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The Path to Degrowth in Overdeveloped Countries

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Abstract

In 2010, the Second Conference on Economic Degrowth for Ecological Sustainability and Social Equity in Barcelona, Spain, convened more than 500 participants from over 40 countries to discuss how to intentionally “degrow” the global economy. (See Box 2–1 for the definition of degrowth.) A variety of academic papers were discussed—from the mechanics of economic degrowth to strategies on how to pursue and communicate this challenging concept.1
M OV I N G TO WAR D
S U S TA I N A B L E
P R O S P E R I T Y
T H E W O R L D W AT C H I N S T I T U T E
State of th e Wor l d 2012
22 WWW.W ORL DWATCH.ORG
n 2010, the Second Conference on Eco-
nomic Degrowth for Ecological Sustain-
ability and Social Equity in Barcelona, Spain,
convened more than 500 participants from
over 40 countries to discuss how to inten-
tionally “degrow” the global economy. (See
Box 2–1 for the definition of degrowth.) A
variety of academic papers were discussed—
from the mechanics of economic degrowth to
strategies on how to pursue and communicate
this challenging concept.1
The conference even drew attention to
some radical (albeit unsanctioned) approaches
to building the movement. At the peak of the
global financial bubble, for example, Enric
Duran—claiming to be an entrepreneur start-
ing a new technology business in Spain—
approached a number of banks to seek loans.
He then promptly donated most of the
500,000 euros he collected to the degrowth
movement (minus interest and taxes paid).
Called by some a modern-day Robin Hood,
Duran used the loose lending practices of the
bubble era to engage in this act of what he
called “financial disobedience” and help reveal
the risks of a poorly regulated financial system
while simultaneously generating resources to
help fund alternatives to the current unsus-
tainable economic system. While undoubt-
edly unconventional, Duran’s actions and
subsequent arrest certainly drew attention to
the movement.2
Degrowth in a globalized culture where
growth is seen to be essential for economic suc-
cess and societal well-being seems to be a
political non-starter even for those who may be
sympathetic. For most people, who deeply
believe growth is essential to modern
economies, it seems to be a recipe for economic
and societal collapse. But the rapidly warming
Earth and other declines in ecosystem services
reveal that economic degrowth is essential and
will need to be pursued as quickly as possible
in order to stabilize Earth’s climate and prevent
irreparable harm to the planet and, in the
process, human civilization.3
Already, the conversation is changing in the
media and among scientists. The hope of pre-
venting a temperature rise of 2 degrees Cel-
sius is weakening. Numerous studies have
found that humanity is now on a path to
increase the average global temperature by 4
degrees Celsius. Most recently, the journal
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society
I
C H A P T E R 2
The Path to Degrowth in
Overdeveloped Countries
Erik Assadourian
Erik Assadourian is a senior fellow at the Worldwatch Institute and director of its Transforming Cultures
Project. He is co-director of State of the World 2012.
SUSTAINABLEPROSPERITY.ORG 23
SUSTAINABLE PROSPERITY The Path to Degrowth in Overdeveloped Countries
even examined projections of a 4 degree
increase not by 2100 but by 2060, follow-
ing the path of emissions that society is cur-
rently on. This path translates to catastrophe
for human society: massive shifts in popula-
tion as coasts flood, areas hit by extreme
weather and droughts, and diseases spread
to new areas. And the 2011 climate talks in
Durban did nothing to stop the world’s rush
to this future.4
With governments like Canada pulling out
of the Kyoto Protocol and with a new climate
agreement probably stalled until 2020, the
world is in all likelihood in for massive eco-
logical shifts, which needless to say are incom-
patible with a growing global economy. Indeed,
in 2007 the Stern Review on the Economics of
Climate Change projected that climate change
could reduce global economic well-being any-
where from 5 to 20 percent (measured in per
capita consumption terms), depending on how
much human activities warm the world.5
These ecological changes are brought ever
closer and made ever larger by people’s con-
tinued belief that growth by all on an over-
taxed planet is a useful pursuit. In the past
half-century, growth has been understood as
the cure-all to societal problems. In reality,
while it may help sometimes, continued eco-
nomic growth is at the root of ecological shifts
that will cause far worse problems. As the
Prince of Wales noted in May 2011, “Our
myopic determination to ignore the facts and
to continue with business as usual is, I fear, cre-
ating the risk of a crash which will be far more
dramatic, and far harder to recover from, than
anything we have experienced over the past
few years.”6
And while that may be evident to those
who study environmental trends, society is so
Degrowth is the intentional redirection of
economies away from the perpetual pursuit
of growth. For economies beyond the limits
of their ecosystems, this includes a planned
and controlled contraction to get back in line
with planetary boundaries, with the eventual
creation of a steady-state economic system
that is in balance with Earth’s limits.
Degrowth should not be confused with
economic decline. As Serge Latouche, a lead-
ing thinker on degrowth, explains, “The move-
ment for a ‘degrowth society’ is radically
different from the recession that is wide-
spread today. Degrowth does not mean the
decay or suffering often imagined by those
new to this concept. Instead, degrowth can be
compared to a healthy diet voluntarily under-
taken to improve a person’s well-being, while
negative economic growth can be compared
to starvation.”
Ultimately degrowth is a process, not the
end point. As Latouche notes, the end point
is abandoning faith in the promise of growth
as driver of development. Economist Tim
Jackson puts this idea in a user-friendly way,
calling for “prosperity without growth.” How-
ever, that prosperity should not be confused
with what is deemed prosperity by many
today—a consumer lifestyle—as that depends
on a growth economic model and overuse of
Earth’s natural capital. Instead, as Latouche
explains, a prosperous society is one “in
which we can live better lives whilst working
less and consuming less.”
Thus degrowth will be a step toward a
more secure, sustainable, and just future,
helping to reduce the number and size of eco-
logically destructive industries and to reorient
economies in ways that improve well-being,
strengthen community resilience, and restore
Earth’s systems—a path that from any sane
perspective would be hard to confuse with
economic decline.
Source: See endnote 1.
Box 2–1. Defining Degrowth
committed to growth that even many envi-
ronmentalists and sustainable development
experts still advocate for “green growth,” or just
the decoupling of growth from material con-
sumption. As Harald Welzer, author of Men-
tal Infrastructures: How Growth Entered the
World and Our Souls, notes, “The current
debate on decoupling…serves above all to
maintain the illusion that we can make a suffi-
cient number of minor adjustments in order to
reduce the negative environmental conse-
quences of economic growth while leaving our
present system intact.” But humanity needs to
radically transform the global economy, reduc-
ing its size by at least one third—based on the
conservative ecological footprint indicator,
which finds that humanity is currently using the
ecological capacity of 1.5 Earths—even while
the poorest one third of humanity needs to
increase total consumption considerably in
order to achieve a decent quality of life.7
The Curse of Overdevelopment
Ultimately, overdeveloped countries (and
overdeveloped populations within developing
countries) will need to either proactively pur-
sue a degrowth path or continue down the bro-
ken path of growth until coasts flood,
farmlands dry up, and other massive ecologi-
cal changes force them away from growth into
a mad dash for societal survival. If overdevel-
oped populations keep ignoring the looming
changes—keeping their proverbial heads buried
in the sand—then this transition will be bru-
tal and painful. But if a strategy of degrowth,
economic diversification, and support for the
informal economy is pursued now, before most
of societal energy and capital is focused on
reacting to ecological shifts, these overdevel-
oped populations may discover a series of ben-
efits to their own welfare, to their long-term
security, and to Earth’s well-being.
It is no surprise that overdeveloped coun-
tries also suffer from a series of ailments con-
nected to overconsumption—since affluence
and development decoupled long ago for many
in these countries. The clearest indicator is
the obesity epidemic now plaguing most indus-
trial countries and developing-world elites. In
the United States, two of every three adults are
now overweight or obese, reducing their qual-
ity of life, shortening life spans, and costing the
country an extra $270 billion a year in med-
ical costs and lost productivity due to early
deaths and disabilities. This epidemic may even
lead to the next generation living fewer years
than their parents did, primarily due to obesity-
related problems like heart disease, diabetes,
and certain cancers. Tragic statistics, but there
are many who pr osper from this type of
growth: agribusiness, processed-food manu-
facturers, marketers, hospitals, pharmaceutical
companies, and others all profit from main-
taining the status quo. The diet industry alone
earns up to $100 billion a year on obesity in
the United States. And the United States is not
exceptional on this front, merely a trendsetter.
In 2010, 1.9 billion people were overweight
or obese worldwide, up 38 percent over 2002,
even though total population rose 11 percent
in that time.8
Obesity, unfortunately, is not the only side
effect of overdevelopment. Increased debt bur-
dens, long working hours, pharmaceutical
dependence, time trapped in traffic, even
increased levels of social isolation stem at least
in part from high-consumption lifestyles.
Indeed, while many modern advances—per-
sonal transport, single-family homes, televi-
sions, computers, and electronic gadgets—seem
to have improved human well-being, in reality
these advances may have imposed significant
sacrifices on consumer populations without
their knowledge or consent.9
More broadly, along with reducing the
physical and societal side effects of the obses-
sive pursuit of growth, pursuing degrowth
would reduce the ecological impacts of the
human economy, as some populations would
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SUSTAINABLE PROSPERITY The Path to Degrowth in Overdeveloped Countries
consume less food, resources, and energy. Per-
haps the most important but least tangible
outcome of this would be to reduce the loss of
Earth’s resiliency, which humanity and all
species depend on completely for their ability
to survive and thrive.
Of course, it is simple to advocate for the
sanity of degrowing the ecologically destruc-
tive global economy. But when growth is one
of the fundamental sacred myths of modern
culture, and when economists, the media, and
political leaders routinely wring their hands
whenever the economy contracts, shifting par-
adigms 180 degrees will be extremely difficult.
Instead, degrowth will need to be pursued
very strategically—working simultaneously on
a variety of complementary fronts.
Reducing Overall Consumption
by Overconsumers
At the heart of degrowth will be dramatic
shifts in individual and collective consump-
tion patterns. A large percentage of people’s
ecological impact comes from food, housing,
and transportation. These sectors will need to
be dramatically overhauled so that people in
overdeveloped countries choose to live more
simply, in smaller homes, in walkable neigh-
borhoods, traveling less by car and plane and
more by foot, bicycle, and public transit, and
eating less and lower on the food chain. More-
over, people will need to own less “stuff”—
from electronics to appliances, from books to
toys—that requires massive amounts of
resources and produces considerable waste.
