentence is ungrounded and misleading. So far in Chapter 2, there has been no evidence showing that emissions could actually be significantly decreased. All the rates we’ve seen in the handful of cases where emissions actually decrease (instead of just stabilising) have been far far (far) away from the rates that are broadly consistent with climate change mitigation scenarios that limit warming to well below 2°C. The reference to a 4% yearly decrease is confusing because such cases have been so rare. It would be like pointing to the top speed of Usain Bolt implying that we could all potentially run that fast, all the time. Plus, we’ve seen that this decoupling was often temporary, and so picking the fastest decoupling years of the fastest decoupling countries is not representative of more general, long-term trends. The rest of the paragraph is more cautious, warning that these cases of decoupling have occurred at levels of GDP and CO2 emissions so high that they “cannot serve as role models for the rest of the world,” to use the concluding words of Hubacek et al. (2021).

The second passage worth mentioning is a FAQ at the end of Chapter 2: Are there countries that have reduced emissions and grown economically at the same time?

“About 24 countries that have reduced territorial CO2 and GHG emissions for more than 10 years. Uncertainties in emission levels and changes over time prevents a precise assessment in some country cases. In the short observation period of 2010–2015, 43 out of 166 countries have achieved absolute decoupling of consumption-based CO2 emissions from economic growth, which means that these countries experienced GDP growth while their emissions have stabilised or declined. A group of developed countries, such as some EU countries and the United States, and some developing countries, such as Cuba, have successfully achieved an absolute decoupling of consumption-based CO2 emissions and GDP growth. Decoupling has been achieved at various levels of per capita income and per capita emissions. Overall, the absolute reduction in annual emissions achieved by some countries has been outweighed by growth in emissions elsewhere in the world” (Ch.2 p.83). 

Even after spending that much time studying the report, I could not identify the study with 43 countries having decoupled their consumption-based CO2 emissions – Hubacek et al. (2021) only look at 116 with 23/24 nations in the absolute decoupling group. In any case, the sentence is overly optimistic in light of the reviewed scientific evidence. Notice also how the sentence “decoupling has been achieved at various levels of per capita income and per capita emissions” is quite more hopeful than the one in the paragraph above (Executive Summary of Chapter 2): “This decoupling has mostly occurred in countries with high per capita GDP and high per capita CO2 emissions.” Notice as well how the sentence “a group of developed countries, such as some EU countries and the United States, and some developing countries, such as Cuba, have successfully achieved an absolute decoupling of consumption-based CO2 emissions and GDP growth” could be potentially misinterpreted as a form of green growth compatible with limiting global warming to well-below 2°C (which it is not since the EU and the United States are still largely overshooting their national carbon budgets). 

That’s it for Chapter 2. Some may say that decoupling is discussed elsewhere in the report, and indeed there are few passages we can analyse, starting with this one in Chapter 5: Demand, services and social aspects of mitigation. 

“Worldwide trends reveal that at best only relative decoupling (resource use grows at a slower pace than GDP) was the norm during the twentieth century (Jackson 2009; Krausmann et al. 2009; Ward et al. 2016; Jackson 2017), while absolute decoupling (when material use declines as GDP grows) is rare, observed only during recessions or periods of low or no economic growth (Heun and Brockway 2019; Hickel and Kallis 2019; Vadén et al. 2020; Wiedenhofer et al. 2020). Recent trends in OECD countries demonstrate the potential for absolute decoupling of economic growth not only from territorial but also from consumption-based emissions (Le Quéré et al. 2019), albeit at scales insufficient for mitigation pathways (Vadén et al. 2020) (Chapter 2)” (Ch.5 p.15). 

Most of the paragraph is sceptical of decoupling supporting the argument I have developed so far, so let’s focus on the more hopeful bit. The last sentence refers to “Drivers of declining CO2 emissions in 18 developed economies” by Le Quéré et al. (2019). The study analyses 18 developed economies (Sweden, Romania, France, Ireland, Spain, UK, Bulgaria, The Netherlands, Italy, United States, Germany, Denmark, Portugal, Austria, Hungary, Belgium, Finland, and Croatia) between 2005 and 2015, finding that emissions decreased by a median -2.4% per year during that decade.

