Post-growth – P2P Foundation

The EU needs a stability and wellbeing pact, not more growth

The Rules — Fri, 21 Sep 2018 08:00:00 +0000

This week, scientists, politicians, and policymakers are gathering in Brussels for a landmark conference. The aim of this event, organised by members of the European parliament from five different political groups, alongside trade unions and NGOs, is to explore possibilities for a “post-growth economy” in Europe.

For the past seven decades, GDP growth has stood as the primary economic objective of European nations. But as our economies have grown, so has our negative impact on the environment. We are now exceeding the safe operating space for humanity on this planet, and there is no sign that economic activity is being decoupled from resource use or pollution at anything like the scale required. Today, solving social problems within European nations does not require more growth. It requires a fairer distribution of the income and wealth that we already have.

Growth is also becoming harder to achieve due to declining productivity gains, market saturation, and ecological degradation. If current trends continue, there may be no growth at all in Europe within a decade. Right now the response is to try to fuel growth by issuing more debt, shredding environmental regulations, extending working hours, and cutting social protections. This aggressive pursuit of growth at all costs divides society, creates economic instability, and undermines democracy.

Those in power have not been willing to engage with these issues, at least not until now. The European commission’s Beyond GDP project became GDP and Beyond. The official mantra remains growth — redressed as “sustainable”, “green”, or “inclusive” – but first and foremost, growth. Even the new UN sustainable development goals include the pursuit of economic growth as a policy goal for all countries, despite the fundamental contradiction between growth and sustainability.

The good news is that within civil society and academia, a post-growth movement has been emerging. It goes by different names in different places: décroissance, Postwachstum, steady-state or doughnut economics, prosperity without growth, to name a few. Since 2008, regular degrowth conferences have gathered thousands of participants. A new global initiative, the Wellbeing Economies Alliance (or WE-All), is making connections between these movements, while a European research network has been developing new “ecological macroeconomic models”. Such work suggests that it’s possible to improve quality of life, restore the living world, reduce inequality, and provide meaningful jobs – all without the need for economic growth, provided we enact policies to overcome our current growth dependence.

Some of the changes that have been proposed include limits on resource use, progressive taxation to stem the tide of rising inequality, and a gradual reduction in working time. Resource use could be curbed by introducing a carbon tax, and the revenue could be returned as a dividend for everyone or used to finance social programmes. Introducing both a basic and a maximum income would reduce inequality further, while helping to redistribute care work and reducing the power imbalances that undermine democracy. New technologies could be used to reduce working time and improve quality of life, instead of being used to lay off masses of workers and increase the profits of the privileged few.

Given the risks at stake, it would be irresponsible for politicians and policymakers not to explore possibilities for a post-growth future. The conference happening in Brussels is a promising start, but much stronger commitments are needed. As a group of concerned social and natural scientists representing all Europe, we call on the European Union, its institutions, and member states to:

1. Constitute a special commission on post-growth futures in the EU parliament. This commission should actively debate the future of growth, devise policy alternatives for post-growth futures, and reconsider the pursuit of growth as an overarching policy goal.

2. Incorporate alternative indicators into the macroeconomic framework of the EU and its member states. Economic policies should be evaluated in terms of their impact on human wellbeing, resource use, inequality, and the provision of decent work. These indicators should be given higher priority than GDP in decision-making.

3. Turn the stability and growth pact (SGP) into a stability and wellbeing pact. The SGP is a set of rules aimed at limiting government deficits and national debt. It should be revised to ensure member states meet the basic needs of their citizens, while reducing resource use and waste emissions to a sustainable level.

4. Establish a ministry for economic transition in each member state. A new economy that focuses directly on human and ecological wellbeing could offer a much better future than one that is structurally dependent on economic growth.

Dr Dan O’Neill, Associate Professor, University of Leeds, UK
Dr Federico Demaria, Researcher, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain
Dr Giorgos Kallis, Professor, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain
Dr Kate Raworth, Author of ‘Doughnut Economics’, UK
Dr Tim Jackson, Professor, University of Surrey, UK
Dr Jason Hickel, Lecturer, Goldsmiths, University of London, UK
Dr Lorenzo Fioramonti, Professor, University of Pretoria, South Africa
Dr Marta Conde, President of Research & Degrowth, Spain
Dr Kevin Anderson, Deputy Director, Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, UK
Dr Steve Keen, Professor, Kingston University, UK
Dr Saskia Sassen, Professor of Sociology, Columbia University, USA
Dr Ann Pettifor, Director, Policy Research in Macroeconomics (PRIME), UK
Dr Serge Latouche, Université Paris Sud, France
Dr Kate Pickett, Professor, University of York, UK
Dr Susan George, President of the Transnational Institute-TNI, Netherlands
Dr Joan Martinez Alier, Professor, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Catalonia
Dr David Graeber, Professor, London School of Economics, UK
Dr Juan Carlos Monedero Fernández, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain
Dr Dominique Méda, Professor, University Paris Dauphine, France
Dr Lourdes Beneria, Professor Emerita, Cornell University, USA
Dr Inge Røpke, Professor, Aalborg University, Denmark
Dr Niko Paech, Professor, University of Siegen, Germany
Dr Jean Gadrey, Professor, University of Lille, France
Dr Nadia Johanisova, Lecturer, Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic
Dr Wolfgang Sachs, Research Director Emeritus, Wuppertal Institut, Germany
Dr Stefania Barca, Senior Researcher, Centre for Social Studies, University of Coimbra, Portugal
Dr Gilbert Rist, Emeritus Professor, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Switzerland
Dr György Pataki, Professor, Corvinus University of Budapest, Hungary
Dr Simone D’Alessandro, Professor, University of Pisa, Italy
Dr Ian Gough, Visiting Professor, London School of Economics, UK
Dr Iñigo Capellán-Pérez, Researcher, University of Valladolid, Spain
Dr Amaia Pérez Orozco, Researcher, Colectiva XXK, Spain
Dr Max Koch, Professor, Lund University, Sweden
Dr Fabrice Flipo, Professor, Institut Mines Télécom-BS et LCSP Paris 7 Diderot, France
Dr Matthias Schmelzer, Researcher, University of Jena and Konzeptwerk Neue Ökonomie, Germany
Dr Óscar Carpintero, Associate Professor, University of Valladolid, Spain
Dr Hubert Buch-Hansen, Associate Professor, Copenhagen Business School, Denmark
Dr Christos Zografos, Pompeu Fabra University, Spain
Dr Tereza Stöckelová, Associate Professor, Institute of Sociology of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Czech Republic
Dr Alf Hornborg, Professor, Lund University, Sweden
Dr Eric Clark, Professor, Lund University, Sweden
Dr Miklós Antal, Researcher, University of Leeds, UK
Dr Jordi Roca Jusmet, Professor, Universitat de Barcelona, Spain
Dr Philippe Defeyt, Chairman, Institute for Sustainable Development, Belgium
Dr Erik Swyngedouw, Professor, University of Manchester, UK
Dr Christian Kerschner, Assistant Professor, Modul University Vienna, Austria
Dr Agata Hummel, Assistant Professor, University of Adam Mickiewicz, Poland
Dr Frank Moulaert, Emeritus Professor, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium
Dr Frank Adler, Researcher, Brandenburg-Berlin Institute for Social Scientific Research, Germany
Dr Janne I. Hukkinen, Professor, University of Helsinki, Finland
Dr Jorge Riechmann, Professor, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain
Samuel Martín-Sosa Rodríguez, Responsable de Internacional, Ecologistas en Acción, Spain
Dr John Barry, Professor, Queen’s University Belfast, Northern Ireland
Dr Linda Nierling, Senior Scientist, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany
Dr Ines Omann, Senior Researcher, Austrian Foundation for Development Research, Austria
Dr Hug March, Associate Professor, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, Spain
Dr Jakub Kronenberg, Associate Professor, University of Lodz, Poland
Yayo Herrero, Miembro del Foro de Transiciones, Spain
Dr Isabelle Anguelovski, Professor, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain
Dr François Schneider, Researcher, Research & Degrowth, France
Dr Vasilis Kostakis, Senior Researcher, Tallinn University of Technology, Estonia
Dr Enric Tello, Professor, University of Barcelona, Spain
Dr Andrew Sayer, Professor, Lancaster University, UK
Dr Kate Soper, Emerita Professor, London Metropolitan University, UK
Dr Klaus Hubacek, Professor, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, Austria
Dr Brent Bleys, Assistant Professor, Ghent University, Belgium
Dr Jill Jäger, Independent Scholar, Vienna, Austria
Dr Mauro Gallegati, Professor, Università Politecnica delle Marche, Italy
Dr Peadar Kirby, Professor Emeritus, University of Limerick, Ireland
Dr Inés Marco, Researcher, University of Barcelona, Spain
Dr Ivan Murray Mas, Assistant Lecturer, Universitat de les Illes Balears, Spain
Dr Alexandros Kioupkiolis, Assistant Professor, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece
Dr Aurore Lalucq, Co-Director, Veblen Institute, France
Dr Gaël Plumecocq, Researcher, French National Institute for Agricultural Research (INRA), France
Dr David Soto Fernández, Associate Professor, Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Spain
Dr Christian Kimmich, Researcher, Masaryk University Brno, Czech Republic
Dr Giacomo D’Alisa, Researcher, Centre for Social Studies, University of Coimbra, Portugal
Dr Seth Schindler, Senior Lecturer, University of Manchester, UK
Dr Philippe Roman, Researcher, ICHEC Brussels Management School, Belgium
Dr Lorenzo Pellegrini, Associate Professor, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Netherlands
Dr Erik Gómez-Baggethun, Professor, Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Norway
Dr Tommaso Luzzati, Assistant Professor, University of Pisa, Italy
Dr Christoph Gran, ZOE Institute for Future Fit Economies, Germany
Dr Tor A. Benjaminsen, Professor, Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Norway
Dr Barry McMullin, Professor, Dublin City University, Ireland
Dr Edwin Zaccai, Professor, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium
Dr Jens Friis Lund, Professor, University of Copenhagen, Denmark
Dr Pierre Ozer, Researcher, Université de Liège, Belgium
Dr Louison Cahen-Fourot, Researcher, Institute for Ecological Economics, Wirtschaftsuniversität Vienna, Austria
Dr Tommaso Rondinella, Researcher, Italian National Institute of Statistics, Italy
Dr Julia Steinberger, Associate Professor, University of Leeds, UK
Dr Andrew Fanning, Marie Curie Research Fellow, University of Leeds, UK
Jose Luis Fdez Casadevante Kois, Miembro del Foro Transiciones, Spain
Dr Seema Arora-Jonsson, Professor, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Sweden
Dr Astrid Agenjo Calderón, Lecturer, Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Spain
Dr Tom Bauler, Professor, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium
Dr Gregers Andersen, Independent Researcher, Denmark
Dr Peter Söderbaum, Professor Emeritus, Mälardalen University, Sweden
Dr Lourenzo Fernandez Priero, Professor, Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, Spain
Dr John R Porter, Emeritus Professor, University of Copenhagen, Denmark
Dr François Thoreau, Senior Researcher, University of Liege, France
Mariagiulia Costanzo Talarico, Researcher, Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Spain
Dr Maria Nikolaidi, Senior Lecturer, University of Greenwich, UK
Dr Ekaterina Chertkovskaya, Lecturer, Lund University, Sweden
Dr Stefan Gaarsmand Jacobsen, Assistant Professor, University of Roskilde, Denmark
Dimitar Sabev, Researcher, University of National and World Economy, Bulgaria
Dr Mladen Domazet, Research Director, Institute for Political Ecology, Croatia
Dr Hans Diefenbacher, Professor, University of Heidelberg, Germany
Dr Marco Armiero, Director of the Environmental Humanities Laboratory, Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden
Dr Irene Ring, Professor, Technische Universität Dresden, Germany
Dr Christine Bauhardt, Professor, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany
Dr Dominique Bourg, Professor, University of Lausanne, Switzerland
Dr Tomas Ryska, Lecturer, University of Economics, Czech Republic
Dr Filka Sekulova, Researcher, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain
Dr Andrej Lukšič, Associate Professor, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia
Dr Adrian Smith, Professor, University of Sussex, UK
Dr Serenella Iovino, Professor, Università di Torino, Italy
Dr Helga Kromp-Kolb, Professor, University of Renewable Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna, Austria
Dr Roberto De Vogli, Associate Professor, University of Padova, Italy
Dr Danijela Dolenec, Assistant Professor, University of Zagreb, Croatia
Dr Alexandra Köves, Senior Lecturer, Corvinus University of Budapest, Hungary
Dr Antoine Bailleux, Professor, Université Saint-Louis – Bruxelles, Belgium
Dr Christof Mauch, Director, Rachel Carson Centre for Environment and Society, Germany
Ajda Pistotnik, Independent Researcher, EnaBanda, Slovenia
Dr Branko Ančić, Researcher, Institute for Social Research for Social Research in Zagreb, Croatia
Dr Marija Brajdic Vukovic, Assistant Professor, University of Zagreb, Croatia
Dr Manuel González de Molina, Professor, Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Spain
Dr Kye Askins, Reader, University of Glasgow, UK
Dr Carlos de Castro Carranza, Profesor Titular de Física Aplicada, Universidad de Valladolid, Spain
Dr Annika Pissin, Researcher, Lund University, Sweden
Dr Eva Fraňková, Assistant Professor, Masaryk University, Czech Republic
Dr Helga Kromp-Kolb, Professor, University of Renewable Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna, Austria
Dr Lidija Živčič, Senior Expert, Focus, Association for Sustainable Development, Slovenia
Dr Martin Pogačar, Research Fellow, ZRC SAZU, Slovenia
Dr Peter Nielsen, Associate Professor, Roskilde University, Denmark
Yaryna Khmara, Researcher, University of Lodz, Poland
Dr Ika Darnhofer, Associate Professor, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Austria
Dr Isabelle Cassiers, Professor, Université catholique de Louvain, Belgium
Dr Mihnea Tanasescu, Researcher, Research Foundation Flanders (FWO) and Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), Belgium
Dr Daniel Hausknost, Assistant Professor, Institute for Social Change and Sustainability, Vienna University of Economics and Business, Austria
Dr Christoph Görg, Professor, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences Vienna, Austria
Dr Andreas Novy, Professor, Vienna University of Economics and Business, Austria
Dr Fikret Adaman, Professor, Boğaziçi University, Turkey
Dr Bengi Akbulut, Assistant Professor, Concordia University, Canada
Dr Kevin Maréchal, Professor, Université de Liège, Belgium
Dr Anke Schaffartzik, Researcher, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain
Dr Milena Buchs, Associate Professor, University of Leeds, UK
Dr Jean-Louis Aillon, Researcher, University of Genova, Italy
Dr Melanie Pichler, Researcher, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Austria
Dr Helmut Haberl, Associate Professor, Institute of Social Ecology, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Austria
Dr Julien-François Gerber, Assistant Professor, International Institute of Social Studies, Netherlands
Dr John Holten-Andersen, Associate Professor, Aalborg University, Denmark
Theresa Klostermeyer, Officer for Sustainability and Social Change, German League for Nature, Animal and Environmental Protection, Germany
Dr Lyla Mehta, Professor, Institute of Development Studies, UK
Dr Geneviève Azam, Professor, Université Jean Jaurès, France
Dr Hermann E. Ott, Professor, University of Sustainable Development Eberswalde, Germany
Dr Angelika Zahrnt, Professor, Institute for Ecological Economic Research, Germany
Dr Melissa Leach, Director, Institute of Development Studies (IDS), University of Sussex, UK
Dr Irmi Seidl, Assistant Professor, Swiss Federal Research Institute WSL, Switzerland
Dr Shilpi Srivastava, Research Fellow, Institute of Development Studies, UK
Dr Elgars Felcis, Researcher, University of Latvia, Chairman of Latvian Permaculture Association, Latvia
Dr Tilman Santarius, Professor, Technische Universität Berlin and Einstein Center Digital Futures, Germany
Nina Treu, Coordinator of Konzeptwerk Neue Ökonomie, Germany
Dr Laura Horn, Associate Professor, Roskilde University, Denmark
Jennifer Hinton, Researcher, Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University, Sweden
Dr Friedrich Hinterberger, President, Sustainable Europe Research Institute, Austria
Dr Miriam Lang, Assistant Professor, Universidad Andina Simón Bolivar, Ecuador
Dr Susse Georg, Professor, Aalborg University, Denmark
Dr Silvio Cristiano, Researcher, Università degli Studi di Napoli ‘Parthenope’ & Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia, Italy
Dr Petr Jehlička, Senior Lecturer, Open University, UK
Dr Maja Göpel, Professor, Leuphana University, Member Club of Rome, Germany
Dr Geraldine Thiry, Associate Professor, ICHEC Brussels Management School, Belgium
Dr Olivier Malay, Researcher, University of Louvain, Belgium
Dr Richard Lane, Researcher, Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development, Utrecht University, Netherlands
Dr Laura Centemeri, Researcher, National Centre for Scientific Research, France
Dr Stephan Lessenich, Professor, Ludwig Maximilians University, Germany
Timothée Parrique, Researcher, Stockholm University, Sweden
Dr Ludivine Damay, Lecturer, Université libre de Bruxelles, Belgium
Dr Janis Brizga, Researcher, University of Latvia, Latvia
Dr Claudio Cattaneo, Associate Professor, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain
Dr Miquel Ortega Cerdà, Advisor, Barcelona City Council
Dr Olivier De Schutter, Professor, Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium
Dr Annalisa Colombino, Assistant Professor, Institute of Geography and Regional Sciences, University of Graz, Austria
Dr Philip von Brockdorff, Head of the Department of Economics, University of Malta, Malta
Dr Sarah Cornell, Senior Researcher, Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University, Sweden
Dr Ruth Kinna, Professor, Loughborough University, UK
Francesco Gonella, Professor, Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia, Italy
Orsolya Lazanyi, Researcher, Corvinus University of Budapest, Hungary
Dr Eva Friman, Director at Swedesd, Uppsala University, Sweden
Dr Pernilla Hagbert, Researcher, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden
Vincent Liegey, Co-Author of ‘A Degrowth Project’, Hungary
Dr Manlio Iofrida, Associate Professor, University of Bologna, Italy
Dr Mauro Bonaiuti, Lecturer, University of Turin, Italy
Dr Marco Deriu, Researcher, University of Parma, Italy
Dr Eeva Houtbeckers, Postdoctoral Researcher, Aalto University, Finland
Dr Guy Julier, Professor, Aalto University, Finland
Dr Anna Kaijser, Lecturer, Linköping University, Sweden
Dr Petter Næss, Professor, Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Norway
Dr Irina Velicu, Researcher, Center for Social Studies, University of Coimbra, Portugal
Dr Ulrich Brand, Professor, University of Vienna, Austria
Dr Christina Plank, Researcher, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Austria
Dr Karolina Isaksson, Senior Research Leader, Swedish National Road and Transport Research Institute, Sweden
Dr Jin Xue, Associate Professor, Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Norway
Dr Rasmus Steffansen, Researcher, Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Norway
Dr Irmak Ertör, Researcher, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain
Dr Maria Hadjimichael, Researcher, University of Cyprus, Cyprus
Dr Carlo Aall, Researcher, Western Norway Research Institute, Norway
Dr Claudiu Craciun, Lecturer, National School of Political Studies and Administration (SNSPA), Romania
Dr Tuuli Hirvilammi, Researcher, University of Jyväskylä, Finland
Dr Tuula Helne, Senior Researcher, The Social Insurance Institution of Finland, Finland
Davide Biolghini, Researcher, Rete italiana Economia Solidale (RES), Italy
Dr Pasi Heikkurinen, Lecturer, University of Leeds, UK
Dr Anne Tittor, Researcher, University of Jena, Germany
Dr Dennis Eversberg, Researcher, University of Jena, Germany
Dr Herman Stål, Lecturer, Umea School of Business, Economics and Statistics, Sweden
Dr Hervé Corvellec, Professor, Lund University, Sweden
Dr Anna Heikkinen, Researcher, University of Tampere, Finland
Dr Karl Bonnedahl, Researcher, Umea University, Sweden
Dr Meri Koivusalo, Professor, University of Tampere, Finland
Dr Martin Fritz, Researcher, Bielefeld University, Germany
Dr Daniel Bergquist, Researcher, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Sweden
Dr Yuri Kazepov, Professor, University of Vienna, Austria
Dr Salvador Pueyo, Researcher, Universitat de Barcelona, Catalonia
Dr Lars Rydén, Professor, Uppsala University, Sweden
Patrick ten Brink, Director of EU Policy, European Environmental Bureau, Belgium
Dr Ebba Lisberg Jensen, Associate Professor, Malmö University, Sweden
Dr Alevgul H. Sorman, Researcher, Basque Centre for Climate Change (BC3), Spain
Dr Aram Ziai, Professor, University of Kassel, Germany
Dr Panos Petridis, Researcher, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences (BOKU), Austria
Dr Gary Dymski, Professor, University of Leeds, UK
Dr Markus Wissen, Professor, Berlin School of Economics and Law, Germany
Dr Wendy Harcourt, Professor, International Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University, The Netherlands
Dr John Barrett, Professor, University of Leeds, UK
Dr Silke van Dyk, Professor, Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, Germany
Dr Vasna Ramasar, Senior Lecturer, Lund University, Sweden
Danijela Tamše, Managing Editor of the Journal for the Critique of Science, Imagination, and New Anthropology, Slovenia
Dr Camil Ungureanu, Associate Professor, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Spain
Dr Mirela Holy, Lecturer, VERN’ University of Zagreb, Croatia

