Part Four / What We’ve Done About It

4.26 Degrowth

All online sources accessed on

  1. GDP is tightly coupled to energy and resource use Wiedmann, T. O., et al., ‘The material footprint of nations’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 112 (20), 2015: 6271–6, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1220362110; Steinmann, Z. J. N., et al., ‘Resource footprints are good proxies of environmental damage’, Environmental Science and Technology, 51 (11), 2017: 6360–66, https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.7b00698.

    our resource use … is already overshooting the maximum sustainable boundary Bringezu, S., ‘Possible target corridor for sustainable use of global material resources’, Resources, 4 (1), 2015: 25–54, https://doi.org/10.3390/resources4010025.

    the Global North is responsible for 92 per cent Hickel, J., ‘Quantifying national responsibility for climate breakdown: an equality-based attribution approach for carbon dioxide emissions in excess of the planetary boundary’, Lancet Planetary Health, 4 (9), 2020: e399–e404, https://doi.org/10.1016/S2542-5196(20)30196-0.

    rich countries rely on a large net appropriation Hickel, J., et al., ‘Imperialist appropriation in the world economy: drain from the Global South through unequal exchange, 1990–2015’, Global Environmental Change, 73, 2022: Article 102467, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2022.102467.

  2. there is no evidence that growth can be absolutely decoupled Hickel, J., and Kallis, G., ‘Is green growth possible?’, New Political Economy, 25 (4), 2020: 469–86, https://doi.org/10.1080/13563467.2019.1598964; Vadén, T., et al., ‘Decoupling for ecological sustainability: a categorisation and review of research literature’, Environmental Science and Policy, 112, 2020: 236–44, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsci.2020.06.016; Haberl, H., et al., ‘A systematic review of the evidence on decoupling of GDP, resource use and GHG emissions, part II: synthesizing the insights’, Environmental Research Letters, 15 (6), 2020: Article 065003, https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ab842a.

    These results have been confirmed by scientists Haberl et al., ‘A systematic review of the evidence’; Vadén et al., ‘Decoupling for ecological sustainability’.

    ‘It is misleading to develop growth-oriented policy’ Ward, J. D., et al., ‘Is decoupling GDP growth from environmental impact possible?’, PLOS One, 11 (10), 2016: Article e0164733, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0164733.

    more growth means more energy demand Hickel, J., et al., ‘Urgent need for post-growth climate mitigation scenarios’, Nature Energy, 6 (8), 2021: 766–8, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41560-021-00884-9.

    it is possible to meet human needs … with much less energy Millward-Hopkins, J., et al., ‘Providing decent living with minimum energy: a global scenario’, Global Environmental Change, 65, 2020: Article 102168, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2020.102168; Jackson, T., Prosperity without Growth: Foundations for the Economy of Tomorrow (Abingdon: Routledge, 2017).

  3. Degrowth calls for a planned reduction Hickel, J., Less Is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World(London: William Heinemann, 2020).