What’s great about this study is that it shows how overly hopeful the Executive Summary of the Chapter 2 is about these rates that are broadly consistent with climate change mitigation scenarios that limit warming to well below 2°C. Take UK, for example, often-cited as one of the most successful decoupling countries. In the Le Quéré study, its consumption-based emissions decreased by -2.1% per year between 2005 and 2015 with positive GDP rates of around 1.1%. This is not much; the country has pledged to reduce emissions by twice than that (5.1% per year). And to comply with the Paris Agreement, UK would need to achieve a steady 13% cut in emissions every year. 

Second remark: part of that decoupling is explained by a slowing down of rates of GDP growth (so closer to degrowth than to green growth). Le Quéré et al. acknowledge that the studied period is nothing extraordinary: “These reductions in the energy intensity of GDP in 2005-2015 do no stand out compared to similar reductions observed since the 1970s, indicating that decreases in energy use in the peak-and-decline group could be explained at least in part by the lower growth in GDP.” Using simulations, the authors estimate that “if GDP returns to strong growth in the peak-and-decline group, reductions in energy use may weaken or be reversed unless strong climate and energy policies are implemented.” The authors themselves err on the side of caution: “as significant as they have been, the emissions reductions observed […] fall a long way short of the deep and rapid global decarbonization of the energy system implied by the Paris Agreement temperature goals, especially given the increases in global CO2 emissions in 2017 and 2018, and the slowdown of decarbonization in Europe since 2014.” 

So, the results for greenhouse gases are rather disappointing, but perhaps there are more comforting evidence concerning the decoupling of other environmental pressures. Except that no, there is not. In fact, the situation for material footprint (the only other environmental pressure mentioned by the IPCC in the context of decoupling) is even worse. The situation is well summarised in the Executive Summary of Chap 11: Industry and then further in the chapter. 

“Global material intensity (in-use stock of manufactured capital, in tonnes per unit of GDP is increasing (high confidence). In-use stock of manufactured capital per capita has been growing faster than GDP per capita since 2000. Total global in-use stock of manufactured capital grew by 3.4% yr-1 in 2000–2019. At the same time, per capita material stocks in several developed countries have stopped growing, showing a decoupling from GDP per capita” (Ch.11 p.4). 

“Since 1970 material stock growth driven by industrialization and urbanization slightly exceeded that of GDP and there was no decoupling, so in Kaya-like identities material stock may effectively replace GDP” (Ch.11 p.12). There is a footnote attached to the word decoupling that says: “This conclusion is also valid separately for developed countries, rest of the world, and for China, when adjusted GDP for this country is used (Krausmann et al. 2020)” (ibid.). The paragraph continues: “While the composition of basic materials within the stock of manufactured capital was evolving significantly, overall stock use associated with a unit of GDP has been evolving over the last half-century in a quite narrow range of 7.7–8.6 t per 1000 USD (2017 PPP) showing neither signs of decoupling from GDP, nor saturation as of yet” (Ch.11 p.13).

So, we’ve done it. We have reviewed the totality of the IPCC report on the question of decoupling. After reviewing all the scientific evidence available, I remain highly sceptical of that claim we encountered in the first paragraph that it is feasible to achieve decoupling, unless we debase decoupling to a minuscule decrease or stabilisation of emissions, which would be a sham, especially in the context of a mitigation report. Now that this is done, let’s look at how these results have been synthesised in the Technical Summary (TS) and in the Summary for Policymakers (SPM). 

Decoupling in the Technical Summary (TS) and in the Summary for Policymakers (SPM)

The term “decoupling” is mentioned three times in the Technical Summary, two of which are worth commenting on.[iii] The first mention happens in Emission trends and drivers. 

