Degrowing the Economy

Some people feel like our economy is broken.

It’s expensive to eat, to drive, to put a roof over your head. Wages are stagnant and people work jobs that don’t add value to the world or bring meaning to their lives. The gap widens between the rich and poor, the climate crisis intensifies, and ecosystems are destroyed in the pursuit of more profit and cheaper consumer goods.

“The economy” is a hot-button political issue. But what if we’re thinking about it the wrong way?

At its core, an economy is a way to use available resources to meet human needs. Through well-designed economies, we can meet our physical needs and pursue safety, health, comfort and satisfaction.

In other words, the purpose of an economy should be to make people’s lives better.

But we have to ask ourselves: What counts as “better?” And what if our economic system actually makes things worse?

In the West we’ve created a high level of material abundance, at least for some. Our ancestors would be astonished at how much “stuff” the average Canadian has, while a small minority enjoy extreme wealth and consumption.

With this material abundance comes loss of biodiversity, destruction of natural resources, pollution, climate change, violence, and exploitation of our fellow humans. We’re watching the ruin of our life-support systems in real time; we know this can’t be sustained; yet we seem unable to stop it. Instead of a tool that serves us, our economy is a machine that consumes our labour, our health—even our lives—all in the service of “MORE.”

Since the mid-20th century, the primary measure of a country’s economy has been the Gross Domestic Product, or GDP - the monetary value of the goods and services produced and sold within that country during a given period of time.

The GDP doesn’t tell us whether that value was equitably distributed or concentrated in the hands of a few. It doesn’t tell us the human or environmental cost of the goods and services produced. 

The costly efforts to clean up an oil spill are economic activity, and therefore increase the GDP. When food costs rise and people take second or third jobs to make ends meet, the economy grows. Predatory lending that forces people further into poverty? The line on the graph goes up, the economy grows. And growth is good…right? 

We’ve been told that when the economy “grows” we all prosper, and if it shrinks we’ll lose everything. So the GDP must keep accelerating at all costs. 

We’re running out of time to answer the question that we’ve been avoiding: if economic growth is the only way to provide for our needs, what happens when we run up against the hard limits of Earth’s resources?

After all, infinite growth is not possible on a finite planet.

Proponents of Green Growth and Sustainable Development want to “decouple” economic growth from environmental destruction so that we can grow the economy while reducing our environmental impact. So far, we haven’t figured out how to do that.

So, despite decades of assurances that growth is the answer, we’re still destroying the planet that sustains us while failing to meet human needs. The United Nations projects that by 2030, 575 million people will still live in extreme poverty. Even in relatively wealthy parts of the world, necessities such as food and housing seem increasingly out of reach.

It’s time to shift our focus towards strategies that allow us to live healthy, happy, meaningful lives in a connected and equitable global society, while living within reasonable planetary limits.

That’s why a growing movement of economists, academics and activists has turned to ideas such as post-growth and degrowth. This movement argues that we need to release our grip on the idea of growth for growth’s own sake.

Instead, it calls for a planned, intentional, and democratic transition from a growth-oriented economy to a just, sustainable and resilient one, focused on meeting human needs within ecological limits. It overlaps with economist Kate Raworth’s “Doughnut Economy,” which aims to keep economic activity between the minimum needed to support a decent life for all people, and the maximum that the environment can support.

Degrowth is a philosophical, economic and policy approach that presents a path towards an economy that prioritizes human well-being over the profits of a few. It’s not a call for austerity or voluntary poverty, or for a return to pre-industrial standards of living. Nor is it a sweeping reduction in all consumption.

Rather, Degrowth calls for targeted reductions in the most destructive and excessive forms of consumption, combined with a social safety net which ensures that everyone has access to essential goods and services. 

Degrowth initiatives are appearing around the world. They include policies and practices such as:

• Regulation of, and withdrawal of investment or subsidies from, unsustainable sectors

• Investments in sustainable products and services (e.g. public and active transportation, regenerative agriculture, social services, production of durable and repairable products)

• Universal Basic Income

• Alternative measures of well-being and progress (e.g. Gross National Happiness, Doughnut Economics)

• Regulation or prohibition of practices such as planned obsolescence, and making manufacturers responsible for the entire life cycle of their products 

• Redistribution of resources from destructive and exploitative uses to sustainable and equitable ones

• Library economies, in which certain resources are owned and shared by the community (e.g. Ottawa Tool Library)

• Recognition of Indigenous sovereignty over their lands and resources

• Local initiatives such as community gardens, gift economies, and mutual aid networks

It’s a big project - and that’s why we need to start now.

The Snails Collective is a grassroots group based in Ottawa, on the unceded, unsurrendered ancestral territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabe nation. As a local circle of the Degrowth Collective, the Snails Collective advocates for policies that support degrowth and community alternatives to growth-based economic systems. They take part in community-based actions, and run a monthly media discussion group. Their Facebook group is open to interested members of the community.