Degrowth: A Path to Transformative Solutions for Socio-Ecological Sustainability

Summary, in English

This article highlights the potential of degrowth as a transformative approach that can expand capacities necessary for socio-ecological sustainability. By addressing economic growth as a fundamental driver of unsustainability, degrowth offers a concrete pathway towards achieving sustainable outcomes. It calls for sustainability scientists to explicitly consider the role of economic growth, aligning with recent scientific assessments that support a critical
stance on growth. While degrowth and sustainability share common goals such as respecting biocapacity and equitable distribution of ecological budgets, degrowth approaches differ by placing emphasis on national and local solutions and exploring aspects like technology, time, work, commodity, and property. Engaging with economic questions is crucial for sustainability science to maintain its transformative potential. Growth-critical perspectives like degrowth and post-growth have the potential to propel sustainability discourses into new,
more impactful realms of development.

• Author: Mine Islar; Max Koch; Riya Raphael; Alexander Paulsson
• Department/s: School of Social Work; Social Policy and Sustainability; LU Profile Area: Nature-based future solutions; LUCSUS (Lund University Centre for Sustainability Studies); CIRCLE; Organizational Studies
• Publishing year: 2024-03-20
• Language: English
• Publication/Series: Global Sustainability
• Links: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/sus.2024.13
• Document type: Journal article
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Topic: Other Social Sciences not elsewhere specified
• Keywords: Sustainabiliity; Degrowth; Transformative solutions
• Status: Inpress
• Project: Postgrowth Welfare Systems; Economic Elites in the Climate Change Transformation: Practices, justifications and regulations of unsustainable lifestyles in Sweden
• ISBN/ISSN/Other: ISSN: 2059-4798