Cross-posted from The Guardian
Photo by wackybadger

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Is it time for a post-growth economy?

The Rules — Fri, 27 Jul 2018 09:00:00 +0000

The growth-driven economic model we have adopted is killing our planet.

Jason Hickel: The crowds of protesters that confronted US President Donald Trump during his visit to London last week have channelled the world’s outrage at all that he represents. But despite this opposition, Trump’s base is expanding. Even those who baulk at his regressive positions – his racism, misogyny, divisiveness – are willing to hold their noses and line up behind him. Why? Because of his promises to deliver growth.

Politicians rise and fall on their ability to grow the GDP. It doesn’t matter what it takes, whether it’s ripping up environmental protections, gutting labour laws, or fracking for cheap oil: If you achieve growth, you win.

This is only the beginning. As we bump up against the limits of growth – market saturation, resource depletion, climate change – politicians will become increasingly aggressive in their pursuit of it. People like Trump will proliferate because everyone knows that we need growth: if the economy doesn’t keep expanding by at least two percent or three percent a year in developed countries, it collapses into crisis. Debts can’t be repaid, firms go bust, people lose their jobs.

The global economy has been designed in such a way that it needs to grow just to stay afloat. We are all hostages to growth, and hostages to those who promise it.

This is a massive problem because growth is tightly linked to environmental degradation. Growth of three percent may not sound like much, but it means doubling the size of the economy every 20 years – doubling the number of cars, smartphones, air miles… i.e. doubling the waste. Scientists tell us that we have already exceeded key planetary boundaries, and we can see the consequences all around us: deforestation, biodiversity collapse, resource wars and climate change.

The good news is that it doesn’t have to be this way. We can choose to create an economy that doesn’t require endless growth and thus take the wind out of the sails of politicians like Trump. In fact, it’s already happening: scholars and activists around the world are building the foundations for post-growth economics.

The first step is to challenge the myth that growth is required by society. Economists and politicians tell us that we need growth in order to boost people out of poverty. But of all the new income generated by growth, only five percent goes to the poorest 60 percent of humanity. Growth is an extremely inefficient and ecologically insane way of improving people’s lives. We can end poverty much more quickly, without any growth at all, simply by distributing existing income more fairly.

This is the core principle of a post-growth economy: Equity is the antidote to growth. There are lots of ideas about how to get there. We could introduce a global minimum wage and strengthen international labour laws. We could put a maximum cap on income and wealth. We could encourage and even subsidise worker-owned cooperatives so wealth and power are distributed more equally.

But we also need to do something about our structural dependence on growth.

For example, capitalism has a built-in incentive to increase labour productivity – to squeeze more value out of workers’ time. But as productivity improves, workers get laid off and unemployment rises. To solve this crisis, governments have to find ways to generate more growth to create more jobs.

There are proven ways to escape this vicious cycle. We could introduce a shorter working week as Sweden has just done, sharing necessary labour so that everyone can have access to employment without the need for perpetual growth. Or we could ease off on the labour requirement altogether by rolling out a universal basic income,funded by progressive taxes on carbon, resource-extraction, and financial transactions.

Photo by Christopher Lane Photography

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From “Green Growth” to Post-Growth

The Rules — Thu, 19 Apr 2018 09:00:00 +0000

Alnoor Ladha: The seduction of economic growth is all-pervasive. Even within progressive circles that claim to understand that growth is causing ecological destruction, there is hope in a new type of salvation: “green growth.” This is the idea that technology will become more efficient and allow us to grow the economy while reducing our impact on the environment. In other words, we will be able to decouple gross domestic product (GDP) from resource use and carbon emissions.

This is appealing to the liberal mind — it provides an apparent middle ground and removes the need to question the logic of the global economy. We can continue on our current trajectory if we make the “right” reforms and get the “right” kind of technology.

The hope of green growth is embedded everywhere, from the majority of domestic economic plans to major international policy schemes like the Paris Climate Agreement and the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. By uncritically supporting these policies, we are unwittingly perpetuating the neoliberal fantasy of infinite growth on a finite planet.

The Logic of “Green Growth”

In some ways, the math is quite simple. We know that the Earth can only safely sustain our consumption at or below 50 billion tons of stuff each year. This includes everything from raw materials to livestock, minerals to metals: everything humans consume. Right now, we’re using about 80 billion tons each year — roughly 60 percent more than the safe limit. In order for growth to be “green,” or at least not life-destroying, we need to get back down to 50 billion tons while continuing to grow GDP.

A team of scientists ran a model showing that, under the current business-as-usual conditions, growth will drive global resource use to a staggering 180 billion tons per year by 2050. That’s more than three times the safe limit. This type of economic growth threatens all life on this planet.

In the hopes of finding more optimistic results, the UN Environment Program conducted its own research last year. The team introduced various optimistic assumptions, including a carbon price of $573 per ton and a material extraction tax, and assumed rapid technological innovation. They found that even with these policies, we will still hit 132 billion tons of consumption per a year by 2050.

In a recent article in Fast Company, Jason Hickel, a leading economic anthropologist, argues that there is no evidence to support green growth hopes. He concludes that although we will need all the strong policies we can get — carbon taxes, resources extraction taxes, more efficient technology, etc. — the only way to bring our economy back in line with our planet’s ecology is to reduce our consumption and production.

This is the core problem that no one wants to address. This is the taboo of Western civilization — the ground zero of values. It is the reason we make up fictions like green growth.

In order to start imagining and achieving real alternatives, we first have to dispose of the false solutions and distractions that pervade the discourse on social change. Right now, it is incumbent on the progressive movement to challenge green growth or any other prophylactic logic that keeps us bound within the ideological concrete of growth as our only option.

Growth as Distributed Fascism

Our global economy is a Ponzi scheme. We have a debt-based economic system that requires growth to exceed interest rates in order for money to be valuable. The World Bank and others tell us that we have to grow the global economy at a minimum of 3 percent per year in order to avoid recession. That means we will double the size of the global economy every 20 years.