“A growing number of countries have achieved GHG emission reductions over periods longer than 10 years – a few at rates that are broadly consistent with the global rates described in climate change mitigation scenarios that likely to limit warming to 2°C (high confidence). At least 24 countries have reduced CO2 and GHG emissions for longer than 10 years. Reduction rates in a few countries have reached 4% in some years, in line with global rates observed in pathways that likely limit warming to 2°C. However, the total reduction in annual GHG emissions of these countries is small (about 3.2 GtCO2-eq yr-1) compared to global emissions growth observed over the last decades. Complementary evidence suggests that countries have decoupled territorial CO2 emissions from GDP, but fewer have decoupled consumption-based emissions from GDP. Decoupling has mostly occurred in countries with high per capita GDP and high per capita CO2 emissions” (TS p.16, bold in original).  

This is almost the same paragraph as in the Executive Summary of Chap 2: Emissions trends and drivers, with one interesting difference. Instead of “there are about 24 countries” in the full report, the TS states “at least 24 countries” (implying there could be more). This suggests that, with better data or looser assumptions, we might discover that more countries have actually greened their growth. In research reality, however, it is the opposite situation that usually happens. As we get better and better data (for example about imported emissions), we update past decoupling achievements downwards. For example, a large portion of countries who were considered absolutely decoupled in term of territorial emissions ceased to be so when their decoupling was measured based on consumption-based emissions.  

One second mention worth commenting on is found in Industry: 

“Global material intensity – the in-use stock of manufactured capital in tonnes per unit of GDP – is increasing (high confidence). In-use stock of manufactured capital per capita has been growing faster than GDP per capita since 2000. Total global in-use stock of manufactured capital grew by 3.4% yr-1 in 2000-2019. At the same time, per capita material stocks in several developed countries have stopped growing, showing a decoupling from GDP per capita” (TS p.77). 

This is a surprising summary for those who remember the footnote in Ch.11 p.13 that “This conclusion is also valid separately for developed countries, rest of the world, and for China, when adjusted GDP for this country is used (Krausmann et al. 2020). Interestingly, the two co-authors of F. Krausmann are the lead authors of the largest literature review of the decoupling literature (Wiedenhofer 2020; Haberl et al. 2020). Their conclusions about the available science on material decoupling contradicts this statement from the SPM: “absolute reductions of material flows are generally only found in periods of very low economic growth or even recession” (p.6). 

It gets worse. It even says that “in contrast to those measures of decoupling based on territorial indicators, consumption-based perspectives unveil a reversal of trends with efficiencies deteriorating instead of improving and no evidence even for relative decoupling” (p.29), adding that “currently, decoupling appears to depend on prior use and accumulation of materials and on extractive expansion and rising material flows elsewhere. As long as this is the case, decoupling cannot be achieved in the long-term or universally” (ibid.). It is therefore no surprise that the authors conclude their literature review by appealing to “sufficiency and other transformative strategies” (in the paper, they directly associate sufficiency with degrowth).     

The term “decoupling” is not mentioned in the SPM, but there are three passages worth commenting.

B.3 “Regional contributions to global GHG emissions continue to differ widely. Variations in regional, and national per capita emissions partly reflect different development stages, but they also vary widely at similar income levels. The 10% of households with the highest per capita emissions contribute a disproportionately large share of global household GHG emissions. At least 18 countries have sustained GHG emission reductions for longer than 10 years. (high confidence)” (SPM p.8) 

B3.5 “At least 18 countries have sustained production-based GHG and consumption-based CO2 emission reductions for longer than 10 years. Reductions were linked to energy supply decarbonisation, energy efficiency gains, and energy demand reduction, which resulted from both policies and changes in economic structure. Some countries have reduced production-based GHG emissions by a third or more since peaking, and some have achieved several years of consecutive reduction rates of around 4 %/yr, comparable to global reductions in scenarios limiting warming to 2°C (>67%) or lower. These reductions have only partly offset global emissions growth. (high confidence)” (SPM P.10) 

