"Living better without economic growth is possible"
14/01/2015
The book includes the opinions of leading world experts in this current of thought – economists, sociologists, political scientists, etc. - who expose the limitations of economic growth and offer social and political alternatives to reach specific proposals of degrowth at local, national and global levels.
What do you propose as scholars and defenders of degrowth?
We propose shaking off the obsession of economic growth, which benefits few and ruins the majority of people. As an alternative, we must drive for public policies and lifestyles which contribute to a good life, social justice and ecological sustainability. Growth has failed to achieve these objectives. Research demonstrates that it is not connected to the wellbeing of people and we also believe that there can be prosperity without growth.
Why did you choose the term "degrowth"?
Nowadays, in which many intellectuals, politicians and economists tell us that we cannot question anything they say to be essential, degrowth is a provocative term which opens the debate on the false consensus that we need economic growth.
The concept doesn't necessarily have to be understood literally. With it we defend the hypothesis that it is possible to live better leading simpler lives in community, through a different type of society and economy, focused on the redistribution of resources, the sustainability of life and the environment and a true democracy.
Our proposal is not to reduce GDP, because there is nothing worse than a society which aims to achieve growth without it. Rather, we want to generate new questions and find alternatives to today's society, based on a capitalist economic system which expects to continue growing forever.
We think growth is more of the same thing and recession is less of the same thing; that is why with degrowth we are trying to create a different society.
Some see degrowth as a type of utopia...
The true utopia, in the sense of a lack of realism, is to think that we can go on with an infinite economic growth in a finite world. We have verified that growth has a very elevated cost which affects the basic pillars of our lives. Not only is it impossible, it is neither necessary nor desirable. This was already mentioned in 1977 by André Gorz, founder of political ecology and the first to use the word degrowth: "lack of realism consists in imagining that economic growth can still bring about increased human welfare". And now is the time to listen to him.
There are others who relate it to less economic wealth or wellbeing.
Spain is a mature economy and it is not likely that it will grow some 3-4% as it did before. In fact, the real estate bubble demonstrates that in order to grow there is the need to go into debt. However, we would have to grow to pay off the debt, which turns out to be a perverse logic.
The main question here is not how to generate more richness, but how to distribute what we already have. In fact, Spain is the OECD country in which economic inequalities have risen the most since the crisis began. This tendency has to be reversed. One of our priorities, for example, is to fight unemployment with measures such as shorter shifts, distribution of work and a basic income.
How can governments be convinced that there is no need to continue growing?
Governments are changed through elections. The political effervescence existing in Spain at the moment is promising. There are political parties which have talked about degrowth for some time now and criticise the obsession with economic growth. And there is an increasing amount of people who speak out, either individually or collectively, against unlimited growth and its consequences.
There are also researchers and academics studying and creating alternatives. Our group for example, called Research & Degrowth, has proposed several public policies which would lead to a prosperity without growth and which would facilitate the transition towards a degrowth. One of them is to eliminate GDP as an indicator of economic progress, establish environmental limits, implement a basic and a maximum income, restructure and eliminate part of the debt, optimise the use of available housing, transform the tax system in the long term and eliminate aids to contaminating activities and destine them to other more sustainable ones.
We include all these proposals in the book, and all were made by leading experts in the field of degrowth. With the book, we wish to contribute to generating a social debate and encourage public and private actors to work towards a society which is economically more just, more supporting and respectful with the environment.
How important is civil society in implementing these proposals?
Civil society plays a key role, but it is important to work on different strategies which complement each other. We need research, activism, experimentation and innovation, as well as parliamentary politics and trade unions.
We also believe that, in addition to civil society, we need to get the uncivil society involved. In other words, all those who question society's conventional norms and are forms of resistance which reject the fundamentals of today's market economies.
What are the researchers at ICTA who promote degrowth working on?
We are part of the Research & Degrowth group, as I mentioned earlier. R&D is an academic association dedicated to studying and disseminating information on degrowth. In addition to research and publishing academic and popularisation articles, we collaborate with other to organise international conferences on degrowth every two years (Paris 2008, Barcelona 2010, Venice 2012, Leipzig 2014). In 2014, we also organised a summer school which turned out to be very successful, with almost one hundred students from different countries participating.
In general, R&D strives to unite scientists, civil society, professionals and activists to think, imagine, discuss and devise sustainable degrowth proposals.