For capital holders — rich countries and the rich within countries — this makes complete sense. They disproportionately benefit from the growth system. Growth is the source of their power. It is what keeps them not just rich, but ever-richer — which means ever-more powerful. They are where they are in this system because their interests align with the “Prime Directive” of the system: more capital for its own sake. The reason the people currently in power are in power is because they believe in growth, and because they are good at delivering it. That is the sole qualification for their jobs. Of course, they are not going to be able to see the problems growth causes; they are, by job-definition and personal identity, growth-fanatics.

As for the rest of us, we are tied into this system because growth is the basis for our livelihood, it is the source of our jobs, and our jobs are what allow us to survive in the debt regime.

It’s a tightly woven system that requires our collective complicity. Although we may know that every dollar of wealth created heats up the planet and creates more inequality, we are tied into the system through necessity and a set of values that tells us that selfishness is rational, and indeed, the innately and rightly dominant human behavior we must orient around. We’re coerced into a form of distributed fascism where we as individuals extract more, consume more, destroy more and accumulate more, without ever being able to step back to see the totality of a more holistic worldview.

Post-Growth as Localism

So, what must be done? The first place to start is to challenge the growth dependency of the current operating system. Then we start looking for the antidote logic. Capitalism is characterized by its imposition of monolithic values — the final outcome of the “American Dream” is for everyone to live as consumers in pre-fabricated houses; leveraged by Wells Fargo mortgages; living off Citibank credit cards; wearing Nike shoes; distracted by Facebook, Google and Apple products; drinking Nestle bottled water; and eating Monsanto laboratory foods, while bobbing our heads to Miley Cyrus or Jay-Z.

The antigen to monoculture is polyculture — many ways of being and living. This requires a transition to localism, which is another way of saying ways of life in which we are connected to our environment, so we see and understand the impacts of our consumption. Localism creates contexts in which we can look into the eyes of the people who make our clothes and grow our food, so that our choices can be informed by their impact on human relationships and well-being, not just convenience and a price tag.

This means working to strengthen local communities and create far more self-sufficient economies. Luckily, we have on hand ready guides and knowledge in the Indigenous cultures that have survived longest on this planet, and whose way of organizing and being are in greatest harmony with the biosphere. It means actively opting out of globalized industrialism as much as we can, by creating interdependence through sharing and cooperation, rather than dependence on economic trade and extraction.

At a national level, we could start by ditching GDP as an indicator of success in favor of more holistic measures, like the Genuine Progress Indicator or a Bhutanese style Gross National Happiness, which are built around life-centric, intrinsic values and take account of negative externalities like pollution and resource degradation. We could roll out a new money system that doesn’t necessitate endless growth and debt. And we could put caps on material use, so that we never extract more than the planet can regenerate.

This type of post-growth thinking must become the central organizing principle of society the way “self-determination” was the operating principle of post-World War I society (at least in rhetoric). Localization should be the rallying cry of both nation-states and communities alike who are nimble and brave enough to transcend the shadows of scarcity and self-interest. Localism requires a sensitivity and attunement to local contexts, geographies, histories and cultures. It requires us to contract new types of relationships with each other, with ourselves, with the state, and with Nature itself.

There is no traditional blueprint for these types of economic models. This may seem daunting. But our current trajectory is even more daunting. Unless a politically significant mass of people actively rejects the false god of growth and chooses a different path, our current economic system will crash under its own weight and take most life as we know it with it. As the late British economist David Fleming reminds us, “Localisation stands, at best, at the limits of practical possibility, but it has the decisive argument in its favour that there will be no alternative.”

Alnoor Ladha is a co-founder and executive director of The Rules, a global collective of activists, writers, researchers, coders and others focused on addressing the root causes of inequality, poverty and climate change.

Photo by Aimée Wheaton

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12 Steps to Post-Growth Sustainable Business

Douglas Rushkoff — Wed, 17 Jan 2018 08:00:00 +0000

Nobody cares about how we got here. They just want solutions for how to get out of the trap. CEOs are struggling to create value for corporations programmed only to accumulate more capital, drain local economies, and externalize the costs.

So I’ve been ending my talks with specific, actionable suggestions for how companies of all sizes and stages can become more sustainably profitable in the current environment. It amounts to a 12-step program for getting off the addiction to growth. If you need to grow in order to survive, then you’re not a real business – you’re just a brand name on debt.

Here’s the quintessence of the recommendations to be gleaned from hearing my talks, reading my book Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus, or listening to my TeamHuman podcast. Of course, if you read the book you’ll see the arguments for why these strategies will work, and how they expose the false assumptions we’ve been working under for a few centuries, now. But here are the basic principles.

1. In all decisions, optimize for the velocity of money over the accumulation of capital. How do we keep money moving instead of piling up? If you are sitting on money that can’t be deployed, you are taking too much out of the system.

2. Make them rich. Make your customers, suppliers, partners, and even your competitors rich. If you drain the value from your marketplace, your customers won’t have money to spend with you. If you squeeze your suppliers on margins, they will be looking to do business with anyone else at the first opportunity. If you make everyone who comes into contact with you wealthy, they will want to keep working with you.

3. Employ bounded investment strategies. Think of the US Steelworkers, who invested their retirement money in construction projects that also put steelworkers to work. Or their subsequent decision to invest in projects that hired them to build nursing homes for their own parents. This triple and quadruple dipping is not a conflict of interests, but the leverage that comes with bounded investing. With boundaries, you can generate the cyclone effect required to enhance the velocity of money. Don’t earn ten dollars once; earn one dollar ten times.

4. Push for a tax policy that promotes revenues instead capital gains. Shareholders are addicted to growth of share price because dividends are taxed higher. Reverse the tax code to promote flow over growth. Dividends and payroll should be tax incentivized; passive capital gains, discouraged.

5. Organize as Platform Cooperatives. Think Uber, where the drivers own the company. Even if they’re getting replaced by autonomous vehicles, they are going to own the company for which their labor served as the R&D and machine learning. Labor must participate in ownership of the means of production, instead of simply getting a redistribution of spoils after the fact through taxes. Coops like Winco beat shareholder companies like Walmart wherever they compete.

6. Local crowdfunding. If you run a bank or credit union, instead of giving 100k loan to a small business, give 50k contingent on their ability to raise the other 50k from the community, through advance-sale discount coupons. Customers pay $100 for $120 of pizza at the restaurant when it finishes expansion. Locals invest in their community and Main St, instead of outsourcing investment to the S&P, and draining local coffers.

7. Develop favor banks and local currencies. An economy is people with needs and people with skills. They shouldn’t be hampered for lack of a means of exchange. Local currencies and favor banks allow for the exchange of value without borrowing at interest from a central treasury. This also means local businesses in the chain can transcend the artificial growth requirement.

8. Cooperative businesses cooperate. Do everything open source, open API, and without “trade secrets.” Maintaining secrets shows you believe your company’s best innovations are in the past. Sharing secrets means you know your best innovations lie ahead, and that you benefit from everyone being smarter. It positions you as the center of competence in your field, dedicated to promoting a culture of learning and innovation.

9. Larger companies can enact economic experiments as local, limited trials. No need to turn the whole ship. Sell the ideas to the CEO or Board as public relations stunts, then use their success to promote them throughout company. Walmart can introduce an aisle of locally produced goods; supermarkets can open parking lot to farmers market on Sundays; banks can offer local crowdfunding apps. Promote disruptive ideas as if they are just one-offs, not the radical game-changing innovations they really are.

10. Run your company like a family business. Family businesses do better in every metric than shareholder owned businesses. They make more money in the long run, have better-paid employees, more stability, less damage externalized to the community or environment, and so on. They are concerned with legacy, the family name, the relationship of their own families to communities in which they live, and the company itself as the inheritance they are bequeathing subsequent generations.

11. Develop new metrics for success other than growth. Put them down on paper. How prosperous is the community in which we are operating? How many unsolicited resumes from qualified candidates are coming in? How well are our suppliers doing? Do our frontline employees feel they are being supported by the company?

12. Your goods and services are your product – not your stock. Don’t build a company to sell it to someone else; build it to run it, yourself. Companies are not disposable. An “exit strategy” is for Ponzi schemes. The world is connected. The environment is limited. The economy is circular. There is nowhere to run.

Before emailing me for references for all this, please know that you can find everything in my book Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus: How Growth Became the Enemy of Prosperity. You can even just get it at the library, and use the index to find the answers you want.

Photo by naturalflow

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How on Earth: The Future is Not for Profit

Stacco Troncoso — Sat, 25 Feb 2017 11:00:00 +0000

“If our economy builds financial circulation into its DNA by continuing to adopt not-for-profit forms of business, we can ensure a fair distribution of our common wealth”.

Video and text originally posted in Sustainable Brands.

Donnie Maclurcan, Executive Director of the Post Growth Institute and co-author of How on Earth: The Future is Not for Profit, will unpack a pleasantly surprising and compelling vision for a world in which purpose and positive impact are at the heart of the global market. Prepare to have some of your core beliefs about not-for-profit organizations challenged, as Donnie shows how 21st century not-for-profits can be highly efficient, transparent, and self-funded. Learn how such developments build on the changing nature of the market, with growing competitive advantage for businesses that prioritize purpose ahead of profit. Explore how an economy built on not-for-profit enterprise offers a realistic antidote to both the failures of state socialism and the excesses of corporate capitalism.

Photo by Max Fridman

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John Thackara on Sustainability, Design and Old Growth

Michel Bauwens — Fri, 24 Feb 2017 09:00:00 +0000

This article by the sustainability designer John Thackara is a must read since it shows the limits of any efforts, even the best ones, under the current growth paradigm. The article describes the extraordinary work of IKEA designers which over 2 decades have halved the material usage of the world largest furniture producer, BUT, and this is crucially important, for a given level of production. The problem is that , because of the growth paradigm, this effort in the end, does not impede the fact that wood usage will keep rising anyway. This confirms the landmark study by Veolia engineer Francois Grosse, showing how any improvement in sustainability and circular economy models, can only postpone peak resource moments a few decades, if the growth of material resources exceeds one percent per year.

The conclusion is that systemic change is required.

Last week I went a restored paper mill in a tiny village in the middle of Sweden. I was there (*) to meet a bunch of people who’ve been given a uniquely challenging task: make the bedroom and bathroom products sold globally by a famous home furnishing giant – – sustainable.When I say that their task is “challenging”, think of it this way. I learned from the Flat Pack Wardrobes – or ‘PAX’ – team, that if you were stack one year’s production of their preassembled wardrobes onto flat bed trucks, the line would stretch, nose-to-tail, from Sweden to Beijing. That’s a lot of wardrobes. And spare a thought for the poor guy in the Beijng car park frantically trying to assemble them all.

These PAX guys are obsessive in their search for ways to reduce the resources used in their products. It’s cause for celebration, they told me, when someone discovers a laminate that’s a few milligrammes lighter, per running meter, than the one it replaces. One of the PAX-men explained their missionary zeal: a milligram here, a milligram there – they really add up by the time you reach Beijing.

I heard similar stories from the mirror team, too: they source three million square metres of the stuff a year. So, too, with the bed team, and the mattress team. They’re all are united in their search for lighter, cleaner, products and materials.

It doesn’t stop with the staff in Sweden. The firm requires each of its suppliers to follow a strict code of conduct – and we’re talking hundreds of firms in over 50 countries. 85 auditors carry nearly a thousand inspections every year – most of them unannounced. If a supplier does not conform – even a big one – they’re out.

The company’s products are only part of the story. Every new store, office, distribution centre, or factory, that the company opens, is located, equipped and operated to be the most sustainable facility of its kind, in the world, at that point in time. 150 of the firms’s megastores will soon be powered by solar panels. Every cup of coffee served in every store is certified organic.

This company-wide effort has been accelerating for 20 years. They’ve taken the lead out of the mirror glass. They’ve removed the chromium from table legs. They’ve taken toxins out of the paint. They’ve replaced the PVC in wallpapers. No more formaldehyde is used in its textiles. The paper in their catalogue is now chlorine-free. They’ve even taken volume out of the mattresses for goodness sake; (they roll them up, to economize on shipping). We’re talking hundreds, thousands of improvements. They’re all recorded on the company’s ‘list without end’.

But there’s just one thing they have not done – and that’s take the keys out of those flat bed trucks. Quite the contrary. The company, which is already huge, is on course to double in size by 2020. The number of customers visiting their giant sheds will increase from from 650 million a year, now, to 1.5 billion a year.

Growth on such a scale is hard to visualize. That line of trucks, stretching all the way to Beijing? By 2020, the line will be twice as long again as it is now. The return line will arrived back to Sweden again. The trucks will be double-parked all over Stockholm. And that’s just the wardrobes.

The senior manager bearing this news put this growth into context for her colleagues.“With this growth we’ll achieve the economies of scale needed to reduce costs” she explained; “we want our products to be available to the many, not just the few”. Growth is needed above all, the manager explained, “to finance the sustainability improvements we all want to make”.

Now there’s a problem with this narrative, and it’s best explained if I talk about wood. The company sells 100 million pieces of furniture every year; it’s thought to be the third largest user of wood in the world. It takes the he sustainability of its supplies very seriously. By 2017, it has promised, half of all the the wood it uses – up from 17 percent now – will either be recycled, or come from forests that are responsibly managed and avoid the excessive use of chemicals and of water.

Wow. 50%.That‘s a vast increase in the percentage of responsible wood in the company’s resource flows. But it begs the question: what about the second half of all that wood? As the company doubles in size, that second pile of wood – the un-certified half, the unreliably-sourced-at-best half – will soon be twice as big as all the wood that’s used today. The impact on forests, of one company’s ravenous hunger for resources, will be devastating.

Together with similar teams in most of the world’s major companies, the committed and gifted people I met last week in Sweden have to live with an awful dilemma. However hard they work, however many innovations they come up with, the negative net impact of their firm’s activities, on the world’s living systems, will be greater in ten years event than it is today.

And all because of compound growth.

This chilling prospect is not the fault of wicked owners. This company has healthy trees almost literally in its blood. Its founder grew up on a farm surrounded by trees. He was born in the same village as Carolus Linnaeus, the father of modern botany. His company’s products are named after the lakes, rivers, and bays he knew as a boy.

