Degrowth

Degrowth is an academic and social movement aimed at the planned and democratic reduction of production and consumption as a solution to social-ecological crises. Commonly cited policy goals of degrowth include reducing the environmental impact of human activities, redistributing income and wealth within and between countries, and encouraging a shift from materialistic values to a convivial and participatory society. According to degrowth theorists, degrowth is a multi-layered concept that combines critiques of capitalism, colonialism, patriarchy, productivism, and utilitarianism, while envisioning more caring, just, convivial, happy, and democratic societies.

Degrowth is critical of the concept of growth in gross domestic product as a measure of human and economic development. It argues that modern capitalism's unitary focus on growth causes widespread ecological damage and is unnecessary for the further increase of human living standards.

Degrowth's main argument is that an infinite expansion of the economy is fundamentally contradictory to the finiteness of material resources on Earth. It argues that economic growth measured by GDP should be abandoned as a policy objective. Policy should instead focus on economic and social metrics such as life expectancy, health, education, housing, and ecologically sustainable work as indicators of both ecosystems and human well-being. Degrowth theorists posit that this would increase human living standards and ecological preservation even as GDP growth slows or reverses.

Degrowth, an unorthodox school of thought, occupies a niche in academic literature and faces substantial criticism. Critics describe it as a vague concept that fails to offer an effective strategy for reducing environmental harm, ignores rebound effects, and has little social or political support, whereas price incentives through environmental taxes or tradable permits are much more effective. Critics also note that far-reaching degrowth scenarios are projected to increase extreme poverty, with no historical precedent of the poorest benefiting in a shrinking economy. Systematic reviews describe degrowth research as largely normative opinions rather than analysis, with most proposals lacking precision, depth, and concrete policy design, and rarely using quantitative or qualitative data, formal modelling, or representative samples, while empirical and system-wide analyses remain scarce.

Alternatives to degrowth include green growth (economic growth and sustainability are deemed compatible) and agrowth (agnostic on growth, focusing on reducing environmental harm through effective instruments, regardless of whether the economy is growing, stagnant, or contracting). Degrowth is closely associated with eco-socialism and eco-anarchism.

The "degrowth" movement arose from concerns over the consequences of the productivism and consumerism associated with industrial societies (whether capitalist or socialist) including:

A 2025 review of research literature on degrowth concluded that degrowth scholars are skeptical of the feasibility of achieving an equitable economic slowdown within a capitalist framework. This skepticism stems from the structural reliance of capitalism on continuous growth driven by competition. As a result, degrowth advocates argue for a deliberate and democratically guided overhaul of the economic system. Such a transformation aims to significantly reduce environmental harm, address inequality, and enhance overall well-being.

The concept of decoupling denotes decoupling economic growth, usually measured in GDP growth, GDP per capita growth or GNI per capita growth from the use of natural resources and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Absolute decoupling refers to GDP growth coinciding with a reduction in natural resource use and GHG emissions, while relative decoupling describes an increase in resource use and GHG emissions lower than the increase in GDP growth. The degrowth movement heavily critiques this idea and argues that absolute decoupling is only possible for short periods, specific locations, or with small mitigation rates. In 2021, the NGO European Environmental Bureau stated that there is "no empirical evidence supporting the existence of a decoupling of economic growth from environmental pressures on anywhere near the scale needed to deal with environmental breakdown", and that reported cases of existing eco-economic decouplings either depict relative decoupling and/or are observed only temporarily and/or only on a local scale, arguing that alternatives to eco-economic decoupling are needed. This is supported by several other studies which state that absolute decoupling is highly unlikely to be achieved fast enough to prevent global warming over 1.5 °C or 2 °C, even under optimistic policy conditions.