Indeed, when adding up all indirect and direct
forms of consumption, in 2000 the average
American used 88 kilograms of resources a
day and the average European 43 kilograms a
day—numbers that need to contract tremen-
dously to be sustainable, especially in the con-
text of growing consumption demands by
developing countries.10
This presents a formidable challenge, as
growth and consumerism are celebrated by
an advertising industry that spent $464 billion
worldwide in 2011 marketing the consumer
lifestyle, by Hollywood and the global film
industry, and by the media more broadly. A few
cracks are appearing, however, in what were
once solid traditions of the growth-centric
consumer culture. Some American teenagers,
for instance, are no longer rushing to get their
driver’s licenses—previously an essential rite of
passage to adulthood. In 1978, half of the 16
year olds in the country got their license; by
2008 the number had fallen to 31 percent.
Even by age 19, while 92 percent of teens
had a license in 1978, only 78 percent had one
in 2008. And this is a trend that now seems to
have persisted even beyond teenage years: the
percentage of total miles that are driven by peo-
ple in their twenties fell from 21 percent in
1995 to 14 percent in 2009. Between the
expense of cars and gasoline, traffic, rising
environmental awareness, and shifts in tech-
nologies—with teens usually now connected
online with friends—young people are finding
less need for cars and more barriers to using
them. Of course, this shift brings problems of
its own, with the average U.S. teen now spend-
ing eight hours a day consuming media, but it
does reveal that even long-standing traditions
can become much less relevant over time.11
These shifts in deeply rooted consumption
patterns will have to be replicated hundreds of
times over in dozens of sectors—food, hous-
ing, transport, electronics, travel, pets, cloth-
ing, appliances and so on. And with changes
so extensive, few individuals will be willing to
make what they see as sacrifices—even if the
products’ downsides are made clear. (See Box
2–2.) Cultures quickly normalize certain
goods, shifts in infrastructure often require
them, social networks reinforce use of these
goods (“keeping up with the Joneses”), and it
is psychologically easy to convert a luxury item
into a perceived necessity. Today, more than
half of Americans view air conditioning and
Many commentators who argue that a
sustainable society requires profound change
also believe that this would involve consider-
able sacrifice in wealthy consumer societies.
And that, they pessimistically assert, is just
not going to happen: most people are too
self-satisfied, apathetic, or uninformed to
sacrifice willingly. But in fact sacrifice is a
familiar part of everyday life and can be
consistent with an inclusive sense of self-
interest—although it can also be foisted on
people unjustly.
A person can willingly sacrifice, giving up
one thing of value for something more valu-
able, such as consuming less to save for a
child’s education. A person can also be sacri-
ficed, as when a poor community bears the
health effects of a toxic incinerator. This
vital distinction about sacrifice is often over-
looked—and is shaped by people’s views of
justice and effectiveness.
Recognizing the sacrifices that people
already make can foster a more balanced
consideration of political and policy choices.
Rather than seeing the task as convincing
people to sacrifice, it is possible to establish
a dialogue about how certain luxuries or con-
veniences might be traded for gains in qual-
ity of life for all. The point is to neither call
for sacrifice nor avoid talk of it, but to
broaden the conversation about choices
and challenges.
When those calling for sacrifice do not
follow suit, those being called to sacrifice
may perceive themselves as victims, rather
than agents, and resist calls to sacrifice.
When U.S. politicians push for emissions
reductions in China and India, where per
capita emissions remain radically lower, as
a precondition for American action, it has
the character of an unfair distribution of
burden—of calling for others to sacrifice,
rather than shared sacrifice. Sharing the
burden, and clearly acknowledging that these
others are already giving up something of
value, can go a long way to countering this
hypocrisy and paternalism.
Sacrifice begets anxiety when people are
afraid that what they give up will be wasted.
To sacrifice willingly, this anxiety must be
tempered with the hope that what is given
up will lead to future good. But this hope can
rarely be sustained through individual action
alone, because the likelihood of success is
diminished by collective action problems.
A person might think, “If I act when others
don’t, I’ll incur costs without social benefit;
if I don’t act when others do, I’ll share in
the benefit without cost.” By contrast, when
action is coordinated, new opportunities
become feasible: large-scale investment in
infrastructure and renewable energy, land
use and urban planning to foster walkability
and reduce car dependence, incentives for
“green” jobs.
Such actions are not painless: public
investment requires taxes; land use policy
generates winners and losers; green jobs may
be at the expense of “brown” ones. Yet such
measures can reduce coerced and inequitable
sacrifice now and temper the coerced and
inequitable impact of climate change and
other environmental harms in the future.
To rethink sacrifice is not to offer a specific
set of policies. It is a way of thinking and talk-
ing about the challenges of sustainability that
opens a political dialogue at precisely the
point where it is often shut down. People
must build on the radical hope that the future
can be a better one for which it is worth taking
action, even if that action comes with certain
sacrifices. In a world with no guarantees, it is
this hope that can inspire change.
—John M. Meyer
Humboldt State University
Source: See endnote 12.
Box 2–2. Sacrifice and a New Politics of Sustainability
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aged foods. These behind-the-scenes changes
could do a lot to shift consumers’ behaviors,
leading them to eat more vegetables and fewer
processed foods.14
While many companies are open to editing
their product lines to be more sustainable—and
are already doing so—few companies will be
bold enough to encourage people to not buy
their products at all, as their bottom line
depends on total sales. But one company in
September 2011 garnered considerable atten-
tion for doing just that. Patagonia, an outdoor
clothing manufacturer, urged its customers to
not buy its products unless they really need to.
And even then, Patagonia encouraged poten-
tial customers to consider buying its products
used instead, as “the environmental cost of
everything we make is astonishing.” The com-
pany set up a partnership with eBay to help cus-
tomers resell used Patagonia products—a
surprising move, as the company receives no
share in those sales.15
Although Patagonia’s primary motive is to
prevent “environmental bankruptcy,” which,
as the company notes, is being driven by the
consumer culture, there is business savvy pre-
sent too. The marketing value of these efforts
may more than make up for any lost sales, as
they increase loyalty of their “green consumer”
customer base. And there’s a first-mover ben-
efit too. As the company’s forecasters are read-
ing the economic and ecological tea leaves,
they already must recognize that in coming
decades more people will most likely buy less
stuff and more products that will last—so
developing that brand advantage now will lead
to long-term returns for Patagonia, even in an
overall contracting economy.16
Beyond choice editing, there are also many
groups helping to change specific consumption
patterns. Take burials. In the United States, 3
million liters of embalming fluid, 104,000
tons of steel, and 1.5 million tons of concrete
are used each year to bury the dead. Burials
there produce more than 1.5 million tons of
clothes dryers as necessities, while new prod-
ucts like smartphones and high-speed Internet
are also becoming quickly perceived the same
way. Thus to reduce overall consumption, just
encouraging people to change their behavior
will be far from sufficient. Rather, govern-
ment and business will need to play a central
role in editing consumers’ choices.12
“Choice editing,” at its simplest, is exactly
as it sounds—editing people’s choices toward
a certain end. Unfortunately, for the past 50
years that end was to stimulate economic
growth and consumption. But the same strate-
gies can be applied to promote degrowth and
sustainability. Shifting the billions in govern-
ment subsidies toward healthy sustainable
goods—such as providing subsidies for small-
scale organic farms rather than giant com-
modity producers or shifting tax credits from
homeownership to living in small, efficient
homes that are owned or rented—could make
consumption patterns much more sustainable.
Of course, choice editing takes finesse: total
bans on some goods can lead to hoarding and
political reactionism. But even subtle taxes sig-
nificantly shift consumption behaviors. When
Washington, DC, added a 5¢ tax on plastic
bags in January 2010, use of these bags plum-
meted from 22.5 million to 3 million—in one
month. And the $2 million in annual revenue
collected from the tax is being used to help
clean up the tons of consumer refuse polluting
the Anacostia River, a long-suffering water-
way that flows through the nation’s capital.13
Businesses, too, can play a role in choice
editing, making it clear to customers what
the healthiest and most sustainable choices
are, such as by labeling products using health
and sustainability criteria or by pricing health-
ier and more-sustainable products favorably.
Walmart announced in early 2011 that it
would lower the price of its produce, reduc-
ing costs to customers by up to $1 billion, and
would work to lower the amount of salt,
added sugars, and unhealthy fats in their pack-
SUSTAINABLE PROSPERITY The Path to Degrowth in Overdeveloped Countries
SUSTAINABLEPROSPERITY.ORG 27
paign has not reached that level, it has spread
to a variety of countries, including the United
Kingdom, Belgium, Israel, and India. The
French cafeteria management company Sodexo
has also come aboard, spreading the initiative
to the 2,000 corporate and government and
the 900 hospital cafeterias it manages.19
Altering such deeply set cultural norms will
take continual intervention at a number of lev-
els by as many actors as possible. As an exhibit
on the government’s effect on the American
diet noted, to shift Americans’ diets during
war time “the battle was fought with squadrons
of celebrities, anthropologists, and cartoon
characters, and a flotilla of films, radio pro-
grams, pledge drives, and posters.” This deep
level of intervention will once again be neces-
sary to shift current consumption patterns.20
Distributing Tax Burdens
More Equitably
Today, the gap between wealthiest and poor-
est has grown to dramatic proportions. (See
Chapter 1.) While this is a social justice issue,
it is also an environmental issue, for the more
wealth someone possesses, the more that per-
son consumes. Ultimately, on a planet with 7
billion people, an ecologically sustainable
annual income is on the order of about $5,000
per person per year (in purchasing power par-
ity terms)—far below the current understand-
ing of western poverty levels. Beyond this
level, individuals purchase larger homes, more
appliances, air conditioning, electronic gadgets,
even air travel.21
But how does society intentionally con-
verge global incomes toward a lower norm?
Shifting tax burdens will play a central role, as
will redistribution of job hours—reducing the
length of the average work week will free up
work and income for others while also helping
to reduce overall incomes of the overworked.