There’s no way that this man, or the people who work for him, would mindfully do harm to the land they love. The only explanation is that thoughts, deeds, and experiences have become disconnected on a company-wide scale.

Standing outside that old factory, I tried to imagine myself in the founder’s shoes. How would I react when told of protests that my company was clear-cutting old growth forests in Russia? What would I feel about complaints that rare species of lichens, mosses and other plants were being endangered by my company’s activities?

The founder’s first reaction, I surmised, would probably be indignation. He would be indignant at the complainers’ ignorance of all the work done – over 20 years – to make our products greener. Indignant, too, that the immense effort needed to put certification procedures in place was not being acknowledged.

The founder’s second reaction, I guessed, would be a nagging suspicion that these problems were probably real. The founder would probably reflect that a certification process on its own – in the far-way interior of a dysfunctional state – was unlikely to be effective when so much money was at stake for so many people.

And then? What wood the founder think then?

At this point, I made a mental wish – that that the founder would get angry – angry that the company he had built seemed to have taken on a baleful life of its own. I wished that he would say: Enough! Stop the cutting! We’re going to find another way!

That other way would not be all that hard. No need to fire people. No need to hire consultants. No lectures. No training. One simple step would be effective: Give everyone in the company the opportunity to spend time quietly in an old-growth forest. Allow them to experience the natural energy of a living system that has evolved over many human lifetimes. Leave them to discover the diversity of species, and the wide variety of vegetation on the ground. Ponder the slow decomposition of dead wood, and let the realisation dawn that dead wood is the life of the forest.

Very lightly, one would help people learn about forestry practices that restore ecological diversity; to respect nature’s timeframe; to experience directly, as does the forest, a connection with the land. Reconnected with the lived reality of the earth’s ecological systems, and its non-industrial time frames, the very idea of destroying the earth in the interests of the economy would become – literally – inconceivable.

(*) I was invited and paid to speak at the seminar in Sweden.

[Photography courtesy of Marc Adamus] The article was adapted by John Thackara from a previous talk at the Global Design Forum in London.

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The Real Circular Economy

Sharon Ede — Thu, 09 Feb 2017 10:30:00 +0000

How Relocalising Production With Not-For-Profit Business Models Helps Build Resilient and Prosperous Societies

This Commons Transition Special Report was written by Sharon Ede, a sustainability ideas transmitter, writer and activist working in Adelaide, Australia. Ede is also a co-founder of the Post-Growth Institute, one of Commons Transition’s most esteemed Partner Projects. We feel that the Post-Growth Institute’s work, specially their exploration of not-for profit business models, aligns with our own work on Open Cooperativism. These projects forge resilient livelihood strategies for commoners, a trend which is explored in this report. Going beyond issues of labor organisation, “The Real Circular Economy” also explores how and why we produce, paying special attention to prosperity, societal resilience, and the possibilities offered by relocalized production and desktop/benchtop manufacturing. This parallels the P2P Foundation and P2P Lab’s work on “Building the Open Source Circular Economy”, where we research and build upon global, open-access design repositories working in conjunction with on-demand, locally grounded and community-oriented micro-factories. This approach, known as “Design Global, Manufacture Local” is also explored in this report, making it one of the most complete, accessible overviews of P2P and Post-Growth economics.

As always, we’ve indexed the report. You can read it sequentially or jump to any of the sections below. You can also read the original in PDF format or consult the different sections and comment on the document in the Commons Transition Wiki.

Introduction

Ecological Footprint and Overshoot

Ecological Cities and Ecological Deficits

Fab Cities, Relocalisation of Production and The Future of Work

Post Growth, Circular Business Models and Not-For-Profit Business

The Real Circular Economy

Introduction

In recent years, the idea of a ‘circular economy’ has come to the fore as a way to tackle carbon emissions and waste. It has gained traction with thought leaders and jurisdictions around the world as a way to stimulate economic growth, foster innovation and generate employment.

The circular economy builds on concepts including zero waste, cradle to cradle and biomimicry. It is focused on creating economic value and reducing environmental impact through design, highest and best use of materials, and efficient use of resources and energy.

The Ellen MacArthur Foundation, a leading authority on circular economy, defines a circular economy as:

…one that is restorative and regenerative by design, and which aims to keep products, components and materials at their highest utility and value at all times, distinguishing between technical and biological cycles[1].

How we design, make, use and manage things at the end of their useful life has enormous implications for everything from our demand on nature’s resources, our carbon impact, and the amount of waste we generate.

Efforts to crystallise and focus attention on creating a circular economy have created a huge awareness of, interest in and momentum for approaches that make a lot of environmental and economic sense. At the same time, a technological approach to the circular economy is necessary, but not sufficient, to get us on track for a secure future.

The principles[2] of a circular economy speak to material resources and our systems of managing them, however with a few exceptions, such as Douglas Ruskhoff’s call for ‘reprogramming our economic operating system’[3], Rammelt and Crisp’s ‘systems and thermodynamics perspective on technology in the circular economy’[4], and Christian Arnsperger and Dominique Bourg’s call for ‘perma-circularity’[5], there is little mention in contemporary circular economy debate of the wider milieu of economic, social and cultural systems in which a circular economy must operate.

Adopting a broader definition of ‘circular economy’ can help us build a sustainable, prosperous and fair society.

ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINT AND OVERSHOOT

If it took Britain the exploitation of half the globe to be what it is today, how many globes will it take India?

Mahatma Gandhi, 1908

The circular economy is primarily concerned with the flows of materials and energy, and it is often taken for granted that this circulation can happen within a growing economy. However, the demand for materials and energy needs to be considered in the context of the limits of a finite planet.

Materials can keep circulating through being designed for disassembly and remanufacturing, or kept in use longer through being designed for durability, but if the ‘circle’ or total demand for materials and energy keeps expanding, we have not solved our civilisation’s challenge.

When human demand on nature’s capacity exceeds what nature can supply, we are in a state of ‘overshoot’[6]. The level of overshoot is the amount by which nature’s biological capacity is being used beyond its regeneration rate – for example, overfishing or overharvesting, or emitting too much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and destabilising the climate.

The minimum, non-negotiable condition for a sustainable civilisation is to live within the means of nature – to avoid ecological overshoot.

This condition is at odds with the current development paradigm which dominates both economics and politics globally, that of continuous economic growth into the indefinite future. Historically, countries have sustained this growth by appropriating carrying capacity (resources, ecological services, waste sinks) from elsewhere on the planet through economic or military power, with waste (particularly CO2) being emitted into the global commons.

However this model of dependence on ‘ghost acreage’ ignores one simple reality – globally, not everyone can be a net importer of biocapacity.

Once the biological carrying capacity of the planet is exceeded, ‘development’ occurs through the liquidation of the planet’s natural capital stock, switching from the reproductive use of the resource base, which leaves it intact, to extractive use, which reduces the total store. Instead of living off the Earth’s ‘interest’, humanity begins eating into the Earth’s ‘capital’. Globally, we are liquidating natural capital and calling it economic growth. It is like ripping off parts of a house to use as firewood in order to keep warm.

Avoiding overshoot is not sufficient in and of itself for a prosperous, healthy society, but without it, sustainable civilisation is impossible.

All other human challenges are ultimately dependent on whether we sustain or undermine the resource base and the ability of ecological life support systems to function. The destructive and painful effects of economic collapse will pale into insignificance in the face of the consequences of ecological collapse.

How can we know if we are in overshoot? The majority of the resources people consume and the wastes they generate can be tracked, and most resource and waste flows can be converted into the biologically productive area required to maintain these flows.

The Ecological Footprint[7] is a resource accounting method and tool which measures how much biologically productive land and water area humanity uses to produce the resources it consumes and to absorb the waste it generates, using prevailing technology and resource management, wherever on Earth those bioproductive areas are located. It aggregates human impact on the biosphere into one number, a common currency of global hectares, or the bioproductive space occupied exclusively by a given human activity[8]. This allows comparison of supply (or biocapacity) with demand (the Footprint, or consumption) to determine whether we are in overshoot – or using more ‘nature’ than is available.

The Global Footprint Network maintains a series of biophysical accounts for over 200 countries, dating back to 1961. The Ecological Footprint account of each country is determined by a complex spreadsheet designed to enable calculation of a country’s per capita Ecological Footprint, and compare that number with the biocapacity of the country and planet. Official data from the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and the International Energy Agency (IEA), and data from a range of other reputable international sources, form the basis of national Footprint accounts[9].

The spreadsheets, which comprise thousands of data points, track a country’s production, import, export and consumption of a vast range of commodities – including food and fibre crops, timber and fossil fuels – in biophysical units (or volume of material eg. tonnes) rather than monetary units, which only reflect market value, not availability in the biosphere. Each category includes both primary resources, such as raw timber or milk, and manufactured products that are derived from them, such as paper or cheese[10]. The Ecological Footprint accounting methodology is deliberately conservative, to avoid exaggerating the Footprint, and is therefore likely an underestimate. Footprint accounting also trade corrects – revealing where countries are ‘outsourcing’ impacts like greenhouse gas emissions[11].

The Ecological Footprint is an indicator, and indicators are sensors. To be effective sensors, they must incorporate feedback mechanisms about the limiting factors of systems, so that it the system knows how to react to impending danger. In this case, the limiting factor is the biological capacity of the Earth, and how much of it humanity is consuming.

Each year, the Global Footprint Network calculates Earth Overshoot Day – the day on which globally, humanity’s consumption (Ecological Footprint) exceeds what the Earth’s biocapacity can supply. The remainder of the year, we are in global overshoot.

Earth Overshoot Day is determined by dividing the planet’s biocapacity (the amount of ecological resources Earth is able to generate that year), by humanity’s Ecological Footprint (humanity’s demand for that year), and multiplying by 365, the number of days in the year[12]. In 2016, Earth Overshoot Day was 8 August[13] – on that date, we began exceeding ecological limits.

How can we be using more than nature is regenerating? Ecological limits can be easily exceeded – for a while, we can harvest more than what grows – creating the illusion that limits can be transgressed without apparent consequences. The reality is that overshoot eats into nature’s reserves, weakening its ability to regenerate.

The Global Footprint Network accounts show that humanity uses around 1.5 planets’ worth of bioproductive space, meaning the Earth takes one year and six months to regenerate what we use in a year. If population and consumption trends continue on their current trajectory, we will need the equivalent of two Earths by 2030. There are billions of people whose material living standard needs to increase, and many who wish to emulate consumerist lifestyles.

The defining question of our age is not whether we can achieve the impossibility of sustaining more than nine billion people on a western industrial model of development, but how to deliver prosperous lives for the global population within the regenerative biocapacity of one planet.

Sustainability is like buying a chair. There’s no question whether the chair should be strong enough to sit on or not. That’s the non-negotiable condition. The questions are: Do you want a red one, a green one, a wooden one, a metal one? But not whether the chair is strong enough.

Mathis Wackernagel, Global Footprint Network, San Francisco Enquirer, June 2001

This sustainability challenge will be won or lost in cities, which are now the most common human habitat, primary economic drivers, and the most powerful physical and political leverage points for change[14]. To win the challenge we need to build, and reconstruct existing cities, as ecological cities. Among many objectives[15], ecocities seek to ensure that cities’ demands on the Earth are within the Earth’s biological capacity.

ECOLOGICAL CITIES AND ECOLOGICAL DEFICITS

An Ecocity is a human settlement modelled on the self-sustaining resilient structure and function of natural ecosystems. The ecocity provides healthy abundance to its inhabitants without consuming more (renewable) resources than it produces, without producing more waste than it can assimilate, and without being toxic to itself or neighbouring ecosystems. Its inhabitants’ ecological impact reflects planetary supportive lifestyles; its social order reflects fundamental principles of fairness, justice and reasonable equity.

Ecocity Builders [16]

Right now, there is no city on earth that is an ecological city. Twenty-first century cities are the primary resource manipulators on the planet. They are a meta-technology – a technology that organises other technologies. But it is precisely because they are such powerful drivers of all kinds of activities that the way we build and live in cities is the key to addressing social and environmental impacts everywhere.

Urban design and density determines much of a city’s carbon profile, and creating and maintaining the built environment generates massive demand for resources:

…as much as a tenth of the global economy is dedicated to constructing and operating homes and offices. And dollar for dollar, this activity uses several times as much wood, minerals, water, and energy as the rest of the economy: buildings consume one sixth to one half of the world’s physical resources…buildings account for roughly 40 per cent of the materials entering the global economy each year: some 3 billion tons of raw materials are turned into foundations and walls, pipes and panels…

Nicholas Lenssen & David Malin Roodman, Worldwatch Institute[17]

In the mid-2000s, a University of Michigan study showed that human activity moved 10 times more soil than all natural processes combined[18]. In the mid-1990s, Herbert Girardet, author of the Gaia Atlas of Cities, estimated the Ecological Footprint of London, and found that it was 125 times the actual surface area of that city, in terms of the space it needs beyond its physical area to produce the resources required to sustain its citizens[19].

With their linear metabolism, cities are at the heart of the take-make-waste economy:

‘Estimates at the time of the Earth Summit (Rio) in 1992 found that 75 percent of the natural resources that we harvest and mine from the Earth are shipped, trucked, railroaded and flown to 2.5 percent of the Earth’s surface, which is metropolitan. At that destination, 80 percent of those resources are converted into ‘waste’.’

Jac Smit, Urban Agriculture Network[20]

Cities are dependent on biophysical capacity and labour, both local and transnational, in order to deliver the needs of their populations. In doing so, they draw on the ecosystems and commons of other communities.

It is imperative that we understand the city as an ecosystem, acknowledging and addressing the behaviour of these mega-organisms, and their impact beyond the physical city.

These impacts and planetary ecological limits are typically not connected to an individual’s personal experience, and are rarely felt by more than the half of humanity who live in cities and towns. People in urban environments are rendered psychologically as well as spatially divorced from their dependence on nature, especially those who are caught up in a consumer culture that promotes abundance and has not yet encountered ecological limits.