B5.1 “At least 18 countries that had Kyoto targets for the first commitment period have had sustained absolute emission reductions for at least a decade from 2005, of which two were countries with economies in transition (very high confidence)” (SPM p.14)

I find it strange that the 18 countries of Le Quéré et al. (2019) make it to the SPM, given that they have played such a minor role in the decoupling section of the report. Overall, Le Quéré et al. (2019) is cited 6 times in the report, so as often as Hickel and Kallis (2020). (This is not an issue of scientific standing: the Hickel and Kallis paper has been cited 727 times according to Google Scholars, whereas Le Quéré et al. only 194 times.) I also find it surprising that Haberl et al. (2020) (cited 5 times in the report) is not given a more prominent role given that it is the largest, most respected literature review on the topic (it has the same number of citation on Google Scholars as Le Quéré et al. 2019). I’m also surprised not to see Hubacek et al. (2021) here since it is the central study used in Chapter 2.  

In the end, what I find most startling is the hopeful tone. Whereas the full report is actually quite sceptical of decoupling and green growth, the SPM is smoothed out to be more green growth-friendly than science suggests. 

***

The IPCC has spoken, but it has done so in two voices. The voice of careful, rigorous science has spoken against the feasibility of green growth as a mitigation strategy. Decoupling is described as “insufficient” (Hubacek et al. 2021), “not sufficient” (IPCC AR6 WGIII, Ch.2 p.39), with rates that “fall a long way short” (Le Quéré et al. 2019), which makes green growth a “misleading” (Ward et al. 2016), “misguided” (Hickel and Kallis 2020) strategy which “rests partly on faith” (Vadén et al. 2020). 

But there is also another dangerous voice. It is the once of cherry-picked statements that give the illusion that developed nations have gotten green and that further economic growth is compatible with climate targets. This voice is made of vague claims and fuzzy definitions which can neither be proven true nor false. It is a pat on the back for regions, countries, and industries who use these arguments to turn a blind eye to the necessary degrowth of their economic activities. 

So, “the jury has reached a verdict,” said UN Secretary-General António Guterres during the release of the report. For me, the AR6 is the last nail on the coffin of the green growth hypothesis, which I consider to be a broken promise, one of the “empty pledges that put us firmly on track towards an unliveable world,” as Guterres says. 

What if we could time travel to Galileo’s trial today? Which voice would we give credence to? I think the situation concerning decoupling is dramatically similar. Give a few years (hopefully less) for the smoke to disappear, and we’ll soon realise that, just like the Sun doesn’t revolve around the Earth, the continued pursuit of economic growth in rich nations is not compatible with a stable climate.   

[i] There are many mentions where the term is only used without further engagement. For example, here: “The economic centrality of fossil fuels raises obvious questions regarding the possibility of decarbonisation. Economically, this is well understood as a problem of decoupling” (Ch.1 p.28), or here: “This suggests initial evidence that policy has driven some decoupling (e.g. Figure 1.1d) and started to ‘bend the curve’ of global emissions, but more specific attribution to observed trends is not as yet possible” (Ch.1 p.31). A small comment in passing concerning relative decoupling in China and India (Ch.2 p.44). Another concerning eco-industrial parks in China (Ch.17 p.41). A couple of lose mentions in Chapter 8, talking about “economic decoupling” in general. 

[ii] In the Supplementary Material of Hubacek et al. (2021), there are actually 24 countries in the absolute decoupling group: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Denmark, El Salvador, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Jamaica, Japan, Latvia, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Romania, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the USA. 

[iii] There is a second, less remarkable mention in Urban and other settlements: “Given the dual challenges of rising urban GHG emissions and future projections of more frequent extreme climate events, there is an urgent need to integrate urban mitigation and adaptation strategies for cities to address climate change (very high confidence). Mitigation strategies can enhance resilience against climate change impacts while contributing to social equity, public health, and human well-being. Urban mitigation actions that facilitate economic decoupling can have positive impacts on employment and local economic competitiveness” (TS p.65, bold in original).