In the process, there would be not only eco-
logical and economic benefits but considerable
carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and cost the
average family about $10,000, in what is essen-
tially a tax on the grieving. The good news is
that there are efforts to shift these trends,
burying people without chemicals in natural
burial grounds that create new community
parklands, which in turn create new space for
biodiversity and help serve as new carbon
sinks—a much better model than today’s pes-
ticide-sprayed, grass-covered cemetery. And
these shifts in burial process are helping trans-
form this essential human ritual so that it
reminds mourning families of humanity’s part
in the broader cycle of life—replacing efforts
to delay decay with a celebration that with
this loss comes new life.17
Similarly, the Slow Food movement is
working to shift dietary norms away from
meat-centric, highly processed, ecologically
destructive, unhealthy food back to enjoying
the preparation, cooking, and eating of “good,
clean, and fair food.” As food is such an emo-
tionally evocative topic, Slow Food has tapped
enormous interest in how people eat, and
today it has over 100,000 members in chap-
ters in 132 countries.18
Even when a broader transformation of diet
is beyond the reach of some—as not everyone
has time to slow down when they are simply
trying to make ends meet—there are gentler
entry points for shifting food and other con-
sumption patterns toward lower-impact norms.
The Meatless Monday Campaign, for example,
encourages individuals to forgo meat once a
week as a way to reduce the significant health
and ecological impacts of meat consumption.
While this campaign was launched by The
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public
Health in 2003, the practice was actually first
instituted by the U.S. government during
World War I, and then again in World War II,
in order to ration meat for the troops. During
the first war, over 10 million American fami-
lies and 425,000 food dealers pledged to go
meatless on Mondays. Although the new cam-
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28 WWW.W ORL DWATCH.ORG
if other taxes are adjusted as well. Recently,
much attention has been given to a small tax
on financial transactions, which could both
help make financial markets less volatile and
generate revenue for sustainable development.
While this has been advocated by some since
first proposed by economist James Tobin in
1972, the idea suddenly has new life behind it.
Occupy movement protestors have included
this in their demands, and several influential
individuals—including billionaires Bill Gates
and George Soros—have publicly backed it,
urging that the tax be used for development
aid. The European Commission is now con-
sidering a fee of $10 per $10,000 of financial
transactions by 2015, which could generate
$77 billion annually in new tax revenue. And
while the idea has critics, the United Kingdom
already imposes a $50 tax on $10,000 of stock
trades, so the tax is clearly workable, both
financially and politically.25
Ecological taxes could also be strength-
ened and even be used to offset burdens on
the individuals most affected by the contrac-
tion of certain polluting industries and dis-
ruptions brought about by degrowth. In late
2011, Australia passed a tax of $23.78 per
ton of carbon, which is projected to cut CO2
social benefits as well. Research has
shown that more-equitable societies
have less violent crime, higher literacy
levels, are healthier and less over-
weight, and have lower teen preg-
nancy and incarceration rates.22
Better distribution of incomes has
a clear impact on human develop-
ment, as the Human Development
Report 2011 reinforced. This report
by the U.N. Development Pro-
gramme found that when inequali-
ties in income, health, and education
are taken into account, several of the
wealthiest nations fall dramatically in
human development rankings. The
United States falls from fourth to
twentieth in the rankings, for example, while
countries with high equity fare better: Sweden
goes from tenth to fifth and Denmark increases
from sixteenth to twelfth.23
One of the most direct routes to shifting
taxes is simply adjusting income tax burdens.
This may sound politically impossible in coun-
tries like the United States—where anti-tax
political movements like the Tea Party exist. But
efforts like Occupy Wall Street may open up
new political possibilities, especially if Americans
start to recall their history. During World War
II, marginal income tax rates on those earning
more than $200,000 a year peaked at 94 per-
cent. And while greater levels of influence by
moneyed interests over the political system will
make this more challenging now, there is no
legal barrier that would prevent Americans
from doing this again. Given that the threat of
today’s environmental crisis is even graver for
U.S. national security than World War II was,
this type of shift should be on the table. Activists
and researchers could benefit from studying the
messaging used to get these tax increases
through Congress and try to apply those lessons
to current tax reform efforts.24
Extremely high income tax rates are not
necessarily the only (or the best) path to take
SUSTAINABLE PROSPERITY The Path to Degrowth in Overdeveloped Countries
SUSTAINABLEPROSPERITY.ORG 29
Poster of self-interested creatures encouraging people to go
meatless on Mondays
© The Monday Campaign, Inc.
ernment programs; they can be redistributed
in a way that increases societal equity and that
compensates groups most affected by the shift
to a degrowth economy—providing people
with transitional support, key social services,
and training in new skills. But simply rebuild-
ing public infrastructures would use up a siz-
able percentage of the taxes collected. At the
most basic, this includes improving public
water and sanitation systems, accelerating the
transition to the efficient use of renewable
energy, and replacing car-centric infrastruc-
ture with one centered on bicycles and public
transit. To these upgrades could also be added
new community centers, swimming pools, hik-
ing trails, and libraries that lend not just books
and media, but games, toys, and tools—all of
which will help convert what are increasingly
private luxuries once again into public goods.
In the process, these new developments could
ease people’s frustration with shrinking levels
of wealth and diminished reserves of private
goods by providing new opportunities to play,
learn, and socialize.
The new funds can also be used to prepare
for an unstable future. Governments have key
roles to play in, for example, restoring ecosys-
tems like forests and wetlands, supporting
entrepreneurs to create new small, local farms,
and actively preparing for the now inevitable
emissions by an annual 160 million tons by
2020 while generating $15.5 billion a year by
2015. This is good news, since earlier in the
year the Australian government announced
it had to cut funding for environmental pro-
grams due to costly flooding—flooding that
environmentalists connected to climate
change. Governments will clearly need revenue
both to prevent additional environmental dis-
asters and to adapt to a warming, more dis-
aster-prone, world.26
Finally, one other industry ripe for taxation
is advertising. In the United States, corpora-
tions’ advertising budgets are currently tax
write-offs, but ending this and even modestly
taxing these expenditures could yield significant
new revenues. In 2011, advertising expendi-
tures in this one country alone were $155 bil-
lion. Assuming the elimination of a tax write-off
at a modest 20 percent corporate tax rate, that
translates into $31 billion in new tax revenues.
Add to that a tax on advertising for unhealthy
and unsustainable products—such as junk food,
fossil fuels, and automobiles—and this could
provide new funds for marketing the elements
necessary for normalizing a less-consumptive
society; it could also deter the marketing of
unsustainable and unhealthy products.27
What would all these new taxes be used
for? First, not all taxes need to go into gov-
McDonald’s billboard before and after being “jammed” by Billboard Liberation Front activists
Billboard Liberation Front
The P ath to De gro wth i n Overd eve loped Co untri es STATE OF THE WORLD 2012
30 WWW.W ORL DWATCH.ORG
have improved and as reductions could help
shrink unemployment. More striking is that if
the true average workweek were calculated—
taking into account the unemployed, the
underemployed, the part-time workers and
full-time workers, and those working excessive
hours—it would be much lower. The New
Economics Foundation found that the average
Briton worked 21 hours a week in 2010.30
A better distribution of job hours among all
working-age individuals will not only help
reduce poverty, it could significantly improve
the quality of life for the many people work-
ing too much and it could reduce their eco-
logical impacts. Psychologists Tim Kasser and
Kirk Brown have found that longer working
hours correlate negatively with life satisfac-
tion levels and positively with ecological foot-
print. Moreover, if the work-hour reductions
are actively supported by the right social mar-
keting messages, more of people’s time could
be directed toward living more sustainably:
bicycling instead of driving, drying clothes on
clotheslines, cooking instead of buying pack-
aged foods or going to restaurants, taking
local “staycations” instead of exotic vacations,
playing board games instead of going out for
expensive entertainment, going to the library
instead of the bookstore, gardening, volun-
teering, and taking care of children and elderly
parents, all of which could help improve health,
social connectedness, and community engage-
ment—in other words, well-being.31
Although many people would be willing
to earn and spend less, few have the opportu-
nity to choose this, as businesses receive incen-
tives to hire full-time employees. Some
countries have already taken steps to remedy
this. The Netherlands, for example, helps peo-
ple cut their working hours to three-quarters
time by requiring employers to maintain indi-
viduals’ same hourly rate of pay and pro-rated
benefits at the reduced working rates. During
the recession, the German government helped
businesses retain employees they might oth-
changes that a warming world will bring
(including in some cases abandoning certain
areas altogether). The Netherlands is already
proactively addressing climate change—not
surprising, considering much of the country is
just above or even below sea level. In Hot: Liv-
ing Through the Next Fifty Years on Earth,
Mark Hertsgaard describes the extensive
lengths to which the Dutch government is
going to prepare for a warming world—steps
many people would find too extreme.28
The Dutch government has created a 200-
year plan to adapt to climate change, spending
$1 billion a year to implement it. Coastal
hotels are being closed to make way for new
protective dikes, and farms are being con-
verted to lakes, with the long-term public
interest taking precedence over short-term
private interests (though owners are compen-
sated when dislocated). These significant
investments will need funding support—an
estimated $2–6 billion a year in the case of the
Netherlands—as will simply adapting to sur-
prise weather disasters. Twelve disasters in the
United States in 2011 cost over $1 billion
each—causing $52 billion of damage (more
than the global total of disaster damage in
2009) and setting a new record for total num-
ber of devastating disasters to hit the country
in one year. With growing instability from a
changing climate, new tax revenue will be nec-
essary to ensure that there is enough money in
the coffers to respond to the next surprise that
nature throws at humanity.29
Sharing Work Hours Better
Another way to improve access to incomes—
one that may more easily get through conser-
vative legislatures—is to do a better job
distributing work hours. Since World War II,
the 40-hour workweek has been seen in many
western countries as “normal.” Few countries
have reduced working hours from this stan-
dard—even as technologies and productivity
SUSTAINABLE PROSPERITY The Path to Degrowth in Overdeveloped Countries
SUSTAINABLEPROSPERITY.ORG 31
32 WWW.W ORL DWATCH.ORG
The P ath to De gro wth i n Overd eve loped Co untri es STATE OF THE WORLD 2012
er wise have laid of f in a program called
Kurzarbeit. The program, meaning “short-
work,” enabled companies to pay workers only
for the hours worked while the government
made up the difference (at up to two-thirds
time). The program has supported 1.5 million
workers across 63,000 companies, reducing
layoffs by 300,000–400,000 and helping to
keep the unemployment rate in Germany to a
17-year low. Through innovative programs
such as these, governments can help save over-
all costs and avoid societal disruptions caused
by unemployment while also helping with the
transition to shorter hours.32
Companies can also create more space for
leave time—such as through more vacation
time, more maternity and paternity leave, or
opportunities to job share. Some advocacy
groups like Right2Vacation.org are lobbying to
get a minimum one-week vacation for all U.S.
workers, as the country has no law requiring
vacation, and half of all workers there get a
week or less of annual vacation time. The more
vacation time built into work schedules, the
shorter the average work week will be and the
more overall jobs will be available. The same
is true with parental leave. The United States
is one of only four countries in the world that
does not have paid maternity leave. Providing
generous maternity leave not only helps moth-
ers bond with new infants and increases the
probability of breastfeeding, it also reduces
total hours worked across the population and
thus helps distribute job hours more broadly.