If the true demand of the city was made visible, it would show that all urban areas are running ecological deficits[21] – that is, they depend on ‘occupied territory’ elsewhere.

The needs of urban dwellers are also dependent on extensive external supply lines, which are a large contributor to carbon emissions[22]. Shipping is projected to be responsible for 17% of global emissions by 2050[23], and incredibly, both shipping and aviation are excluded from international climate change negotiations due to the difficulty of allocating emissions to one country.

Creating an ecological city and reducing the city’s Ecological Footprint does not mean the end of trade – it just means trade happens where it is necessary, not where it isn’t.

‘Frequent flyer prawns’ are just one example of a multitude of long and unnecessarily carbon-intensive supply lines, which are only made possible by an era of cheap energy and the externalisation of costs. Prawns (shrimp) caught in Scotland are sent to Thailand for shelling, and shipped back again for distribution in the UK, because the labour in Thailand is cheaper:

Instead of transporting UK-caught langoustines the relatively short distance from sea to factory to distributor, Britain’s leading seafood supplier will send them on a 13,000-mile round trip to Thailand – in the interests of cost-cutting. The shellfish will then be repackaged and shipped back to the factory where they began their journey. Eventually, they will be breaded and sold across the UK[24].

Research by Germany’s Wuppertal Institute revealed that a typical container of strawberry yoghurt clocked up over twelve thousand miles of transport in the process of being made, assembled into its pot and delivered to the point of sale[25].

In its 2009 report, the new economics foundation cited the following research into ‘boomerang trade’ in the UK alone:

All around us still, are ships, lorries and planes passing in the night, wastefully carrying often identical goods from city to city across the globe and back again to meet ‘consumer demand’…we export 4,400 tonnes of ice cream to Italy, only to re-import 4,200 tonnes. We import 22,000 tonnes of potatoes from Egypt whilst exporting 27,000 tonnes back again. Then there are the 5,000 tonnes of toilet paper heading from the UK to Germany, with over 4,000 tonnes returning, and 10 tonnes of ‘gums and jelly’ sweets going back and forth to Thailand. And 117 tonnes of sweet biscuits, waffles, wafers and gingerbread came into the UK, rumbling past 106 tonnes headed in the opposite direction[26].

US author and food activist Michael Pollan also cited examples of wasteful trade:

…we are exporting sugar cookies to Denmark while we import sugar cookies from Denmark: a mind boggling trade that one economist said, when he was told of it, ‘Wouldn’t it be more efficient to swap recipes?[27]’

In the 21^st century, urban impacts are not just physical, but also digital. A multi-billion dollar submarine fibre optic cable link extending over 15,000km is being built between London and Tokyo via the Arctic Ocean, now accessible due to the retreat of sea ice. This cable will cut the ‘friction’ between the two cities from 230 milliseconds to 168 milliseconds, enabling reduced transmission time, which ‘will be a boon for high-frequency traders who will gain crucial milliseconds on each automated trade[28].’

Cities, with their immense economic and political power, are central to global and local ecological problems, and they must become central to solutions. Cities should not only do less damage, but proactively work as an environmental repair kit – become biogenic, or generative, not biocidic, or extractive.

An ecocity, in symbiosis with its region, is a lifeboat for human civilisation, an ark for defence of the biosphere, a regulator of the global climate, and a fractal of our sustainable future.

Paul Downton, Urban Ecologist and Ecological Architect[29]

To successfully reduce our ecological footprint and move out of overshoot, we need to build ecological cities, including relocalising production of food, energy and things.

For cities to produce more of what they consume locally, they need to become productive, fabricating (making) cities – Fab Cities.

FAB CITIES, RELOCALISATION OF PRODUCTION AND THE FUTURE OF WORK

The first city to become self-sufficient – simultaneously increasing employment by creating opportunities through open innovation, and radically reducing carbon emissions by re-localising production – will lead the future of urban development globally.

Tomas Diez, Fab City Global Initiative[30]

Digital technologies can either amplify and accelerate cities’ ecological devastation, or be channelled to create positive change, such as through digitally sharing open source design enabling distributed production[31].

A Fab City is a locally productive, globally connected, self-sufficient city.

‘Fab’ is short for ‘fabrication’, making and producing. Fab Labs (Fabrication Laboratories) and makerspaces offer opportunities for people to make and produce what they need for themselves, and to bring back to citizens the skills and knowledge needed to make things.

Makerspaces and Fab Labs are open access workshops, which means that anyone can access a range of production equipment (including but not limited to 3D printers and other means of digital fabrication) and networks of knowledge. Fab Labs (Fabrication Laboratories) emerged from the Center for Bits and Atoms at MIT in the early 2000s[32], originating from a course designed to enable anyone to learn how to make almost anything[33].

Harnessing these spaces and digital manufacturing technologies in service of the circular economy offers the potential for returning production to cities in the form of distributed manufacturing with microfactories – small scale, cleaner production that is also less wasteful, occurring as-needed, often customised, instead of over-producing for markets[34].

The Fab City Global Initiative[35], which originated in Barcelona in 2014, has expanded with the network now including Amsterdam, Shenzhen, Copenhagen, Detroit, Paris and Boston, who have all joined the challenge of leveraging the capability of Fab Labs to relocalise production of energy, food and things in cities to 50% by 2054.

FAB City takes the ideals of the Fab Lab – the connectivity, culture and creativity – and scales it to the City. It is a new urban model of transforming and shaping cities that shifts how they source and use materials from ‘Products In Trash Out’ (PITO) to ‘Data In Data Out’ (DIDO). This means that more production occurs inside the city, along with recycling materials and meeting local needs through local inventiveness. A city’s imports and exports would mostly be found in the form of data (information, knowledge, design, code)[36].

If the idea of digital trade seems peculiar, it is worth noting that a recent McKinsey report revealed that …‘digital flows—which were practically non-existent just 15 years ago—now exert a larger impact on GDP growth than the centuries-old trade in goods[37].’ Fab Cities are about swapping the ‘recipe’, not the ‘cookies’.

Fab Cities are not defined as a city full of Fab Labs, but are about reinvigorating old industries to make them more clean, dynamic, fast and adaptive, and connecting them with grassroots innovation.

In Barcelona, a 1km x 1km area in the Poblenou district has been designated the ‘Maker District’ with the objective of prototyping a fractal of a Fab City, focusing on:

Fabrication & materials: with complementary production ecosystems happening inside the local network of Fab Labs, citizens have the possibility to produce what they consume, recirculating materials inside the neighbourhood and the city to reduce waste and carbon emissions associated with long-distance mass production and distribution chains.
Food production: growing food on the rooftops of Barcelona. Through urban agriculture practices, citizens can grow part of what they eat turning production of local clean food in a regular part of their lives.
Energy: Renewable energy production. With the arrival of domestic batteries and the cost drop of solar technologies, citizens have the tools to produce part of their domestic energy consumption[38].

The Fab City Research Laboratory team has recently initiated ‘Fab Market’, an online shop where designers can fabricate for low cost and sell their open source designs globally[39]:

Using digital fabrication as its main focus, the network promotes the idea of distributed manufacturing. With this model, designs can be sent to the other side of the planet, modified and made on the same day.…you can find a variety of locally made products designed by people from all over the world. All products are open-source and sold ready for use, assembly or fabrication, giving people the possibility to participate in the making process. The more you participate, the less you pay for the product[40].

Other terms being used to describe the approach advocated by Fab City include ‘Design Global, Manufacture Local’[41], and ‘cosmo-localization’[42]. In all cases, this means the ‘light’ things (bits, information, shared/open source design) travel, but the ‘heavy’ things (atoms, the physical, manufacturing) stay local.

The circular economy approach can reduce demand for energy and materials and production of waste, but if a city is not making things locally, does it truly have a circular economy? A city that is exporting recycled materials elsewhere to be remade into things arguably still has a linear economy. Our oceans churn with carbon-intensive cargo movements[43]. A true circular economy means relocalising production in our cities, needing to move less stuff, and making more of what we need, when and where we need it.

The Fab City approach offers potential to cut carbon emissions, reduce waste, and generate local jobs, however relocalising production in cities does not necessarily mean relocalisation of jobs[44]. Adidas have announced plans to shift production of boots back to Germany from Asia – but they will be built by robots[45]. There may be local employment of people who build and maintain robots, however the objective of replacing labour with machines will likely result in fewer job opportunities, especially for lower skilled workers who may not be able to access work roles that require skills they don’t have, or don’t have the ability or interest to train for. The 2016 World Economic Forum report, ‘The Future of Jobs’, found that technology could result in a net loss of five million jobs in fifteen developed and emerging countries by 2020[46].

In a system where people are dependent on selling their labour for the means to sustain themselves, a conscious choice must be made to prioritise labour and generation of local employment opportunities. In many cases, it could be beneficial to automate dangerous or undesirable work, however if the choice is made to automate jobs, a lot of social benefit will be lost, even though relocalised production may deliver environmental benefits.

Meaningful work is also about contribution and social identity, not just an income[47].

…while we insist that everyone must work to meet basic living expenses when the labour market is bifurcating into a small number of high-skill, highly paid jobs and a much larger number of unskilled, poorly paid and insecure jobs, we are preventing people from inventing new things to do and new ways of working…providing people with a reasonable income while they find or create for themselves the right job (not just any job), or to enable them to do creative and/or socially useful things that are currently unpaid, or to study and develop new skills, might be a good investment for the future, improving the productivity of human capital which over the longer term benefits the economy…[48]

A zero waste society should also mean zero waste of human potential, and this potential can be realised in ways other than seeking to match skills and aptitudes of people to fulfilling jobs – it can be realised outside the confines of paid work, outside the narrow definitions of ‘productivity’ and ‘work ethic’ that have characterised work since the start of the Industrial Revolution.

In a provocative 2013 article entitled ‘On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs’, anarchist author David Graeber noted that the increased leisure time predicted at the end of the 20^th century by economist John Maynard Keynes back in 1930 had not manifested, and that:

It’s as if someone were out there making up pointless jobs just for the sake of keeping us all working…technology has been marshalled…to figure out ways to make us all work more. Huge swaths of people, in Europe and North America in particular, spend their entire working lives performing tasks they believe to be unnecessary. The moral and spiritual damage that comes from this situation is profound. It is a scar across our collective soul. Yet virtually no one talks about it[49].

If the nature of work is changing such that it is not fulfilling either material or non-material needs, is the very notion of a ‘job’ soon to be an anachronism? Perhaps it is time for us to reframe the question from: ‘how can we ensure everyone has the opportunity for a suitable job that helps sustain the needs of themselves and their families?’ to ‘how can we best meet everyone’s needs in a way that enables them to fulfil their potential and contribute meaningfully to society?’

In the meantime, within our current construction of the idea of ‘work’, there is a bigger question – why choose to automate jobs and throw people out of work, severing them from the ability to sell their labour to support themselves? The reason is that labour is one of the largest costs for any business, and replacing workers with machines that don’t need to eat, rest, sleep or be paid a wage, enables costs to be driven down, so that profit can be maximised. An even bigger question is: in an automated world, who owns the robots, and who benefits from their productive capacity?

If automation is a societal choice, it will need to occur in conjunction with a reinvention of the social contract that reconfigures the job/work/income/means-to-meet-one’s-needs nexus, possibly with a form of Universal Basic Income[50], or Universal Basic Dividend[51].

Value is produced by all of society, including contributions to the commons and social reproduction in the domestic sphere, not just in the formal economy where monetised transactions occur. Private enterprise benefits from that which is created beyond its value-capturing boundaries, such as supply of a schooled workforce, and the provision of infrastructure such as transportation and power infrastructure.

How can we better share the benefits of collectively produced value?

One way to achieve this is through business models and modes of production that prioritise purpose over profit.

POST GROWTH, CIRCULAR BUSINESS MODELS AND NOT-FOR-PROFIT BUSINESS

A healthy economy thrives on circulation. If our economy has circulation built into its very DNA, we can ensure a fair distribution of our common wealth without dominating each other and nature. The difference between for-profit and not-for-profit business could be the difference between having a linear, extractive economy and having a circular, generative economy

Donnie Maclurcan and Jennifer Hinton, Post Growth Institute[52]

Ecological cities and Fab Cities, which have many similar objectives including reduction of urban Ecological Footprints, offer theoretical frameworks and practical ways to help us move out of global overshoot. Circular economy approaches are an integral part of both.

All are still embedded in and trying to change a world where the growth paradigm is dominant.

The drivers of growth are many, but they include money created as interest bearing debt[53], planned obsolescence, consumer culture and status envy, population[54] and the indicators that we use to manage our economic systems.

Economic growth, the overriding objective of governments everywhere, is measured by Gross Domestic Product (GDP). GDP is an indicator designed to track total economic activity, developed in the 1930s and 40s amidst the upheavals of the Great Depression and two World Wars. Its inventor, Simon Kuznets, the chief architect of the United States national accounting system, cautioned against equating GDP growth with economic or social well-being in 1934[55]. Yet eighty years on, economic growth is seen as the pathway to prosperity and wellbeing.

Although many people today still lack basic needs, many more people today have a material living standard higher than that of an average citizen at any previous time in history. Economic growth has delivered that standard of living for many people.

However, as an indicator, GDP is a blunt instrument in that it adds up the total monetary value of economic activity, but does not distinguish between the desirability of that activity. It does not count the value created in the non-market economy of social production – caring work, volunteering, domestic labour, ‘work for the world’. Yet every car accident, razed forest, oil spill, heart attack and break-in is counted as ‘growth’ because it results in greater production and exchange of goods and services.

We are systematically incentivising unsustainable behaviours, wreaking destruction on ecosystems and communities with abstractions we have ourselves created.

In order to keep growing, a system dependent on economic growth must continually convert nature into goods and relationships into services – things once provided to us as gifts become monetised transactions.