Even after two days of binge reading, I still have trouble believing that the last IPCC report “Mitigation of climate change” is real. The document is packed with powerful statements with radical implications and might represent nothing short of a watershed in the history of climate politics. There is so much to talk about and so I will split the analysis into several articles. 

This first one is about degrowth. The term is mentioned 7 times (plus 21 times in the bibliography)[i] in the 2,913-page report. This is roughly the same number of mentions than in the adaptation report, which had a total of 27 mentions (15 in the text and 12 in references). Just like in the adaptation report, “degrowth” is neither mentioned in the Summary for Policymakers nor in the Technical Summary, even though we’ll see that the underlying idea is present (this will be the topic of another article).  

There are four places in the report where degrowth is discussed. In Chapter 1: Introduction and framing, degrowth is presented as an alternative sustainability concept with a specific take on well-being; in Chapter 3: Mitigation pathways compatible with long-term goals, it is discussed as a scenario feature for modelling mitigation pathways; in Chapter 5: Demand, services and social aspects of mitigation, it is evoked again in the context of prospective scenarios; and finally in Chapter 17: Accelerating the transition in the context of sustainable development, the term is mentioned twice in a discussion about the transition. 

Degrowth and well-being

The first mention occurs in Chapter 1: Introduction and framing in a section titled “Concepts and frameworks for integrating climate mitigation and development.” After a few paragraphs discussing the relevance of the concept of sustainable development, there are two long paragraphs that present nine “alternative sustainability concepts”: doughnut economics, ecological modernisation, mainstreaming, green economy, green growth, degrowth, post growth, post development, and just transition.  

After describing green growth, the authors add that “critics however argue that green economy ultimately emphasizes economic growth to the detriment of other important aspects of human welfare such as social justice (Adelman 2015; Death 2014; Kamuti 2015) and challenge the central idea that it is possible to decouple economic activity and growth (measured as GDP increment) from increasing use of biophysical resources (raw materials, energy) (Jackson and Victor 2019; Parrique et al. 2019; Hickel and Kallis 2020; Haberl et al. 2020; Vadén et al. 2020).” It is in the following sentence that the term is mentioned: “Literature on degrowth, post growth, and post development questions the sustainability and imperative of more growth especially in already industrialised countries and argues that prosperity and the ‘Good Life’ are not immutably tied to economic growth (Escobar 2015; Asara et al. 2015; Kallis 2019; Latouche 2018; see also Section 5.2.1 in Chapter 5)” (Ch.1 p.41). 

The sentence points to sub-section 5.2.1 “Metrics of well-being and their relationship to GHG emissions” which can be found in Chapter 5: Demand, services and social aspects of mitigation. There is much to say about how remarkable Chapter 5 is and I’ll write another article just about that. But for now, let’s have a look at a few relevant passages on the topic of degrowth and well-being.

Let’s start with the idea of “minimum and maximum standards of consumption.” “Reducing GHG emissions associated with high levels of consumption and material throughput by those far above DLS [Decent Living Standards] levels has potential to address both emissions and inequality in energy and emission footprints (Otto et al. 2019)” (Ch.5 p.18). (The title of the cited paper is “Shift the focus from the super-poor to the super-rich.”) “The challenge then is to address the upper limits of consumption. When consumption supports the satisfaction of basic needs any decrease causes deficiencies in human-need satisfaction, contrary, in the case of consumption that exceeds the limits of basic needs” (Ch.5 p.18). The focus on high levels of consumption with the objective of reducing consumption (putting an upper limit of consumption) is one important aspect of degrowth. 

This brings us to another paragraph from the same sub-section: “Vital dimensions of well-being correlate with consumption, but only up to a threshold,” and so “a mitigation strategy that protects minimum levels of essential-goods service delivery for DLS, but critically views consumption beyond the point of diminishing returns of needs satisfaction” (Ch.5 p.19). This is what growth-critical scholars call the saturation hypothesis, which implies that reducing income per capita in rich countries (one of the implications of degrowth) will not debase quality of life if income levels do not fall below a certain threshold (that point of diminishing returns of needs satisfaction). 