In Sweden, new parents receive a combined
480 days of parental leave, with 390 days sup-
ported at 80 percent of their salary—which, not
surprisingly, encourages many of these new
parents to work less.33
Overall, there will need to be better distri-
bution of job hours and in due course a con-
traction of the consumer economy. But mostly
the contraction—if managed—could be of
goods and services that are artificially stimulated
solely to make a profit and that cause both ill
health and ecological degradation. Cigarettes,
junk food, cars, weaponry, alcohol, cosmetics,
disposable packaging, and many other sectors
of the economy produce jobs, but should these
oftentimes socially irresponsible industries be
maintained at current levels just to sustain over-
all employment levels? Or should society shift
the economy to provide a healthy and sustain-
able way of life along with work that does not
undermine the planet and humanity’s long-
term well-being? Shrinking and even phasing
out certain economic sectors and replacing
them (when beneficial) with other economic
pursuits will be an essential step in degrowth,
even if to some it looks like “reverse progress.”
Cultivating a Plenitude Economy
Sociologist Juliet Schor has spent decades study-
ing work hours and the high levels of con-
sumption that accompany working too much.
She has drawn attention to these issues in pop-
ular books like The Overspent American and
The Overworked American. In 2010 she pub-
lished Plenitude—a term that refers to great
abundance or the condition of being bountiful.
In this book, Schor calls for the controlled
reduction of the consumer economy, with more
people supporting themselves with a diverse
set of formal and informal economic activities,
including self-provisioning and trading of food
and artisan goods as well as maintaining and
repairing goods for longer periods. Ultimately,
shifting some portion of the household econ-
omy to these informal economic activities
“expands a household’s options with respect to
employment choices, time use, and consump-
tion,” notes Schor. “The more self-provision-
ing one can do, the less income one has to earn
to reproduce a standard of living.34
The combination of intentional shifts in
working hours and inevitable market contrac-
tions could help accelerate this plenitude
model. The recession in the United States has
played a role in increasing the number of peo-
SUSTAINABLEPROSPERITY.ORG 33
SUSTAINABLE PROSPERITY The Path to Degrowth in Overdeveloped Countries
ple living in multigenerational house-
holds to 51.4 million Americans, up
10 percent between 2007 and 2009.
When different generations share a
home, living costs can be reduced
considerably—in housing, utilities,
and transportation. This helped keep
U.S. poverty rates of multigenera-
tional households lower than those of
other households, even as their
median income levels were lower. In
addition, elderly parents can help with
children (and also be looked after if
necessary), lowering both child and
elderly care costs. And more house-
hold economic activities can be taken
on—such as gardening or raising live-
stock. Although these are time-inten-
sive activities, they can be done more easily
when more people share the time burdens.35
Multigenerational housing should be
actively celebrated by popular culture and sup-
ported with government incentives, as it will
significantly reduce ecological and economic
costs while redeveloping social capital and
neighborhood density. It may even open up
new entrepreneurial opportunities: Lennar, a
U.S. housing developer, has created a new
line of multigenerational houses to sell to peo-
ple embracing this demographic shift.36
Strategic social marketing could help this.
Marketers have been targeting multigenera-
tional households in the United States since the
recession began, primarily to sell them more
stuff. But if the government and public inter-
est groups also reached out to these house-
holds—offering pamphlets, online videos, and
workshops on canning, basic repair, sewing,
and so on—this could help encourage diversi-
fication of household livelihoods and help nor-
malize both this housing strategy and broader
aspects of plenitude living.37
The contribution of this sector should not
be underestimated. In the United States, dur-
ing World War II, 40 percent of vegetables
consumed by households were grown in home
and community gardens. Gardening could
reduce both household food costs and the
ecological impacts of agriculture if people are
taught food cultivation strategies that empha-
size organic and integrated pest management
methods. As climate change disrupts large-
scale agriculture and as food-insecure countries
ban the export of grain, backyard and com-
munity gardens could play a substantial role in
food security and community resiliency. Indi-
vidual gardens have played an essential role in
Cuba, for example, since the collapse of the
Soviet Union reduced its access to cheap oil.
In Havana alone, more than 26,000 food gar-
dens are spread across 2,400 hectares of land,
producing 25,000 tons of food annually.38
Juliet Schor is optimistic that, over time,
people will get disillusioned with the 9-to-5
work/spend/consume lifestyle and more of
them will actively seek out a plenitude lifestyle,
working fewer hours at paying jobs and help-
ing to rebuild local economies. Some civil
society organizations are working to accelerate
this transition in a variety of ways. For decades
there have been efforts to encourage people to
live more simply—working less, buying less,
U.S. goverment social marketing poster from 1917
Library of Congress
logical impact, alter choices and behaviors to
reduce their carbon footprint, and advocate for
better care of God’s creation. Initiatives in the
religious community along these lines are still
fairly small. But given that 80 percent of the
people in the world identify themselves as reli-
gious, expanding the leadership role of religions
could dramatically accelerate the transition to
a plenitude society.40
In the United States, Common
Security Clubs have started working
over the past few years to proactively
rebuild social capital and links in the
informal economy. Community mem-
bers come together in groups of
10–20 to assess how they could help
each other, exchanging skills and
resources—from tools and trucks to
time and an extra room in someone’s
home. Neighbors are once again start-
ing to do what neighbors used to do:
help each other. Facilitated by the
Institute of Policy Studies, these clubs
are spreading around the countr y,
growing especially in church commu-
nities or small towns where a basic
level of social cohesion already exists.
Along with fostering community resilience,
these groups also teach people about broader
economic issues and mobilize members to
become politically active.41
On a larger scale, the Transition Towns
movement founded in 2005 is working to
reduce community energy usage and relocalize
economies and food systems in order to make
communities more resilient in the increasingly
constrained future. There are now nearly 400
communities in 34 countries recognized as
official Transition Town Initiatives. These towns
have brought together diverse sectors of soci-
ety to create community gardens, tool
exchanges, and waste exchanges between busi-
nesses, for instance. There is even an eco-cir-
cus in Shaftesbury, England, that uses clowns,
humor, and performances to teach children
and enjoying the greater amount of time they
have with friends, family, or hobbies. “Volun-
tary simplicity” initiatives have taken on many
forms—from study circles and Simple Living
television shows to annual “Buy Nothing”
boycotts and websites that help people share
and exchange unneeded goods. They have
helped millions of individuals to “downshift”
their spending.39
Many religions have been active in encour-
aging adherents to live more simply as well—
a role their ancient teachings deeply support.
From Pope Benedict XVI advocating for a less
commercialized and more meaningful Christ-
mas, to Jews developing a new Eco-Kosher
standard to encourage more-sustainable food
choices, to Muslims advocating for a Green
Ramadan—with the annual fasting ritual being
expanded to include eating more locally grown
food and reducing carbon footprints by 25
percent—a wide variety of religious efforts are
encouraging simpler living. In 2009, the
Catholic Church created the St. Francis Pledge,
named after the monk who lived an ascetic
life in the thirteenth century and is the patron
saint of the environment. People who take
the pledge are asked to reflect on their eco-
Outdoor oven at the Sirius Community, an ecovillage in
Massachusetts
karina y
The P ath to De gro wth i n Overd eve loped Co untri es STATE OF THE WORLD 2012
34 WWW.W ORL DWATCH.ORG
ization of childbirth, showing that Cesarean sec-
tions are rarely necessary. Of the 3,000 births
handled by The Farm’s program since 1971,
under 2 percent have been C-sections. Con-
sidering the ecological and financial resources
needed for surgery (along with the risks to
mother and baby), the degrowth of unneeded
medical interventions will be essential, and
society will need to look to innovators like
these for inspiration and advice on how best to
treat medical needs sustainably and safely.45
Government can play a valuable role in
cultivating a plenitude economy as well. As the
consumer economy has come to dominate,
many of the skills needed for a plenitude econ-
omy have been lost and will need to be
relearned. Governments could support train-
ing—both directly and through funding non-
profit or community organizations—to help
redevelop basic household skills. This is already
happening in several European countries.
More than 1,200 “social farms” have been
established in France, for example, and over
700 in the Netherlands. These ventures use
farming as a means of creating jobs and new
skills, as well as offering opportunities to
reconnect with nature, build community con-
nections, and in some cases help rehabilitate
mentally handicapped populations—not to
mention provide sustainable and local sources
of produce.46
Governments could also help individuals
and communities get involved in the manage-
ment and restoration of public and marginal
lands. Although this certainly would not appeal
to everyone, growing numbers of people seek
opportunities to lead a more-traditional lifestyle.