Yet past a certain point, the costs of more growth – congestion, pollution, declining quality of life, inequality, destruction of ecosystem services (such as bees’ ability to pollinate or the ability of a watershed to filter and clean water)[56] and liquidation of natural capital – start to outweigh the benefits.

Economic growth becomes uneconomic growth.

The UN defines uneconomic growth as:

jobless growth, where the economy grows, but does not expand opportunities for employment;
ruthless growth, where the proceeds of economic growth mostly benefit the rich;
voiceless growth, where economic growth is not accompanied by extension of democracy or empowerment;
rootless growth, where economic growth squashes people’s cultural identity; and
futureless growth, where the present generation squanders resources needed by future generations[57]

Persisting with economic growth in a finite system is not only foolish when growth is no longer delivering the benefits it used to and the costs outweigh the gains, it is dangerous.

The ‘eat more’ message of growth economics is at fundamental odds with the ‘eat less’ message of sustainability.

This has been recognised with the emergence of concepts such as ‘green growth’, which is the bargaining stage of the end of growth grief cycle. It assumes we can still have growth, as long as it is ‘greener’ or more environmentally responsible. The idea is that we can decouple material throughput and energy from economic growth – that is, we can reduce the demand for new resources and energy, and still grow. Yet decoupling is not happening at the scale and pace needed:

UN Sustainable Development Goal 8 calls for improving ‘global resource efficiency’ and ‘decoupling economic growth from environmental degradation’. Unfortunately, there are no signs that this is possible at anything near the necessary pace. Global material extraction and consumption grew by 94% between 1980 and 2010, accelerating in the last decade to reach as high as 70 billion tonnes per year. And it’s still going up: by 2030, we’re projected to breach 100 billion tonnes of stuff per year. Current projections show that by 2040 we will more than double the world’s shipping, trucking, and air miles – along with all the things those vehicles transport. By 2100 we will be producing three times more solid waste than we do today[58].

A recent study revealed that for every 10% increase in GDP, a nation’s material footprint increases by 6%:

Metrics on resource productivity currently used by governments suggest that some developed countries have increased the use of natural resources at a slower rate than economic growth (relative decoupling) or have even managed to use fewer resources over time (absolute decoupling). Using the material footprint (MF), a consumption-based indicator of resource use, we find the contrary: Achievements in decoupling in advanced economies are smaller than reported or even non-existent…two-fifths of all global raw materials were extracted and used just to enable exports of goods and services to other countries[59].

In 2011, a study commissioned by the CEO of Veolia was published in a peer-reviewed journal focused on sustainability, with the objective of assessing the business opportunities of the circular economy and recycling. It found that the ability to ‘decouple’ is only possible if the total annual raw material consumption growth rate is under one percent, and that ‘the influence of recycling on resource preservation is negligible for any raw material with a greater than 2% per annum increase in world production’[60]. Even then, growth in material consumption kept below that rate is still insufficient to decouple, and requires a high rate of recycling (60% – 80%). Economist and Professor of Sustainability and Economic Anthropology Christian Arnsperger of the University of Lausanne[61] analyses what this means:

Efficiency gains…become themselves the ‘raw material’ for generating new economic growth thanks to lower raw material requirements…and it explains why the circular growth economy attracts so much enthusiasm among businesspeople and industrialists: The mirage is that of perpetually expanding markets along with perpetually contracting raw material consumption…we have no use for a pseudo-circular metabolism that is actually a steadily widening spiral: circling, yes, but spinning slowly out of control nevertheless, in ever-broader circles of ever-growing circumference. We need a genuinely circular metabolism…one that doesn’t spiral outward but, rather, promises to keep the same circumference…

Images by Sharon Ede

The earth is a finite system of nutrients, resources, minerals and energy. Human impact must fit within these limits, and leave some ‘breathing room’ not only for humanity, but for millions of other species. If the absolute amount of resource and energy use is still rising, economic growth will negate resource efficiency gains. It is a global Jevon’s Paradox[62].

Capitalism’s answer to every problem is more of the same growth and overconsumption that has wrecked the planet and the climate in the first place. There can never be a market solution to our crisis because every ‘solution’ has to be subordinated to maximizing growth, or companies can’t stay in business.

Richard Smith, Six Theses on Saving the Planet[63]

Running physical ecological deficits as part of growth economics is also a financial and political security risk. The UN Finance Initiative is working in partnership with the Global Footprint Network on how to quantify natural resource and environmental risks, and incorporate them into risk assessments used by insurance companies, investors and credit rating agencies[64] (see overview of this project, ‘Integrating Ecological Risk in Sovereign Credit Ratings and Investments’[65]).

For the world as a whole, the growth model is no longer safe – we are already in overshoot.

Uneconomic growth, where the benefits flow mainly to the rich, also creates social inequality and contributes to social breakdown. In 2016, Oxfam’s report ‘An Economy for the 1%’, found that, worldwide, just 62 individuals own as much wealth the 3.6 billion who make up the bottom socioeconomic half of the world’s population[66]. Research by authors of The Spirit Level, epidemiologists Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, shows that social problems (including mental illness, drug addiction, obesity, loss of community life, imprisonment) are more prevalent in more unequal societies, even among the richer strata of those societies. Inequality affects the entire social fabric, not just those less well off[67].

Mental health is one of the biggest public and human costs. The World Health Organization (WHO) reports that mental illnesses are the leading causes of disability worldwide, with an estimated global cost of almost $2.5 trillion – more than cardiovascular disease, respiratory disease, cancer or diabetes[68], and mental illnesses are more prevalent in more unequal societies This is largely due not to absolute poverty, but rather relative wealth, or where you ‘rank’ in society – in other words, ‘how am I doing compared to what I see around me?’

A growth economy requires ongoing consumption, which is why it promotes the defining of individual identity, focusing our attention on what we are doing to maximise our consumption and generating the income to sustain it.

While people are busy concentrating on the pursuit of individualistic, increasingly commodified lifestyles, there is a corresponding retreat from involvement in civic, community and family life, and a weakening of the social cohesion that has been part of life for centuries. This atomisation of society is at the basis of much social and community breakdown:

When the relationships of gift-giving in a community are replaced by monetary transactions, the fabric of the community unravels…in sharp contrast to the monetized world of financial security, which inexorably separates everyone from everyone else, a gift economy is an economy of obligation and dependence. Financial security is not true independence, but merely dependence on strangers, who will only do the things necessary for your survival if you pay them…the monetized life removes some of the incentives for people to adhere to social and ethical norms. Dissolution of community is built in to our system of money.

Charles Eisenstein, The Ascent of Humanity[69]

In an economic system that depends on growth, pursuing more growth is entirely rational. But there is a deeper question that goes unasked: is an economic system that depends on growth itself rational? Growth is not working for most of humanity, it’s no longer working as well for those who have benefited, and it’s not at all working for the natural systems on which the security of our civilisation depends. But just like in the movie Speed, we are ‘stuck on the bus’[70], in a catch 22 of our own making.

How can we harness economic, financial and cultural dynamics to get us safely off the growth bus before we run out of fuel, without the damage that will occur if we slow down?

In this light, circular economy business models are not transformative enough, as they tend to be focused on how to unlock business growth through better management of materials[71].

Zero Waste Scotland cites the following examples of circular economy business models[72]:

Hire & Leasing: Hire or leasing of products as an alternative to purchasing.
Performance/Service System: Providing a service based on delivering the performance outputs of a product where the manufacturer retains ownership, has greater control over the production of a product, and therefore has more interest in producing a product that lasts.
Incentivised Return: Offering a financial or other incentive for the return of ‘used’ products. Products can be refurbished and re-sold.
Asset Management: Maximising product lifetime and minimising new purchase through tracking an organisation’s assets, planning what can be re-used, repaired or redeployed at a different site.
Collaborative Consumption: Rental or sharing of products between members of the public or businesses, often through peer-to-peer networks.
Long Life: Products designed for long life, supported by guarantees and trusted repair services.

While they are all worthwhile approaches, models such as hiring or leasing and asset management are not new, and the stated benefits of these models primarily focus on the opportunities for business growth.

Growth of what, and for whom? Who benefits? Should the impetus for a circular economy be restricted to opportunities for business owners?

Part of the growth mythology is that ‘growing the pie’ enables wealth to trickle down, that giving tax concessions to the wealthy will result in investment and productive activity that creates jobs[73], however this is not necessarily the case. The lion’s share of the benefits of growth are typically privatised in the hands of a few, while the costs are socialised[74].

Are we missing bigger opportunities to profoundly transform our societies through a broader definition of ‘circular economy’?

In the business world, surplus value is typically extracted from an economic system as returns on investment to shareholders and owners, not reinvested back into the business, or society more broadly.

Like our take-make-waste economy, our financial economy is also a linear economy.

The primary legal responsibility of corporate executives is fiduciary, that is, to make as much profit as possible for returning to shareholders and investors. To do this, costs – like frequent flyer prawns – are externalised to the environment and to society. One report sponsored by the UN revealed that none of the world’s top industries would be profitable if they had to pay for the natural capital they consume[75].

This externalisation also relates to social costs, and is one of the drivers of both automation of jobs, and increasing precarity and casualisation of work – over a third of the US workforce is now freelance[76]. This focus on maximising shareholder value is now being challenged in the business arena itself[77].

One consequence of a system structured this way is that wealth is increasingly captured and sucked out of the ‘real’ or ‘common’ economy of goods and services, and into the ‘elite’ economy – including an estimated at $32 trillion in offshore tax havens[78] – where it is then locked away from and unavailable to wider society:

A recent study found that the super-rich, on average, invest 18% of their wealth in real estate, keep 26% of it in cash and bank deposits, use 27% of it to buy more equity in companies, and put 30% of it into hedge funds, derivatives, securities, currency trading and bond markets[79]. The wealthy essentially extract the surplus from the real economy of goods and services, putting most of it into the elite economy of business equity, shares, securities, derivatives, money markets, and hedge funds. We call this the elite economy because it is a speculative market that only those who have a certain amount of extra money can afford to bet in.

Donnie Maclurcan and Jennifer Hinton, Post Growth Institute[80]

Diagram from How On Earth, forthcoming in 2017 [81]

How can we stop this astronomical flow of wealth being siphoned into the elite economy?

One powerful way is to change how value is shared and distributed.

There is increasing momentum in support of employee/worker owned co-operative enterprise[82], including platform co-operatives[83] – such as a ridesharing platform owned by the drivers and other stakeholders, rather than the benefits flowing back to suppliers of venture capital.

Even more broadly, open co-operatives[84] share the wealth and governance of a business with all stakeholders who wish to participate. Complementary and local currencies[85], including cryptocurrencies[86], can play a role, locally and transnationally.

The potential of commons based peer production in creating a truly circular economy is enormous:

Commons-based peer production is a term coined by Harvard Law School professor Yochai Benkler to describe a new model of economic production in which the creative energy of large numbers of people is coordinated (usually with the aid of the internet) into large, meaningful projects, mostly without traditional hierarchical organization or financial compensation. He compares commons-based peer production to firm production (where a centralized decision process decides what has to be done and by whom) and market-based production (when tagging different prices to different jobs serves as an attractor to anyone interested in doing the job)[87].

Michel Bauwens, Founder of the Foundation for Peer-to-Peer Alternatives, cites the emergence of global open design communities, which through open contributory systems are now able to massively scale co-operation in creating commons projects of value, like Wikipedia[88], Rep Rap[89] and Arduino[90].

Around these commons, there are extractive business models on how to maximise profits from these commons, but also generative business models. This is a new type of economy, where people organise to make a living without destroying the commons, and find democratic solutions to work together[91].

Bauwens cites Enspiral[92], which originated in New Zealand, as an example of a generative business model. Enspiral embodies the three elements Bauwens has identified:

an open contributory system, where people (whether paid or unpaid) add to a common shared resource that is outside the market ie. not subject to the supply-demand dynamic
a coalition of ethical entrepreneurs that seek to co-operate with the commons and global design communities, creating markets and livelihoods around these commons that enable people to continue their contribution to shared resources and make a living around solving social and environmental problems
a for-benefit association that manages the commons (at the territorial governance level, this could be the ‘partner city’ or ‘partner state’)

Enspiral produces a commons, Loomio[93], which is an open source decision making software for virtual teams. Around that, they have numerous business ventures that seek to solve human and ecological issues. The Enspiral Foundation is the entity that manages their common infrastructure.

When value is captured by extractive models and not reinvested in the commons, it creates economic uncertainty and insecurity for many people[94]. Commons based peer production seeks to change that dynamic, returning the rewards to those who generate value and contribute to the commons.

How can capital be accessed without those needing it being beholden to investors indefinitely?

One approach is that of ‘capped investments’ where investors are guaranteed an agreed percentage of return on investment, but over a time period that eventually expires, rather than requiring the enterprise to continue to provide a dividend in perpetuity.

The biggest problem with our current system is that the growth path of successful companies very often end up with an IPO or acquisition by a listed company. No matter where they start, companies tend to end up in a profit maximising system with incentives to externalise as many costs as they can onto society. In this model, a few win while society loses.

The shares in those public companies never expire. They transition from being a vehicle for fair compensation to investors and entrepreneurs to becoming licenses to extract wealth from society that are sold to the highest bidder. There are dividends being paid out today on shares in companies where every person who took the risks and put in the capital to start it up has been dead for 100 years. The returns have become divorced from their original connection to meaningful inputs to the business.

If capped returns became the norm of business then the growth path of a successful enterprise would be to pay back its founders and investors early on in its lifecycle (first decade or two). Then there would be a big celebration as the business became a freehold impact venture with a binding mandate to serve wider society.

Joshua Vial, Enspiral[95]

This is an example of ‘transvestment’[96], reversing the effects of the wealth siphon by transferring value back into the ‘real’ economy. Such a scenario would need investors who seek a fair financial return – but not a never-ending return of claims on wealth from value generated by others – and a willingness to invest for positive and environmental impact.
All of these examples shift us away from an extractive economy to a regenerative economy.