The last passage I want to highlight is a Frequently Asked Question at the end of Chapter 5: Demand, services and social aspects of mitigation. To the question “Is demand reduction compatible with growth of human well-being?” the IPCC authors respond: “there is a growing realisation that mere monetary value of income growth is insufficient to measure national welfare and individual well-being. [So far, this is only the classic critique of GDP as an indicator ill-fitted to measure welfare.] Hence, any action towards climate change mitigation is best evaluated against a set of indicators that represent a broader variety of needs to define individual well-being, macroeconomic stability, and planetary health. Many solutions that reduce primary material and fossil energy demand, and thus reduce GHG emissions, provide better services to help achieve well-being for all” (Ch.5 p.107). 

Let’s unpack that sentence. The Annex I: Glossary defines demand-side measures as “policies and programmes for influencing the demand for goods and/or services,” which falls within the territory of the reduction of production and consumption discussed in the degrowth literature. If this is right, it means that this passage argues that degrowth (which involves a reduction in demand for goods and/or services) is not only effective in cutting emissions, but also to achieve well-being for all.  

Modelling economic decline 

The second mention happens in Chapter 3: Mitigation pathways compatible with long-term goals. While the degrowth-related discussions in Chapter 1 and Chapter 5 were rather conceptual, focusing on degrowth as a vision of prosperity beyond growth, this one is more technical, with the idea (either called degrowth or economic decline or decline in income levels) understood as a specific pathway to be simulated in mitigation scenarios.  

In the midst of a discussion on Socio-economic drivers of emissions scenarios in Section 3.3 “Emission pathways, including socio-economic, carbon budget and climate responses uncertainties,” one can read that “the SSP [Shared Socioeconomic Pathways] scenarios cover an extensive range, with low per capita growth in SSP3 and SSP4 (mostly in developing countries) and rapid growth in SSP1 and SSP5. At the same [time], however, also scenarios outside the range have some plausibility – including the option of economic decline (Kallis et al. 2012) or much faster economic development (Christensen et al. 2018)” (Ch.3 p.24). The term economic decline is here used in the sense of degrowth, as attested by the reference to an article lead-authored by Giorgos Kallis which is titled “The economics of degrowth.” 

The paragraph continues: “An emerging area of literature emphasises the possibility of stabilisation (or even decline) of income levels in developed countries, arguing that such a trend would be preferred or even needed for environmental reasons (Anderson and Larkin, 2013; Kallis et al. 2020; Hickel and Kallis 2020; Keyßer and Lenzen 2021; Hickel et al. 2021). [Same situation here: all these references explicitly use the term degrowth.] Such scenarios are not common among IAM [Integrated Assessment Models] outcomes, that are more commonly based on the idea that decarbonisation can be combined with economic growth by a combination of technology, lifestyle and structural economic changes. Still, such scenarios could result in a dramatic reduction of energy and resource consumption” (Ch.3 p.25).

On the same point, one finds an actual mention of the term in Annex III: Scenarios and modelling methods in a section discussing “key design choices and assumptions in mitigation scenarios.” “A wider range of narratives describing alternative worlds is also conceivable. The sustainability world (SSP1), for example, is a world with strong economic growth, but sustainability worlds with low growth or even elements of degrowth in developed countries could also be explored” (Annex III p.56). 

As to why there are no degrowth scenarios in the report, the authors justify themselves in a section of Chapter 3, Methods of assessment and gaps in knowledge and data. “The scenarios included in the AR6 scenarios database [3,131 scenarios in total] are an unstructured ensemble, as they are from multiple underlying studies and depend on which institutions chose to submit scenarios to the database. As noted in Section 3.2 [this section describes the database in more detail], they do not represent the full scenario literature or the complete set of possible scenarios. For example, scenarios that include climate change impacts or economic degrowth are not fully represented, as these scenarios, with a few exceptions, were not submitted to the database” (Ch.3 p.116). 