With support, a new, bolder version of “the back
to the land” movement of the 1970s could
take off. At the moment, the financial downturn
in Greece has led to a growth in the agricultural
sector of 32,000 jobs, even as unemployment
shot from 12 to 18 percent. This agrarian way
of life, with the right training, would not just
be low impact but could be actively eco-restora-
and their families about climate change and
sustainable living.42
One U.S. effort—the Oberlin Project—is
taking the Transition Town model to a new
level, working to sustainably redevelop the
region around Oberlin College in Ohio. By
using the creative energy, talent, and financial
resources of the college community, this pro-
ject—if successful—could help drive progress
toward the participants’ deep green vision of
a carbon-neutral city and a “20,000 acre green-
belt of farms and forests” that will form the
backbone of a robust local economy. As David
Orr, Oberlin professor and visionary behind the
project, notes, the entire effort will also serve
“as an educational laboratory relevant to vir-
tually every discipline.”43
Ecovillages also play an essential role in
modeling the plenitude economy. With hun-
dreds spread around the world, many of these
communities have pioneered a sustainable and
resilient way of life for decades—exploring the
frontiers of permaculture, alternative build-
ing materials, renewable energy systems, even
lost skills like horse-powered agriculture. The
majority of these ecovillages also make it a
central mission to spread these skills to broader
society, regularly holding retreats and work-
shops for visitors from around the world.44
Ecovillages have also rediscovered tradi-
tional wisdom that will play an important role
in a constrained future. At The Farm, in Ten-
nessee, for instance, some midwives are a repos-
itory of knowledge about skills that had been
lost as the U.S. medical system eagerly
embraced modern technologies in delivering
babies. Today, in the United States, one third
of pregnant women have their babies by
Cesarean section (C-section)—putting them-
selves and their babies at often unnecessary
risk. Many of these procedures are due to mis-
information, cultural pressures, even time pres-
sures on hospital staffs. The Farm’s midwifery
program has helped train many new midwives
and has drawn attention to the overmedical-
SUSTAINABLE PROSPERITY The Path to Degrowth in Overdeveloped Countries
SUSTAINABLEPROSPERITY.ORG 35
will need to be pursued across many realms—
from the Internet and the classroom to the
voting booth and the living room. Fortunately,
some promising initiatives may point the way.50
First, “social marketing” strategies are being
used to challenge overconsumption and even
growth. The Story of Stuff project has been
effective in challenging the use of cosmetics,
electronics, bottled water, and even the spend-
ing of unlimited funds on political marketing.
The New Economics Foundation also cre-
ated a short film that captures the absurdity of
infinite growth flawlessly, applying this goal to
a hamster. As the film reveals, if a hamster
did not stop growing as it reached adulthood,
it would be 9 billion tons on its first birthday
and “could eat all the corn produced annually
worldwide in a single day. And still be hungry.
As the narrator concludes, “There is a reason
why in nature things grow in size only to a cer-
tain point, so why do economists and politi-
cians think tha t the economy can gr ow
forever?” Similarly, and seen by much larger
audiences, popular Hollywood films like
Avatar and WALL·E are also playing an
important role in drawing attention to the
possible devastating outcomes of a continued
obsession with growth and consumerism—
literally the destruction of planet Earth.51
Beyond film, there is now a degrowth
movement, with annual conferences on this
topic and a budding political movement;
degrowth political parties exist in several coun-
tries, including France and Italy. A variety of
publications and websites are devoted to the
subject, including a monthly magazine in
French, La Décroissance, and an Internet hub
for the topic at DegrowthPedia.org. As
degrowth is brought more openly into dia-
logues and as progressive politicians articulate
positive visions of it, the concept can move
from the realm of the taboo to the more nor-
mal, creating space for mainstream media and
political parties to break away from assump-
tions that growth is always good.52
tive, if it is based on proactive, sustainable man-
agement of ecosystems.47
The Colombian village of Gaviotas demon-
strates just how much can be achieved by a
small community committed to ecological
restoration. This village of 200 people was
established on degraded savanna 30 years ago
and since then has replanted over 8,000
hectares of surrounding land with forest—an
area larger than Manhattan. This forest now
provides the village with food and tradable
forest products, while absorbing 144,000 tons
of carbon a year as it grows. Supporting this
type of community-driven ecological restora-
tion—particularly in ways that encourage
extremely low-consumption lifestyles—could
help greatly in the pursuit of sustainability.48
The last important point about a pleni-
tude economy is that it will free up ecologi-
cal capacity for people who are living in true
poverty and maintain the key services that
society does not want to lose in a constrained
future—hospitals, vaccines, antibiotics, basic
education, energy production, clean water
infrastructure, and so on.
Moving Toward Degrowth
Ultimately the idea of decoupling growth and
prosperity is no longer a utopian dream but a
financial and ecological necessity, as Tim Jack-
son puts it. Right now, however, prosperity is
deeply understood as consuming ever more
and growing ever larger. Thus, moving toward
degrowth will involve redefining prosperity
altogether—resurrecting traditional under-
standings of what this word means: health,
social connectedness, freedom to pursue hob-
bies, and interesting work.49
Communicating this shifted meaning will
be a challenge, especially with 1 percent of the
global economic product spent each year mar-
keting consumer goods and services and the
romanticized idea that they will bring happiness.
To succeed, effective communication strategies
The P ath to De gro wth i n Overd eve loped Co untri es STATE OF THE WORLD 2012
36 WWW.W ORL DWATCH.ORG
tem—in this case, the island of Catan. By offer-
ing ways to win based on responsible envi-
ronmental stewardship instead of just growth,
and by making too much growth potentially
lead to all players losing, this board game can
help players wrestle with the limits of growth.54
In the end, whether societal leaders accept
it or not, the nat ural limit s of Earth—
brought into view by increasing numbers of
a population of 7 billion striving to live as
consumers—will shatter the myth of con-
tinued growth, most likely due to dramatic
ch ange s to the p lanet’s s yste ms. Th us
degrowth is part of humanity’s future. Will
people pursue this agenda proactively? Or
will Earth and its limits drive the contraction
of the global economy?
More aggressive efforts in the classroom
and academic settings may help too. In 2009,
the Adbusters Media Foundation—which is
credited with starting Buy Nothing Day,
Turnoff the TV week, and Occupy Wall
Street—started a campaign to get
economics students to challenge their
professors to adapt the flawed neo-
classic economic model to ecological
realities of life on a finite planet. By
putting up posters, starting debates,
sending open letters, and even walk-
ing out of class—as a group of Har-
vard students did in November
2011—students hope Economics
Department curricula will start teach-
ing a “new economics—open, holis-
tic, human-scale.” In a similar but
less confrontational manner, groups
like Net Impact, which has 20,000
members across six continents, are
working with Business School pro-
fessors and administrators to inte-
grate sustainability and social
responsibility courses into academic curricula
and to help find socially responsible business
opportunities for graduates.53
Subtly harnessing popular culture icons to
question growth can also play an important
role. One example is a new eco-educational sce-
nario for The Settlers of Catan, an award-win-
ning board game with over 18 million copies
in print in 30 languages. The scenario, Catan:
Oil Springs, not only incorporates clear side
effects of growth, such as pollution and climate
change, it also questions whether continued
growth can be the definitive goal in a finite sys-
Perpetually growing hamster after having consumed most of Earth
Leo Murray
SUSTAINABLE PROSPERITY The Path to Degrowth in Overdeveloped Countries
SUSTAINABLEPROSPERITY.ORG 37
SUSTAINABLEPROSPERITY.ORG 197
SUSTAINABLE PROSPERITY Notes
58. The 1 percent and the 15 million estimate
from Chris Bonner, “Waste Pickers Without Fron-
tiers,” South African Labour Bulletin, vol. 32, no.
4 (2008); additional calculation from Population
Reference Bureau, 2011 World Population Data
Sheet (Washington, DC: 2011).
59. Martin Medina, “The Informal Recycling Sec-
tor in Developing Countries,” Gridlines, October
2008; Sonia M. Dias, “Overview of the Legal
Framework for Inclusion of Informal Recyclers in
Solid Waste Management in Brazil,” WIEGO Urban
Policies Briefing Note No. 8, May 2011; Sonia M.
Dias and F. C. G. Alves, Integration of the Informal
Recycling Sector in Solid Waste Management in
Brazil (Berlin: GTZ, 2008); “Brazilian President
Launches the “Cata Ação” Program,” AVINA 2009
Annual Report, at www.informeavina2009.org/
english/reciclaje.shtml; “Brazil Sanctions National
Policy that Formalizes the Work of 800,000 Recy-
clers,” AVINA 2010 Annual Report, a t
www.informeavina2010.org/english/reciclaje.shtml.
60. CWG and GIZ, op. cit. note 56; WIEGO,
“Waste Pickers,” at wiego.org/informal-econ
omy/occupational-groups/waste-pickers; WIEGO,
“Laws & Policies Beneficial to Waste Pickers,” at
wiego.org/informal-economy/laws-policies-bene
ficial-waste-pickers.
61. Chris Bonner, “Foreword,” in Samson, op. cit.
note 57.
62. Box 1–2 based on the following: U.S.-China
wind case from United Steelworkers’ Section 301
Petition, from Jonathan Watts, “China Moves to
Defuse Trade Row with US over Green Technol-
ogy,” (London) Guardian, 23 December 2010,
from Doug Palmer and Leonora Walet, “China
Agrees to Halt Subsidies to Wind Power Firms,”
Reuters, 7 June 2011, from Kevin Gallagher, “US
Should Exer cise G re en P ower, ” (London)
Guardian, 6 January 2011, from Ed Crooks,
“Washington’s Energy Rift with China Unpopular,”
Financial Times, 19 October 2010, and from Dale
Jiajun Wen, “Pointing the Finger the Wrong Way,”
China Dialogue, 19 October 2010; U.S.-China
solar trade case from Keith Bradsher, “U.S. Solar
Panel Makers Say China Violated Trade Rules,”
New York Times, 20 October 2011, from Keith
Bradsher, “Chinese Trade Case Has Clear Targets,
Not Obvious Goals,” New York Times, 21 October
2011, from James Kanter, “Trade Disputes Hurt
Renewable Energy, Chinese Executive Asserts,”
New York Times, 27 October 2011, and from
Stephen Lacey, “Chinese Cheaters? How China
Dominates Solar,Grist, 10 September 2011; Japan-
Ontario case from Todd Tucker, “Corporations
Push for WTO Attack on Green Jobs,” Eyes on
Trade, Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch, 24
June 2011, from Gloria Gonzalez, “EU Joins Japan
in Attacking Ontario’s Renewables Tariff,” Envi-
ronmental Finance, 15 August 2011, from Shira
Honig, “Japan Renewable Feed-in-Tariff Passes,
While Ontario Faces Battles,” Climatico, 7 Sep-
tember 2011, from John Landers, “Legal Issues
for Ontario’s Feed-in-Tariff Policies,”Energy Trend,
18 August 2011, and from Paul Gipe, “Japan Feed-
in Tariff Policy Becomes Law,” Wind-Works, 27
August 2011.
63. DESA, op. cit. note 22, pp. xx–xxi, with
detailed discussion in Section VI (pp. 161–86).