A powerful approach detailed in the Post Growth Institute’s forthcoming book, How On Earth[97], makes the case that not-for-profit business models – which prioritise purpose/mission ahead of profit – will become the core of the global economy by 2050, because they will outperform business whose primary focus is profit.

How often do we hear the term ‘for-profit business’? It is assumed that all businesses are for-profit, just as it’s assumed all markets operate on the basis of growth, extractive practices, even greed. Yet businesses of all kinds can be not-for-profit – social enterprises, sustainable businesses, cooperatives, and even multinational corporations. Not-for-profit businesses already exist across sectors as diverse as telecommunications, engineering, retail, manufacturing, software development, construction, healthcare and the food industry.

A not-for-profit business is one where profit cannot be privately distributed to anyone, including workers or stakeholders as well as shareholders. It is different to a traditional non-profit, which is often dependent on government funding, philanthropy or corporate charity.

Diagram from How On Earth, forthcoming in 2017

Not-for-profit business is legally different to other models such as B Corporations (a certification scheme), corporate social responsibility and for-purpose business, where the surplus is still allowed to be privatised:

While some for-profit organizations may never even make any profits, all of them have the ability to privately distribute profits. A company that can distribute profits to individuals (such as owners, shareholders, investors, partners, workers, managers and board directors) is legally for-profit. Although the way for-profit entities handle their financial surplus varies, the key distinction is that they can distribute surplus to individuals, and almost always have the intention to do so.

By law, not-for-profit businesses are mission-based and they must invest 100% of their profits back into their mission. Because of this, they are more likely to care about whether or not their supply chains are ethical; about their environmental impact; and about their employees’ wellbeing. They are more likely to take into consideration the concerns of the local communities in which they operate and to give their employees the chance to express themselves. And they are not at all likely to sacrifice any of these concerns in the name of profit-maximization.

For-profit companies that are trying to incorporate ethical business practices can easily drift from a social mission due to the pressure to maximize profits or generate financial value for owners and investors. It’s not that for-profit companies can’t do work that has a deeper purpose; rather it’s that the profit motive often distracts them from that deeper purpose.

Donnie Maclurcan and Jennifer Hinton, Post Growth Institute[98]

A not-for-profit business works the same as any other business: it must be financially sustainable, everyone gets paid, and it can make as much profit as it likes – but it cannot distribute profit privately. Any surplus is required to be reinvested back into the mission or purpose of the business. These businesses see profit as a means to achieving deeper goals, rather than as a goal in itself.

Not-for-profit businesses have many advantages in the marketplace, including being more resilient in times of economic downturn, because they don’t have to provide dividends to shareholders. They also have greater freedom to innovate, due to the absence of owners and shareholders who tend to restrict creative energy to the areas they decide will yield a good financial return.

Not-for-profit businesses that constantly cycle their surplus back into the real economy provide a practical, tangible way to redirect the flow of both value and capital, enabling us to prime the wealth circulation pump in the real economy, to meet social needs and ensure we are not undermining our ecological life support systems.

If we want to move out of the danger zone of ecological overshoot, we must move away from dependence on profit maximisation and ever more economic growth, which drives extractive behaviour, extreme inequality and destruction of the Earth’s life support systems.

If we want an economic operating system that is regenerative, not extractive, we have to change how surplus is managed.

Profit is neither inherently good nor bad. But, as the surplus of economic activity, it is important. And what happens to the surplus in our economy is at the root of whether we have a healthy economy or a destructive economy.

Donnie Maclurcan and Jennifer Hinton, Post Growth Institute[99]

The not-for-profit model is about preventing value extraction and keeping it invested and circulating in the real economy. It promises value creation, rather than value appropriation, and is a system that runs on shared interest, not self-interest.

It can help support the push for worker and open co-operatives, platform co-ops, commons based peer production and, eventually, partially or completely replace the need for ‘transvestment’, as there will be less need for a transfer of capital back from the elite economy to the real economy if the value is retained in the real economy in the first place.

An economy based on not-for-profit enterprise would take us beyond the current debate about whether the market should be more heavily regulated or if it should be allowed to operate more freely, because the functioning of a not-for-profit market economy would be so different from the for-profit market economy.

Donnie Maclurcan and Jennifer Hinton, Post Growth Institute[100]

The not-for-profit model meets the needs of those who want a market economy, individual choice and reward for effort; those who want a more equitable society, where people’s needs are met; those who champion innovation and technology; and it satisfies those who understand that our wellbeing and safety depend on the health of our environment.

It is not a panacea, but it is a practical approach and realistic bridge from the old economy to the new economy, and most importantly, it is already emerging in the world we live in right now.

THE REAL CIRCULAR ECONOMY

Electric light did not come about from the continuous improvement of candles.

Oren Harari

A circular economy can play a crucial role in improving the design and management of our material world.

But can we meet our ultimate objective of a sustainable society by improving on the current system, or must we transition to a new system?

Any approach which is aligned with or dependent on an economic system based on perpetual growth and the pursuit of more, or one where value is created by many but captured by a few, does not offer the structure that can deliver the changes we need to address our environmental and social challenges.

A circular economy is necessary, but not sufficient, for the systemic change we need to get us on track for a secure future. The not-for-profit model is also necessary but not sufficient, though it differs from circular economy in that it is a transformational approach away from the growth paradigm, giving us a better chance to move out of ecological overshoot, and deliver prosperous lives for everyone.

A real circular economy would expand the definition of the circular economy to one where its operating system is regenerative not extractive not only towards nature, but people; one where wealth is equitably circulated and shared. A truly circular economy would mean that the circular ethos is also reflected in our social systems, including our financial services, our business structures, and the political frameworks and cultural norms that influence human behaviour.

What if circular economy businesses were commenced as, or transitioned to, not-for-profit business models?

This is a way to fund circular economies in their truest sense – not just by moving to a circular economy of materials that has to keep growing and maximising profit, but by also making circular the value flows that could help fund the positive social and environmental change we need to make, creating a circular economy of wealth in service of the common good.

Supplementary Material and Credits

Authored by Sharon Ede

CoFounder, Post Growth Institute
Catalyst, Fab City Global Initiative

December 2016

Images: Lead image by Sparkleice. Additional images by Andy Tolsma, @ondasderuido, Leo HSU, Sparkleice, Francokv, Fui and Jan Fidler. Circular economy diagrams sourced by Sharon Ede/Post Growth Institute.

References

Diez, Tomas (2016) ‘Locally Productive, Globally Connected, Self-Sufficient Cities’ – Fab City Whitepaper: http://fab.city/whitepaper.pdf
Hinton, Jennifer and Maclurcan, Donald (2017 forthcoming) ‘How On Earth’: www.howonearth.us

In addition to specified references, this paper reflects years of mentoring by, and collaboration with:

Paul Downton, architect and urban ecologist, Cherie Hoyle, community leader and urban ecologist, the driving force behind Adelaide’s ‘piece of ecocity’, Christie Walk
Mathis Wackernagel, Global Footprint Network founder and CEO and William Rees, creator of the Ecological Footprint concept
Donnie Maclurcan and Jennifer Hinton, co-directors of the Post Growth Institute
Michel Bauwens, founder of the P2P Foundation
Tomas Diez, instigator of the Fab City Global Initiative

Acknowledgments

Special thanks to Tomas Diez, Donnie Maclurcan and Jennifer Hinton for reviewing this paper, and for their contributions and suggestions.

Footnotes

[1] www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/circular-economy
[2] www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/circular-economy/overview/principles
[3] http://circulatenews.org/2016/11/douglas-rushkoff-on-reprogramming-our-economic-operating-system; www.rushkoff.com/medium-douglas-rushkoff-growth-became-enemy-prosperity-fix
[4] www.paecon.net/PAEReview/issue68/RammeltCrisp68.pdf
[5] http://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Perma-Circularity
[6] www.footprintnetwork.org/images/article_uploads/EOD15_PR_scenario_graphic_final.jpg
[7] The Ecological Footprint concept was initiated and developed by the University of British Columbia’s Professor William Rees, who has been teaching the Ecological Footprint concept since the mid-1970s, and Mathis Wackernagel, a PhD student of Rees, went on to further develop and promote the Footprint, founding the Global Footprint Network.
[8] www.footprintnetwork.org/en/index.php/GFN/page/footprint_basics_overview
[9] www.footprintnetwork.org/en/index.php/GFN/page/footprint_data_and_results
[10] www.footprintnetwork.org/en/index.php/GFN/page/methodology; www.footprintnetwork.org/documents/National_Footprint_Accounts_2016_Guidebook.pdf
[11] www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/jan/19/co2-emissions-outsourced-rich-nations-rising-economies
[12] www.overshootday.org/about-earth-overshoot-day on the supply side, a city, state, or nation’s biocapacity represents its biologically productive land and sea area, including forest lands, grazing lands, cropland, fishing grounds, and built-up land. On the demand side, the Ecological Footprint measures a population’s demand for plant-based food and fiber products, livestock and fish products, timber and other forest products, space for urban infrastructure, and forest to absorb its carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels.
[13] www.overshootday.org
[14] www.mckinsey.com/global-themes/urbanization/urban-world-mapping-the-economic-power-of-cities; www.citylab.com/housing/2016/04/cities-drive-the-new-world-order-parag-khanna-connectography-maps/480165
[15] www.ecocitystandards.org
[16] www.ecocitybuilders.org
[17] https://i.unu.edu/media/ourworld.unu.edu-en/article/4502/transport-energy.jpeg
[18] www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/11/041103234736.htm; www.nature.com/news/2005/050307/full/news050307-2.html
[19] www.gdrc.org/uem/footprints/girardet.html
[20] www.ruaf.org/sites/default/files/UA%20and%20biodiversity.pdf
[21] www.footprintnetwork.org/ecological_footprint_nations
[22] http://metrocosm.com/map-international-trade
[23] www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/oct/28/shipping-industry-fails-agreement-cap-carbon-emissions; www.transportenvironment.org/press/shipping-emissions-17-global-co2-making-it-elephant-climate-negotiations-room
[24] www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-416740/British-seafood-shipped-Thailand—just-shells-removed.html
[25] www.natcap.org/images/other/NCchapter10.pdf
[26] www.policyinnovations.org/ideas/policy_library/data/01554
[27] www.mnn.com/your-home/organic-farming-gardening/videos/michael-pollan-the-problem-with-monocultures
[28] www.newscientist.com/article/mg21328566.000-fibre-optics-to-connect-japan-to-the-uk–via-the-arctic
[29] www.ecocitydesign.net
[30] https://issuu.com/fabcity/docs/fab_city_booklet_v1
[31] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_manufacturing
[32] www.fabfoundation.org/index.php/what-is-a-fab-lab/index.html
[33] https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/media-arts-and-sciences/mas-863-how-to-make-almost-anything-fall-2002
[34] http://singularityhub.com/2016/04/13/how-microfactories-can-bring-iterative-manufacturing-to-the-masses
[35] www.fab.city
[36] http://fab.city/whitepaper.pdf
[37] www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/digital-mckinsey/our-insights/digital-globalization-the-new-era-of-global-flows
[38] https://blog.fab.city/co-creating-the-fab-city-poblenou-roadmap-at-ouishare-fest-barcelona-2016-afb418c5a151
[39] http://market.fablabs.io/
[40] http://market.fablabs.io/manifesto
[41] www.p2plab.gr/el/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Futures.pdf
[42] http://wiki.commonstransition.org/wiki/Cosmo-localism_and_the_futures_of_material_production
[43] http://digg.com/2016/every-ship-in-the-world
[44] http://motherboard.vice.com/read/why-an-assembled-in-america-iphone-wont-bring-back-skilled-manufacturing-jobs
[45] www.theguardian.com/world/2016/may/25/adidas-to-sell-robot-made-shoes-from-2017
[46] www.businessinsider.com.au/wef-davos-report-on-robots-replacing-human-jobs-2016-1
[47] www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-12-02/a-job-is-more-than-a-paycheck
[48] www.pieria.co.uk/articles/the_wastefulness_of_automation
[49] www.canberratimes.com.au/national/public-service/the-modern-phenomenon-of-bullshit-jobs-20130831-2sy3j.html
[50] www.theage.com.au/comment/the-case-for-a-universal-basic-income-no-questions-asked-20161118-gssj23.html
[51] www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/basic-income-funded-by-capital-income-by-yanis-varoufakis-2016-10
[52] in www.howonearth.us forthcoming 2017
[53] https://youtu.be/DOa8U0yixgQ
[54] http://postgrowth.org/learn/about-post-growth/faq/#consuption-vs-population
[55] www.spiegel.de/international/business/beyond-gdp-economists-search-for-new-definition-of-well-being-a-650532.html
[56] www.esd.ornl.gov/benefits_conference/nature_paper.pdf
[57] http://steadystate.org/discover/downsides-of-economic-growth
[58]www.theecologist.org/blogs_and_comments/commentators/2988051/to_deliver_sustainable_development_first_give_up_on_growth.html; www.pnas.org/content/112/20/6271.abstract
[59] www.pnas.org/content/112/20/6271.full
[60] http://sapiens.revues.org/1242; http://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Circular_Economy_Effects_Only_Work_Under_One_Percent_Growth
[61] http://arnsperger-perma-circular.com/2016/06/22/one-engineers-deeper-wisdom-francois-grosse-and-the-rediscovery-of-the-perma-circular-mindset; http://unil.academia.edu/ChristianArnsperger
[62] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons’s_paradox
[63] www.thenextsystem.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/RichardSmith.pdf
[64] www.footprintnetwork.org/en/index.php/GFN/page/footprint_for_finance; www.footprintnetwork.org/images/uploads/UNEPFI_Ecobonds_Brochure.pdf
[65] www.footprintnetwork.org/images/uploads/UNEPFI_Ecobonds_Brochure.pdf
[66] www.oxfam.org/sites/www.oxfam.org/files/file_attachments/bp210-economy-one-percent-tax-havens-180116-summ-en_0.pdf
[67] www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/mar/09/society-unequal-the-spirit-level
[68] www.shareadelaide.com/blog/hearts-minds-sharing-as-a-mental-health-intervention
[69] http://charleseisenstein.net/ascent-of-humanity/the-anonymous-power
[70] http://postgrowth.org/stuck-on-the-bus
[71] www.forumforthefuture.org/sites/default/files/Card%20deck.pdf
[72] www.zerowastescotland.org.uk/content/what-are-circular-economy-business-models
[73] www.abc.net.au/news/2014-11-14/dcosta-g20-should-focus-on-jobs-not-growth/5891308
[74] http://newint.org/blog/2011/03/02/privatizing-profit-and-socializing-risk
[75]http://grist.org/business-technology/none-of-the-worlds-top-industries-would-be-profitable-if-they-paid-for-the-natural-capital-they-use/
[76] www.forbes.com/sites/elainepofeldt/2016/10/06/new-survey-freelance-economy-shows-rapid-growth
[77] www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2011/11/28/maximizing-shareholder-value-the-dumbest-idea-in-the-world/#7ab1d3c92224
[78] www.reuters.com/article/us-offshore-wealth-idUSBRE86L03U20120722
[79] www.worldwealthreport.com/sites/all/themes/wwr/images/WWR2015-GeneralInfographic.jpg
[80] in www.howonearth.us forthcoming in 2017
[81] www.howonearth.us
[82] www.theselc.org/cooperatives
[83] http://platformcoop.net/
[84] http://open.coop/open
[85] http://reconomy.org/economic-enablers/alternative-means-of-exchange/complementary-currencies
[86] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptocurrency; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cryptocurrencies
[87] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commons-based_peer_production
[88] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
[89] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RepRap_project
[90] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arduino
[91] www.youtube.com/watch?v=46xXynjY4Nc
[92] www.enspiral.com
[93] www.loomio.org
[94] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precariat
[95] http://joshuavial.com/capped-returns; http://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Capped_Returns
[96] http://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Transvestment
[97] in www.howonearth.us forthcoming 2017
[98] in www.howonearth.us forthcoming 2017
[99] in www.howonearth.us forthcoming 2017
[100] in www.howonearth.us forthcoming 2017