Policies and institutions for degrowth 

The aforementioned passages in Chapter 3 reduces degrowth to a simple scenario of declining income levels. In Chapter 5: Demand, services and social aspects of mitigation, however, the discussion becomes more complex. In a section titled “Equity, trust, and participation in demand-side mitigation,” it is written that “consumption reductions, both voluntary and policy-induced, can have positive and double-dividend effects on efficiency as well as reductions in energy and material use.” 

The paragraph continues: “systems-dynamics models linking strong emissions-reducing policies and strong social equity policies show that a low-carbon transition in conjunction with social sustainability is possible, even without economic growth (Kallis et al. 2012; Jackson and Victor 2016; Stuart et al. 2017; [D’Alessandro et al. 2020]; Huang et al. 2019; Victor 2019; Chapman and Fraser 2019; Gabriel and Bond 2019). Such degrowth pathways may be crucial in combining technical feasibility of mitigation with social development goals (Hickel et al. 2021; Keyßer and Lenzen 2021)” (Ch.5 p.32).

A quick look at the references[ii] reveals that the kind of degrowth these articles talk about goes way beyond a mere decline in GDP and includes a variety of more sophisticated institutional changes. For instance, D’Alessandro et al. (2020) associate degrowth with a universal basic income and work time reduction, Stuart et al. (2017) discuss community-based energy systems, and Kallis et al. (2012) mention a whole list of proposals from cap and share systems and local currencies to not-for-profit cooperatives and commons. 

In a section on “Economy-wide implications of mitigation” (Chap 3), the authors discuss the impact of mitigation pathways on economic growth. After explaining that it could either slow down GDP growth or increase it, they write that “several studies find that only a GDP non-growth/degrowth or post-growth approach allow to reach climate stabilization below 2°C (Hardt and O’Neill 2017; D’Alessandro et al. 2020; Hickel and Kallis 2020; Nieto et al. 2020)” (Ch.3 p.86). Again, the references here are describing degrowth as something much more multi-faceted than a mere contraction of GDP. Take Hardt and O’Neill (2017), for example, a review of ecological macroeconomic models which the authors evaluate based on their capacity to test a number of “post-growth policy themes” like environmental limits, debt levels, consumer behaviours, work patterns, business models, and well-being. As for D’Alessandro et al. (2020), they actually model a degrowth scenario in France which includes a wealth tax, a job guarantee, working time reduction, a carbon tax, incentives for eco-innovation, additionally to a general reduction of production and consumption. 

Degrowth transition 

We now arrive to the fourth and final discussion that mobilises the term “degrowth.” (Let’s remember here that some key degrowth ideas – even though not named as such – play an important role throughout the report, including in the Summary for Policymakers and the Technical Summary. This will be the topic of another article.) For now, let’s focus on Chapter 17: Accelerating the transition in the context of sustainable development.

The first mention is indirect. It happens in the second paragraph of a section titled “Psychology, Individual Beliefs and Social Change” where the term “achieve the good life” is referenced with “see Section 1.6.2 in Chapter 1; Asara et al. 2015; Escobar 2015; Kallis [2019]; Latouche 2018; Chapter 5.” The section 1.6.2 “Concepts and frameworks for integrating climate mitigation and development” is the one I reviewed in the first part of this article, and Chapter 5: Demand, services and social aspects of mitigation is the chapter about demand-side measures. 

But there is also a direct mention in the same section following a discussion on inner transitions (defined as “a person gaining a deepening sense of peace and a willingness to help others, as well as protecting the climate and the planet,” Ch.17 p.14). “Examples have also been seen in relation to a similar set of inner transitions to individuals, organizations and societies, which involves embracing post-development, de-growth, or non-material values that challenge carbon-intensive lifestyles and development models (Kothari 2019; Neuteleers and Engelen 2015; Paech 2017; Sklair 2016)” (Ch.17 p.14).