64. Energy Co nser vation Center, at
www.eccj.or.jp/top_runner/index.html. The World
Economic and Social Survey discusses Japan’s expe-
rience and suggests a global top runner program; see
DESA, op. cit. note 22, pp. 47, 61.
65. “Increasing Price with Volume,” in UNEP
and GRID-Arendal, Vital Water Graphics, 2nd ed.
(Arendal, Norway: 2008).
66. David Schweickart, “A New Capitalism—or a
New World?” World Watch, September/October
2010; Tom Prugh, “Band-aids for Capitalism? Or
Something Completely Different?” (blog), World-
watch Green Economy, 28 August 2009.
Chapter 2. The Path to Degrowth in
Overdeveloped Countries
1. Number of participants from “Degrowth Con-
ference Barcelona 2010,” at degrowth.eu. Box 2–1
from the following: Serge Latouche, “Growing a
Degrowth Movement,” in Worldwatch Institute,
State of the World 2010 (New York: W. W. Norton
& Company, 2010), p. 181; Serge Latouche,
Farewell to Growth (Cambridge, U.K.: Polity Press,
2009), pp. 8–9; Tim Jackson, Prosperity Without
198 WWW.W ORL DWATCH.ORG
Notes STATE OF THE WORLD 2012
Growth: Economics for a Finite Planet (London:
Earthscan, 2011).
2. Martín Mucha, “Robin Bank, Héroe Juve-
nil,El Mundo, 12 October 2010; Erik Assadourian,
“A Tale of a Modern-Day Robin Hood” (blog)
Transforming Cultures, 4 November 2010; Enric
Duran, “I Have ‘Robbed’ 492,000 Euros to Whom
Most Rob Us in Order to Denounce Them and
Build Some Alternatives for the Society” (blog)
enricduran.cat, 27 August 2010; Giles Tremlett,
500,000 Scam of a Spanish Robin Hood,” (Lon-
don) Guardian, 18 September 2008.
3. Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, Living
Beyond Our Means: Natural Assets and Human
Well-Being: Statement from the Board (Washing-
ton, DC: World Resources Institute, 2005), p. 2;
Johan Rockström et al., “A Safe Operating Space for
Humanity,” Nature, 24 September 2009, pp.
472–75.
4. Andrei Sokolov et al., “Probabilistic Forecast
for 21st Century Climate Based on Uncertainties in
Emissions (without Policy) and Climate Parame-
ters,” American Meteorological Society Journal of Cli-
mate, October 2009, pp. 5,175–204; David
Chandler, “Revised MIT Climate Model Sounds
Alarm,” TechTalk (Massachusetts Institute of Tech-
nology), 20 May 2009; Juliet Eilperin, “New Analy-
sis Brings Dire Forecast of 6.3-Degree Temperature
Increase,” Washington Post, 25 September 2009;
Elizabeth R. Sawin et al., “Current Emissions
Reductions Proposals in the Lead-up to COP-15
Are Likely to Be Insufficient to Stabilize Atmos-
pheric CO2Levels: Using C-ROADS—a Simple
Computer Simulation of Climate Change—to Sup-
port Long-Term Climate Policy Development,”
draft presented at the Climate Change—Global
Risks, Challenges, and Decisions Conference, Uni-
versity of Copenhagen, Denmark, 10 March 2009;
Mark G. New et al., eds., “Four Degrees and
Beyond: The Potential for a Global Temperature
Increase of Four Degrees and Its Implications,”
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A, 13
January 2011; “Royal Society Special Issue Details
‘Hellish Vision’ of 7°F (4°C) World—Which We
May Face in the 2060s!” Climate Progress, 29
November 2010; Richard Black, “Climate Talks
End with Late Deal,” BBC News, 11 December
2011.
5. “Canada to Withdraw from Kyoto Protocol,”
BBC News, 13 December 2011; Fiona Harvey,
“Rich Nations ‘Give Up’ on New Climate Treaty
Until 2020,” (London) Guardian, 20 November
2011; Executive Summary, The Economics of Climate
Change: The Stern Review (Cambridge, U.K.: Cam-
bridge University Press, 2007), p. 10.
6. Harald Welzer, Mental Infrastructures: How
Growth Entered the World and Our Souls (Berlin:
Heinrich Böll Foundation, 2011), p. 12; “Prince of
Wales: Ignoring Climate Change Could Be Cata-
strophic,” (London) Telegraph, 24 May 2011.
7. Welzer, op. cit. note 6, p. 10; WWF, ZSL, and
GFN, Living Planet Report 2010 (Gland, Switzer-
land: 2010); World Bank, “New Data Show 1.4 Bil-
lion Live On Less Than US$1.25 A Day, But
Progress Against Poverty Remains Strong,” press
release (Washington, DC: 26 August 2008).
8. Overweight Americans from Trust for Amer-
ica’s Health, F as in Fat: How Obesity Policies Are
Failing in America (Washington, DC: Robert Wood
Johnson Foundation, 2008); medical and produc-
tivity costs from Society of Actuaries, “New Soci-
ety of Actuaries Study Estimates $300 Billion
Economic Cost Due to Overweight and Obesity,”
press release (Schaumburg, IL: 10 January 2011),
and from Robert Preidt, “Cost of Obesit y
Approaching $300 Billion a Year,” USA Today, 12
January 2011; Institute for Health Metrics and
Evaluation, “Life Expectancy in Most US Counties
Falls Behind World’s Healthiest Nations,” press
release (Seattle, WA: 15 June 2011); David Brown,
“Life Expectancy in the U.S. Varies Widely by
Region, in Some Places Is Decreasing,” Washing-
ton Post, 15 June 2011; S. Jay Olshansky et al., “A
Potential Decline in Life Expectancy in the United
States in the 21st Century,” New England Journal
of Medicine, 17 March 2005, pp. 1,138–45; Laura
Cummings, “The Diet Business: Banking on Fail-
ure,” BBC News, 5 February 2003; global obesity
from Richard Weil, “Levels of Overweight on the
Rise,” Vital Signs Online, 14 June 2011.
9. Juliet Schor, “Sustainable Work Schedules for
All,” in Worldwatch Institute, op. cit. note 1, pp.
91–95; Gary Gardner, Erik Assadourian, and Rad-
hika Sarin, “The State of Consumption Today,” in
Worldwatch Institute, State of the World 2004 (New
SUSTAINABLEPROSPERITY.ORG 199
SUSTAINABLE PROSPERITY Notes
York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2004), pp. 3–21;
Sonia Shah, “As Pharmaceutical Use Soars, Drugs
Taint Water and Wildlife,” Yale Environment 360,
15 April 2010; Miller McPherson, L ynn Smith-
Lovin, and Matthew E. Brashears, “Social Isolation
in America: Changes in Core Discussion Networks
over Two Decades,American Sociological Review,
June 2006, pp. 353–75.
10. Sustainable Europe Research Institute,
GLOBAL 2000, and Friends of the Earth Europe,
Overconsumption? Our Use of the World’s Natural
Resources (September 2009).
11. Zenith Optimedia, “Quadrennial Events to
Help Ad Market Grow in 2012 Despite Economic
Troubles,” press release (London: 5 December
2011); Jack Neff, “Is Digital Revolution Driving
Decline in U.S. Car Culture?” Advertising Age, 31
May 2010; Lisa Hymas, “Driving Has Lost Its
Cool for Young Americans,” Grist, 27 December
2011; Victoria J. Rideout, Ulla G. Foehr, and Don-
ald F. Roberts, Generation M2: Media in the Lives
of 8- to 18-Year-Olds (Washington, DC: Kaiser Fam-
ily Foundation, 2010).
12. Erik Assadourian, “The Rise and Fall of Con-
sumer Cultures,” in Worldwatch Institute, op. cit.
note 1, pp. 3–20; Paul Taylor and Wendy Wang,
“The Fading Glory of the Television and Tele-
phone,” Pew Research Center, Washington, DC, 19
August 2010. Box 2–2 is based on Michael Mani-
ates and John M. Meyer, eds., The Environmental
Politics of Sacrifice (Cambridge, MA: The MIT
Press, 2010).
13. Michael Maniates, “Editing Out Unsustainable
Behavior,” in Worldwatch Institute, op. cit. note 1,
pp. 119–26; Brian Merchant, “Plastic Bags Used in
DC Drop From 22 Million to 3 Million a Month,”
Treehugger, 31 March 2010; “Good News, Bad
News on D.C.’s Plastic Bag Tax,” Washington
Examiner, 5 January 2011.
14. Sheryl Gay Stolberg, “Wal-Mart Shifts Strat-
egy to Promote Healthy Foods,” New York Times,
20 January 2011; Bruce Blythe, “UPDATED: Wal-
Mart’s Health Kick Cuts Prices on Produce,” The
Packer, 20 January 2011; Tom Philpott, “Is Wal-
Mart Our Best Hope for Food Policy Reform?”
Grist, 29 April 2011.
15. Adam Aston, “Patagonia Takes Fashion Week
as a Time to Say: ‘Buy Less, Buy Used,’” GreenBiz,
8 September 2011; Tim Nudd, “Ad of the Day:
Patagonia,” Ad Week, 28 November 2011.
16. Nudd, op. cit. note 15.
17. David Reay, Climate Change Begins at Home
(New York: MacMillan, 2005); estimate from
National Funeral Directors Association, “Statistics:
Funeral Costs,” at www.nfda.org/media-center/
statisticsreports.html, viewed 28 December 2011,
and from Selena Maranjian, “How Much Does a
Funeral Cost?” Fool.com, 5 March 2002; Joe Sehee,
“Presentation: Eco-Friendly End of Life Rituals,”
Green Burial Council, 2010.
18. Helene Gallis, “The Slow Food Movement,”
from Worldwatch Institute, op. cit. note 1, p. 182.
19. The Meatless Monday Campaign, “The Move-
ment Goes Global,” at www.meatlessmonday.com/
the-movem en t-goes-global; Ma rc Gun ther,
“Sodexo’s Meatless Mondays Give ‘Where’s the
Beef’ a New Meaning,” GreenBiz, 2 May 2011.
20. “What’s Cooking, Uncle Sam?” exhibit at
U.S. National Archives, viewed 16 December 2011;
Erik Assadourian, “Uncle Sam Says Garden…And
Eat Vitamin Donuts” (blog), Transforming Cul-
tures, 17 December 2011.