The two last references are well-known in the degrowth literature. Sklair (2016) is a review of the 2014 book Degrowth: A Vocabulary for a New Era and Paech (2017) is a German article written by Niko Paech, author of the book Liberation from excess: The road to a post-growth economy (the title of the article translates as “Where does the growth compulsion come from?”). Neuteleers and Engelen (2015), which I didn’t know before, is an article in Ecological Economics arguing that monetary valuation can weaken environmental morale and decrease environmental protection. I could not understand the relevance of Kothari (2019), the fourth edition of a textbook on research methodology, but I suspect there may have been a mix up in the bibliography between C.R. Kothari – the author of the textbook on research methodology referenced in the bibliography – and Ashish Kothari, a well-known growth-critical author, who would be worth citing here for his 2019 book Pluriverse: A Post-Development Dictionary.  

The last mention in the overall report happens in a sub-section on Financial systems and economic instruments. “Also the degrowth movement, with its focus on sustainability over profitability, has the potential to speed up transformations using alternative practices like fostering the exchange of non-monetary goods and services if large numbers of stakeholders want to invest in these areas (Chiengkul 2017)” (Ch.17 p.59). The reference points to a book by Prapimphan Chiengkul titled The Political Economy of the Agri-Food System in Thailand (she is also the author of a 2018 article that would have well-fitted this sentence: The Degrowth Movement: Alternative Economic Practices and Relevance to Developing Countries). 

***

The idea of degrowth is experiencing a historical rise in popularity. This is especially true in science, with the number of peer-reviewed articles on the topic rising from only 3 in 2007 to more than 340 today. The presence of “degrowth” in the latest IPCC report is therefore not a surprise but only a reflection of the growing importance given to the idea in academic circles and beyond. What I find remarkable about this report is the diversity of contexts in which the term is used: degrowth as a vision of prosperity and the ‘Good Life’ (mention n°1), as an alternative sustainability world (n°2), as a scenario (n°3), as a crucial pathway for a low-carbon transition in conjunction with social sustainability (n°4), as the only option to reach climate stabilization below 2°C (n°5), as a challenge to carbon-intensive lifestyles and development models (n°6), and as a movement with a focus on sustainability over profitability which has the potential to speed up transformations (n°7). Those familiar with the degrowth literature know that this is only the tip of the iceberg, but the world is now discovering (thanks to the valuable work of IPCC authors) how interesting the idea of degrowth is. 

[i] There are seven articles that have “degrowth” in their titles which are cited in the text without referring directly to degrowth: Assadour[ian] 2012(Chap 2); Dengler and Strunk 2017, Nicoson 2021, Perkins 2019, Spangenberg [2017], and Spangenberg 2016 (Chap 5); and Lietaert 2010 (Chap 9). This brings the total number of referenced degrowth texts to 31 (for a full list of degrowth-related articles, see here).  

[ii] The economics of degrowth (Kallis et al. 2012) is the introduction of a special-issue. Jackson and Victor (2016) is a modelling exercise demonstrating that a reduction in GDP must not necessarily lead to an increase in inequality – a similar model is used by Victor (2019) to simulate degrowth scenarios in Canada. D’Alessandro et al. (2020) is another modelling exercise exploring degrowth transition scenarios in France. Stuart et al. (2017) is a conceptual critique of carbon markets; Gabriel and Bond (2019) offers a theory of distributive justice for degrowth. Hickel et al. (2021)and Keyßer and Lenzen (2021) both discuss degrowth as a mitigation pathway for modelling. Huang et al. (2019), which I’ve not seen used in the growth-critical literature, uses a computable general equilibrium model to simulate the introduction of a national emission trading system in China. Also foreign to the degrowth literature (at least to the best of my knowledge) is Chapman and Fraser (2019), a quantitative study of solar projects in Japan.