21. Calculation based on Global Footprint Net-
work, The Ecological Footprint Atlas 2008 (Oak-
land, CA: rev. ed., 16 Dece mber 2008); G.
Ananthapadmanabhan, K. Srinivas, and Vinuta
Gopal, Hiding Behind the Poor (Bangalore: Green-
peace India Society, 2007); Assadourian, op. cit.
note 12.
22. Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, The Spirit
Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do
Better (London: Penguin Group, 2009).
23. U.N. Develo pment Programme, “2011
Human Development Index Covers Record 187
Countries and Territories, Puts Norway at Top,
DR Congo Last,” press release (Copenhagen: 2
November 2011).
24. “U.S. Federal Individual Income Tax Rates
200 WWW.W ORL DWATCH.ORG
Notes STATE OF THE WORLD 2012
History, 1913–2011 (Nominal and Inflation-
Adjusted Brackets),” Tax Foundation, Washing-
ton, DC, 9 September 2011.
25. Steven Greenhouse and Graham Bowley, “Tiny
Tax on Financial Trades Gains Advocates,” New
York Times, 6 December 2011.
26. James Grubel, “Australia Passes Landmark
Carbon Price Laws,” Reuters, 8 November 2011;
Enda Curran and Ray Brindal, “Australia’s Carbon
Tax Clears Final Hurdle,” Wall Street Journal, 8
November 2011; “Australia Makes Green Cuts to
Fund Flood Relief,” Radio Australia, 28 January
2011.
27. Zenith Optimedia, op. cit. note 11; Zoe Gan-
non and Neal Lawson, The Advertising Effect: How
Do We Get the Balance of Advertising Right (Lon-
don: Compass, 2010).
28. Mark Hertsgaard, Hot: Living Through the
Next Fifty Years on Earth (New York: Houghton
Mifflin Harcourt, 2011), pp. 107–27.
29. Ibid.; Jason Samenow, “NOAA: 2011 Sets
Record for Billion Dollar Weather Disasters in the
U.S.,” Washington Post, 7 December 2011; Petra
Löw, “Losses From Natural Disasters Decline in
2009,” Vital Signs Online, 25 March 2010.
30. Anna Coote, Jane Franklin, and Andrew
Simms, 21 Hours: Why a Shorter Working Week Can
Help Us All to Flourish in the 21st Century (London:
New Economics Foundation, 2010).
31. Tim Kasser and Kirk Brown, as cited in Juliet
Schor, Plenitude: The New Economics of True Wealth
(New York: Penguin Press, 2010), pp. 113–14,
and 178; Gary Gardner and Erik Assadourian,
“Rethinking the Good Life,” in Worldwatch Insti-
tute, op. cit. note 9.
32. Juliet Schor, The Overworked American: The
Unexpected Decline of Leisure (New York: Basic
Books, 1993); Netherlands from John de Graff,
“Reducing Work Time as a Path to Sustainability,”
in Worldwatch Institute, op. cit. note 1, pp. 173–77;
“Employers and Unions Brace for a Downturn,”
Der Spiegel, 20 October 2011; Christian Vits and
Jana Randow, “The Price of Saving Jobs in Ger-
many,” Business Week, 29 July 2010; Nicholas Kul-
ish, “Aided by Safety Nets, Europe Resists Stimulus
Push,” New York Times, 26 March 2009.
33. De Graff, op. cit. note 32; Michael Maniates,
“Struggling with Sacrifice: Take Back Your Time and
Right2Vacation.org,” in Maniates and Meyer, op.
cit. note 12, pp. 293–312; Sweden from Organi-
sation for Economic Co-operation and Develop-
ment, “PF2.1: Key Characteristics of Parental Leave
Systems,” 1 5 April 2011, at www.oecd .org/
dataoecd/45/26/37864482.pdf, pp. 6 and 14.
Note: Sweden has a ceiling of 43,070 euros for
parental leave.
34. Juliet Schor, The Overspent American: Why
We Want What We Don’t Need (New York: Harper
Perennial, 1999); Schor, op. cit. note 32; Schor, op.
cit. note 31.
35. Rakesh Kochhar and D’Vera Cohn, Fighting
Poverty in a Bad Economy, Americans Move in with
Relatives (Washington, DC: Pew Research Center,
2011); Catherine Rampell, “As New Graduates
Return to Nest, Economy Also Feels the Pain,”
New York Times, 16 November 2011.
36. Jessica Silver-Greenberg, “When Kids Come
Back Home, Wall Street Journal, 26 November
2011.
37. Beth Snyder Bulik, “Boom in Multigenera-
tional Households Has Wide Implications for Ad
Industry,” Advertising Age, 23 August 2010.
38. “What’s Cooking, Uncle Sam?” op cit. note
20; Peter Rosset and Medea Benjamin, Two Steps
Backward, One Step Forward: Cuba’s Nationwide
Experiment with Organic Agriculture (San Fran-
cisco: Global Exchange, 1993); The Community
Solution, The Power of Community: How Cuba Sur-
vived Peak Oil (Yellow Springs, OH: 2006); Mario
Gonzalez Novo and Catherine Murphy, “Urban
Agriculture in the City of Havana: A Popular
Response to a Crisis,” in N. Bakker et al., eds.,
Growing Cities Growing Food: Urban Agriculture on
the Policy Agenda: A Reader on Urban Agriculture
(German Foundation for International Develop-
ment, 2001), pp. 329–47.
SUSTAINABLEPROSPERITY.ORG 201
SUSTAINABLE PROSPERITY Notes
39. Juliet Schor, “Exit Ramp to Sustainability:
Building a Small-scale, Low-footprint, High-knowl-
edge Economy,” presentation at SCORAI work-
shop, Princeton, NJ, 16 April 2011; Cecile Andrews
and Wanda Urbanska, “Inspiring People to See
Less Is More,” in Worldwatch Institute, op. cit.
note 1, pp. 178–84; Shareable.net: Sharing By
Design, at shareable.net; Gardner and Assadourian,
op. cit. note 31.
40. Nicole Winfield, “Pope Laments Christmas
Consumerism, Urges People to Look Beyond
‘Superficial Glitter,’” Huffington Post, 24 Decem-
ber 2011; Gary Gardner, “Engaging Religions to
Shape Worldviews,” in Worldwatch Institute, op. cit.
note 1, pp. 23–29; Gary Gardner, “Ritual and
Taboo as Ecological Guardians,” in Worldwatch
Institute, op. cit. note 1, pp. 30–35; St. Francis
Pledge from Catholic Climate Covenant, at catholic-
climatecovenant.org.
41. Chuck Collins, presentation on Common
Security Clubs, Washington, DC, 18 January 2011;
Common Security Clubs website, at localcircles
.org.
42. Transition Network website, at www.trans
itionnetwork.org/initiatives/map; Andrews and
Urbanska, op. cit. note 39; Shaftesbury Transition
Town website, at www.transitiontownshaftes
bury.org.uk.
43. David Orr, “The Oberlin Project: What Do We
Stand for Now?” Oberlin Alumni Magazine, fall
2011.
44. Erik Assadourian, “Sustainable Communities
Become More Popular,” Vital Signs 2007–2008
(New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2007),
pp. 104–05; Jonathan Dawson, “Ecovillages and the
Transformation of Values,” in Worldwatch Institute,
op. cit. note 1, pp. 185–90.
45. Jennifer Block, Pushed: The Painful Truth
About Childbirth and Modern Maternity Care
(Philadelphia: De Capo Press, 2007); Steven Rein-
berg, “C-section Rate in U.S. Climbs to All-Time
High,” USA Today, 22 July 2011; Jennifer Block,
“Midwife Q&A: Are We Having Babies All
Wrong?” Time, 25 May 2011; A. Mark Durand,
“The Safety of Home Birth: The Farm Study,”
American Journal of Public Health, March 1992,
pp. 450–52.
46. Kevin Green and Erik Assadourian, “Making
Social Welfare Programs Sustainable,” in World-
watch Institute, op. cit. note 1, p. 141; Francesco
di Iacovo, “Social Farming: Dealing with Com-
munities Rebuilding Local Economy,” presenta-
tion at Rural Futures Conference, University of
Plymouth, U.K., 1–4 April 2008.
47. Rachel Dona di o, “Wi th Work Sc ar ce i n
Athens, Greeks Go Back to the Land,” New York
Times, 8 January 2012.
48. Richard E. White an d Gloria Eugenia
González Mariño, “Las Gaviotas: Sustainability in
the Tropics,” World Watch Magazine, May/June
2007, pp. 18–23; Friends of Gaviotas website, at
www.friendsofgaviotas.org.
49. Jackson, op. cit. note 1, p. 185.
50. Assadourian, op. cit. note 12, p. 12.
51. New Economics Foundation, The Impossible
Hamster, Script: Andrew Simms, Animators: Leo
Murray and Thomas Bristow, London, 2010.
52. Latouche, “Growing a Degrowth Movement,
op. cit. note 1 ; see also Degrowthpedia, at
degrowthpedia.org.
53. Kick It Over! website, at www.kickitover.org;
Kick It Over Manifesto, at kickitover.org/sites/
default/files/downloads/adb_poster_manifesto.pdf;
Michael C. George, “Group Endorses Walk Out in
Economics 10,” Harvard Crimson, 2 November
2011; “An Open Letter to Greg Mankiw,Harvard
Political Review, 2 November 2011; Net Impact
from Erik Assadourian, “Maximizing the Value of
Professional Schools,” in Worldwatch Institute, op.
cit. note 1, p. 78; Net Impact website, at netim-
pact.org.
54. Worldwatch Institute, “Oil Discovered on the
Island of Catan,” press release (Washington, DC: 19
October 2011); rules of Catan Scenarios: Oil Springs
at www.oilsprings.catan.com.
Moving Toward
SuSTainable
ProSPeriTy
The worldwaTch inSTiTuTe
State of the World 2012
STaTe of The world 2012
SCIENCE | ENVIRONMENT
2012
STaTe of The world
Moving Toward
Sustainable Prosperity
In 1992, governments at the Rio Earth Summit made a historic commitment to sustainable
development—an economic system that promotes the health of both people and ecosystems. Twenty
years and several summits later, human civilization has never been closer to ecological collapse, one
third of humanity lives in poverty, and another 2 billion people are projected to join the human race over
the next 40 years. How will we move toward sustainable prosperity equitably shared among all even
as our population grows, our cities strain to accommodate more and more people, and our ecological
systems decline?
To promote discussion around this vital topic at the Rio+20 U.N. Conference and beyond, State of
the World 2012: Moving Toward Sustainable Prosperity showcases innovative projects, creative policies,
and fresh approaches that are advancing sustainable development in the twenty-first century. In
articles from experts around the world, this report presents a comprehensive look at current trends in
global economics and sustainability, a policy toolbox of clear solutions to some of our most pressing
environmental and human challenges, and a path for reforming economic institutions to promote both
ecological health and prosperity.
Moving Toward Sustainable Prosperity is the latest publication in the Worldwatch Institute’s flagship State
of the World series, which remains the most recognized and authoritative resource for research and policy
solutions on critical global issues. State of the World 2012 builds on three decades of experience to offer
a clear, pragmatic look at the current state of global ecological systems and the economic forces that are
reshaping them—and how we can craft more-sustainable and equitable economies in the future.
“Top-ranked annual book on sustainable development.”
—GlobeScan survey of sustainability experts
“The most comprehensive, up-to-date, and accessible
summaries . . . on the global environment.”
—E. O. Wilson, Pulitzer Prize winner
Washington | Covelo | London
www.islandpress.org
All Island Press books are printed on recycled, acid-free paper.
Cover design by Lyle Rosbotham
Cover illustration by Wesley Bedrosian, wesleybedrosian.com
2012
Moving Toward
Sustainable Prosperity
... There is a theory of sustainability to link the educational strategy within the social matter and inclusive ecology [14][15][16][17]. It is important to highlight educational participation in social ecology, according to Assadourian's study [18][19][20] on the original model that corresponds to set theory (Venn diagram) in which one set contains the education for sustainability group, the other set contains to the education for resilience group, and from both sets the overlapping area of education for the Earth is obtained, equivalent to eco-social education; On the other hand, the modernized model that corresponds to the double group: one set contains the environmental education group, and the other set contains the inclusive education group, and both sets transform the intersection of environmental education for inclusive sustainability (Figure 1). ...
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... Barrows (1995, p. 107) hypothesizes that "the attraction children have for fairy tales set in nature and populated with animal characters may be explained by children's instinctually based feelings of continuity with the natural world." The garden is symbolic of a desired and holistic community-for both the local and the global, economically and environmentally-in striving for a sustainable world (Assadourian, 2012(Assadourian, , 2017Cardinale et al., 2012;Buxton and Butt, 2020). This links students' environmental connection to place to their economic needs in particular access to organic food. ...
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The wholistic nature of gardening is an approach to learning that provides opportunities to place science education in a context that also values other ways of knowing and draws on the cognitive, the affective and the spiritual—knowing, feeling, connecting. This paper offers a case study of teaching gardening to primary students at The Old School Community Garden (TOSCG), in the Adelaide Hills, South Australia. As experienced science educators, we find that engaging young people in gardening provides them with the opportunity to see the world as a whole, learn science concepts while also addressing local issues such as organic food production. Our focus in this project is the use of the garden as a learning place for Year 1 students (aged 6–7) working with Year 4 students (aged 9–10). We also argue that nature teaching is part of the answer to liveable futures in this time of climate change, pandemics, and the possible crossing of other Earth boundaries. These challenges require educators to focus on futures thinking and transdisciplinary approaches in order to develop the dispositions needed to live in the present with a well-formed idea of where we want to go. Learning the science of gardening is clearly a central aspect—soil science, biological science, ecosystem management and a sustainable food supply.
... This certainly makes it imperative without having high and high economic growth and consumption ambitions. (Assadourian, 2012) In this case, Jean Baudrillard sharply criticized the ideology of growth or the ideology of growth. He revealed how the ideology of growth will only give birth to two possibilities as well as facts on the ground, namely poverty, and prosperity. ...
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Among the solutions in dealing with the problems of this country is to regenerate the spirit of Pancasila. It is the source of the Indonesian entity as a State. Pancasila also has a function as an ideology, principles and philosophy of the nation, as well as a basic principal representation for an independent country. Therefore, the revitalization of Pancasila should be the main objective of a series of government discourses, so that the values contained in it are able to permeate every society of this country. The Founding Fathers believed that Pancasila was not only able to unite the citizen, but also to alleviate them from the shackles of social inequality, poverty, hunger, and rampant corrupt practices. In this paper, we describe a series of discourses about the economy that is unique to this country, namely the Pancasila Economy. It is believed to be able to free the shackles of these downturns, even without harming other parties, as happened in the economic concept of capitalist, socialist, and liberal. The findings of this paper are that in fact, Pancasila Economy is part of the heterodox economic approach, which contains the concept of a socialist and capitalist economy. Even so, Pancasila Economics does not mean adopting the two economic concepts, but rather a hybrid form and has been modified in line with the values contained in the principles of Pancasila.
... Degrowth became a "political, economic, and social movement based on ecological economics, anti-consumerist and anti-capitalist ideas" [65]. It is also considered an "essential economic strategy responding to the limits-to-growth dilemma" [66]. Nine international degrowth conferences have been organized, so far-the initial one in Paris (2008 with 140 participants), the 1st one in Barcelona (2012) and the 8th one in The Hague (2021, the 6th one with 600 participants). ...
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This review paper examines the past, present, and future of sustainable consumption and production (SCP). The history of the Sustainable Development Goal No. 12 (i.e., to ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns) is presented and analyzed. A definition of the sustainable consumption is given and the role of education is explained. The present status and existing trends of SCP are introduced by analyzing unsustainable behavior and the existing dilemma, namely sustainable growth or degrowth. A very broad range of methods is used for measuring and evaluating SCP within sustainable development. To forecast the future of SCP, important trends are presented. The future development of SCP will follow several megatrends and it will require reduced personal and collective consumption (degrowth). Energy usage in buildings, renewable energy sources, and energy storage will be important in that respect. Transportation emissions will continue to be lowered. Waste, especially food waste, shall be reduced, and consumer products shall become more durable. All waste must be collected and separated to be reused. SPC is elaborated in view of the two approaches—Industry 4.0 (smart factory), and the “Sixth Wave” evolution. Net-zero greenhouse gas emissions, resource efficiency, and zero waste will be at the forefront of future activities. A circular economy requires extension of product lifetimes, and the reuse and recycling of products. Reducing emissions, pollution and specific energy, water, and raw material usage (especially critical raw materials), as well as the role of digitalization, will be important.
... The ubiquitous drive toward growth-based economics is responsible for the cycle of overconsumption and overproduction which has resulted in irreversible impacts leading to biodiversity loss (Salleh, 2010) and the contemporary climate emergency (Ripple et al., 2019). A concentration on economic growth and acquisition of corporate wealth has surpassed socio-cultural and environmental interests in communities, and biocultural conservation (Assadourian, 2012;Cavaliere, 2017a). Specifically, Hall's (2019) Unfortunately, as Higgins-Desbiolles (2018) points out, tourism is obsessed with growth which is incongruent with sustainability goals. ...
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Abstract The argument against green growth as a sole strategy for sustainable development has led to a passionate call for global degrowth as the only way to save the planet. Degrowth is a radical economic theory born in the 1970s, which requires societies to abandon the idea that the percentage change in gross domestic product is an accurate indicator of progress, and instead learn to live better while producing less. They argued that the only sustainable growth is degrowth. Degrowth is an ecological necessity, and possibly inevitable; but under what conceivable socio-political conditions could such impressive changes happen? This study investigates the issue of degrowth in the Delta oil-rich state of Nigeria using primary sources of data by employing online surveys to send a questionnaire to respondents to gather information on the need and perception of a degrowth economy. The findings are negative and sceptical contrary to the degrowth policies of being an effective means of fighting against climate breakdown and biodiversity loss and securing human needs and well-being. Leading researchers in ecological economics have published a strategic policy framework to ensure a just transition to a degrowth economy globally. Keywords: Growth Economy, Degrowth, Decoupling, Sustainable Development, and Environmental well-being.
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A young visionary named Paolo Lugari set out to build a sustainable village on los llanos, Colombia in the early 1970s. Supported by ingenious renewable energy technologies, hydroponic farming techniques and a regenerating forest, Las Gaviotas has survived and flourished for 30 years. One of the notable project undertaken in the 1980s was the design and construction of a self-sufficient rural hospital facility. It featured double ventilation systems and the kitchen featured solar cooking. Beginning in the 1980s, experiments with the areas acidic soil of the llanos took root. When inoculated with a specific mycorrhizal root fungus, the Caribbean pine could grow in the poor soil of the savanna. By the 1990s, the Caribbean pine produces abundant resin. The forest saw biodiversity in both plants and animals. The initial achievement of viable forest growth led to a massive tree-planting effort. Today, the forest is has grown to 8,000 hectares. Besides generating resin products, the forest yielded a serendipitous bonus: systematically cooler temperatures over the forested land have caused a local increase in rainfall. Moreover, the increasingly rich biomass in the soil provides more effective filtering. Wells under the forest now yield drinking water of the highest purity, which is bottled along with tropical fruit juices in the sterile facilities of the converted hospital.
Book
This book, based on thirty years' research, goes an important stage beyond either of these ideas: it demonstrates that more unequal societies are bad for almost everyone within them---the well-off as well as the poor. The remarkable data the book lays out and the measures It uses are like a spirit level which we can hold up to compare the conditions of different societies. The differences revealed, even between rich market democracies, are striking. Almost every modern social and environmental problem---ill-health, lack of community life, violence, drugs, obesity, mental illness, long working hours, big prison populations---is more likely to occur in a less equal society. The Spirit Level goes to the heart of the apparent contradiction between the material success and social failings of many modern societies, but it does not simply provide a key to diagnosing our ills. It tells us how to shift the balance from self-interested 'consumerism' to a friendlier and more collaborative society. It shows a way out of the social and environmental problems which beset us and opens up a major new approach to improving the real quality of life, not just for the poor but for everyone. It is, in its conclusion, an optimistic book, which should revitalize politics and provide a new way of thinking about how we organize human communities. As the authors write, 'It falls to our generation to make one of the biggest transformations in human history. The role of this book is to point out that greater equality is the material foundation on which better social relations are built.' (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)(jacket)