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French Development Agency Champions the Commons as New Vision for Development

David Bollier — Fri, 27 Jan 2017 09:30:00 +0000

The word “development” has long been associated with the Western project of promoting technological and economic “progress” for the world’s marginalized countries. The thinking has been: With enough support to build major infrastructure projects, expand private property rights, and build market regimes, the poor nations of Africa, Latin America and Asia can escape their poverty and become “modern” — prosperous, happy consumers and entrepreneurs poised to enter a bright future driven by economic growth and technology.

That idea hasn’t worked out so well.

As climate change intensifies, the ecological implications of growth-based “development” are now alarming if not fatuous. The 2008 financial crisis exposed the sham of self-regulating “free markets” and the structural political corruption, consumer predation and wealth inequality that they tend to entail. And culturally, people are starting to realize, even in poorer countries, that the satisfactions of mass consumerism are a mirage. A life defined by a dependency on global markets and emulation of western lifestyles is a pale substitute for a life embedded in native cultures, languages and social norms, and enlivened by working partnerships with nature and peers.

AFD Chief Economist Gaël Giraud

It is therefore exciting to learn that Agence Française de Développement (AFD) – the French development agency, based in Paris – is actively considering the commons as a “future cornerstone of development.”

A key voice for this shift in perspective at AFD is Chief Economist Gaël Giraud, who boldly acknowledges that “growth is no longer a panacea.” He compares the current economic predicament to the plight of the Red Queen in Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, who had to keep running faster and faster just to stay in the same place. (For a short video interview with Giraud, in French, click here. Here is an AFD webpage devoted to various commons issues.)

In a blog post outlining his views of the commons and development (and not necessarily reflecting those of AFD), Giraud cited the loss of biodiversity of species as a major reason for a strategic shift in “development” goals. “The last mass extinction phase [of five previous ones in the planet’s history] affected dinosaurs and 40% of animal species 65 million years ago,” writes Giraud. “At each of these phases, a substantial proportion of fauna was lost within a phenomenon of a massive decline of biodiversity.”

Cultural diversity is equally important to our survival, Giraud noted. He noted that “the wealth of languages, and therefore of cultures, has as much value as biodiversity….We destroy a lot at the cultural level, and consequently the possibility of coming up with solutions tailored to specific environments. It involves fighting against cultural uniformity, which Jacques Derrida called “Global-Latinization.”

Why is all of this a concern to a development agency like AFD?

Citing the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals adopted in September 2015, Giraud writes that it is becoming quite clear that the whole idea of a Global North separate from the Global South no longer makes sense. “The bulk of our problems are now shared, in a world where the North-South border is tending to disappear.” Faced with existential global problems, the us/them distinctions of another era are a diversion from finding the solutions we need.

Giraud explains:

“Our greatest challenges concern the resilience of societies, in the North and South alike, faced with climate change, pollution and the progressive scarcity of mining resources, but also faced with the disruption of social ties caused in particular by the violent political reactions to ecological problems. The Syrian disaster was triggered by the 2007-2010 drought, without, of course, all of this crisis being due to the drought alone. The congress organized by the World Bank last spring on ‘The State of the Economy – The State of the World’ recorded this point: we economists have the unfortunate tendency of underestimating the impact of these upheavals. The truth is that they now represent a greater threat than the nuclear risk, for example.”

Giraud sees the commons as helping the world deal with many problems because “pooling resources with rules for sharing is an essential resilience factor. Development must involve a renewed understanding by institutions, which have already allowed communities in the past, and will allow them in the future, to preserve, develop and promote common, cultural or natural resources.”(original emphasis).

By this understanding, a preeminent development goal must be to preserve diversity – in species, habitat, culture – and the uniqueness of life wherever it may be. Given the nature of the global economy and capitalism as now structured, however, this means that we need to re-imagine “development” itself.

Giraud concedes that there are many major challenges in understanding the commons in today’s context:

How can we move from local experiences to more globalized management methods for the main global commons? What is the State’s role in the management of commons? Some people, such as Pierre Dardot and Christian Laval, the authors of The Common: An Essay on the 21st Century Revolution (La Découverte, Paris, 2014), argue that the State has nothing to do with the commons and embodies an obstacle to their management.

At AFD, we feel that while the State must not necessarily directly manage these commons, (which would ipso facto become public goods), it must create the conditions for possibilities for the emergence of commons within civil society and the private sector.(original emphasis) For example, promote the creativity of civil society to form coalitions and manage commons – through NGOs, cooperatives, etc. The Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative (DNDI) network is a wonderful example of joint management, at international level, of the cheap drugs industry in order to fight against diseases for which there is no solvent customer base with regard to the standard criteria of the traditional private sector. (original emphasis) It is a fundamental initiative for health in Sub-Saharan Africa, for example, and who can have any doubt today, after H1N1 or Ebola in particular, that health for all is a global common good?

The AFD took a major step toward actualizing a new vision when it convened a major conference on the commons in Paris on December 1-2, 2016, bringing together a variety of academics, policy experts, commoners, economists, and activists. I have not seen any formal presentation of the conference on the AFD website yet, but I have heard from colleagues that it was a remarkable event that augurs promising new steps toward commons-oriented development.

In the meantime, the AFD website states its ambitions plainly: “AFD has set up a crosscutting process of reflection on these subjects, involving research and operational officers. It calls on academics from all disciplines, as well as consultants and politicians, with the aim of building a common knowledge and understanding of the operationalization of the Commons for a development assistance agency. To what extent do the Commons renew our understanding of contexts, and our support for the public policies and projects we finance?”

In this time of dismal political news, AFD’s leadership on the commons is a sign of hope, sanity and the potential for planetary reconstruction.

Photo by psyberartist

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If Degrowth is an ‘irresponsible agenda’, can we achieve slow (quasi-circular) growth?

Michel Bauwens — Tue, 10 Jan 2017 11:50:00 +0000

In a discussion on the perma-circularity blog of Christian Arnsperger, the French biophysical engineer and economist Francois Grosse strongly argues that degrowth is the wrong path:

“Nobody has the slightest hint as to how to render viable a world economy that would be structurally de-growing while ensuring social balance, individual and collective satisfaction, and peace between the large states. Even the slow-growing economy (at a less-than-1% growth rate) that results from my earlier demonstration remains an unsolved challenge, since we still don’t know how to ensure employment, innovation, useful investments, and even democracy at such a low pace of economic growth. Just think back to the social structures and the kinds of international relations that prevailed across the world before industrialization. Even recommending that we create a perfectly clean and quasi-infinite energy source – so that we could gradually replace every negative externality with energy solutions that are neutral for the biosphere – would be less irresponsible than promoting de-growth. I don’t think it’s at all realistic to bet on this, but I suggest that the science we have now is much closer even to designing such an energy source than to inventing a stable de-growth economy. We can’t live with negative growth for any length of time. De-growth as a solution is a fraud; let’s drop it.”

Instead we argues we must strive for ‘quasi-circular growth’. He explains that:

“There’s no room for doubt and no possible escape: If the consumption of raw materials grows above 1% per year, or if the global addition to stocks lies above 20% of global consumption of any material, then there is no sense in recycling. And if we don’t soon become technically capable of recycling at least 60% to 80% of all the raw materials we’re using, then let’s not get all excited about changing this industrial world of ours into a sober one: our recycling efforts won’t have much impact on the future. The only way to have an impact is to do three things at the same time: slow growth, light accumulation, and high recycling. This is what I call “Quasi-Circular Growth.”

But how to do this ?

Unfortunately, “We still have no clue about this. Actually, the issue isn’t just raw-material production and recycling; it’s not just about how to engineer one global closed loop for each raw material. Earlier, I only discussed the global flows of non-renewable raw materials, but a circular economy needs to purposefully minimize retrieval and irreversible impacts for every material and biological resource locally, globally, and sustainably, while maximizing the benefits to mankind under that constraint. It’s a systemic challenge, including loops at every scale – like in a fractal system. When looking for solutions, it’s appealing to single out individual responsibilities within the system: managers seeking profits, engineers planning obsolescence, marketeers stimulating consumers’ greed, etc. All of this is, or may be, true. But merely pointing it out won’t help.

In the end, our individual experience – at least for most of us – is that today we usually still enjoy better health technologies, larger schools for our kids, a larger house, a more powerful mobile phone, etc. As the French sociologist Jean Baudrillard wrote in his 1970 book La société de consommation, “there is no limit to the ‘needs’ of man as a social being.” Making our society sustainable begins with imagining and reflecting on how our socially constructed needs could gradually be made to fit into the biosphere; and that’s only the beginning, not the point of arrival. Let me suggest a very first step, though: What if we began by regulating the minimum amount of recycled materials inside every new product?”

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Policies for a Post-Growth Economy

Stacco Troncoso — Thu, 15 Dec 2016 11:00:00 +0000

Why are there limits to growth? How can we bring about a flourishing post-growth economy? Dr. Samuel Alexander — a lecturer with the Office for Environmental Programs — originally wrote this paper for the Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute, University of Melbourne (MSSI), where he is a Research Fellow. Here, Alexander lays out the contradictions posed by the growth paradigm in our current context of resource scarcity and environmental boundaries. Tackling issues such as free time, budgets, banking and finance reform, resource caps, and renewable energy, Alexander’s paper presents a sobering vision of our current conundrum, but doesn’t stop there. Unlike the many existing critiques of the growth paradigm, “Policies for a Post-Growth Economy” mainly focuses on what a feasible and desirable Post-Growth Economy would look like. We are pleased to present it here as a Commons Transition Special Report.

Introduction

Definitions

How the Growth Economy is Defended

The Case for a Post-Growth Economy

Policies for a Post-Growth Economy

1) Explicit adoption of post-growth measures of progress:

2) Reduce overconsumption via diminishing ‘resource caps’:

3) Working hour reductions:

4) Rethink budget spending for a post-growth transition:

5) Renewable energy:

6) Banking and finance reform:

7) Population policies:

8) Reimagining the good life beyond consumer culture:

9) Distributive justice:

Hard Truths about a ‘Top-Down’ Transition

Conclusion

References

Credits

Introduction

The 1972 publication of Limits to Growth sparked a controversy that has yet to subside. This book argued that if population, resource use, and pollution kept increasing on our finite planet, eventually economies would face environmental ‘limits to growth’ – with potentially dire consequences. Although evidence is mounting in support of this position (Turner, 2014; Steffan et al, 2015), any suggestion that nations might have to give up economic growth, or even embrace a ‘degrowth’ process of planned economic contraction, is typically met with fierce resistance, especially by mainstream economists. In response to such arguments, most economists tend to insist that technological innovation, better design, and market mechanisms will mean that economies can and should continue growing indefinitely.

Those counter-arguments have shaped the cultural understanding of this debate, meaning that the ‘limits to growth’ perspective is widely and casually dismissed as flawed. Most people, including most politicians, still believe that sustained economic growth, in terms of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), is necessary for societal progress, and that such growth is consistent with environmental sustainability. For example, questioning economic growth never entered the key discussions at the Paris Climate Summit in December 2015, which implies that mainstream political and economic discourse still deems continuous GDP growth not just consistent with a safe climate, but a precondition for it.

The main political implication of the growth paradigm is that governments shape policies and institutions with the aim of promoting economic growth, giving society a pro-growth structure. This is supported by consumerist cultures that seek and indeed expect ever-rising material living standards. On the flip side, any policies and institutions that would inhibit economic growth are presumptively rejected or not even given a serious hearing.

This paper provides a summary case for why there are, in fact, limits to growth, and outlines a range of bold policy interventions that would be required to produce a stable and flourishing post-growth economy. The analysis draws on and attempts to develop a rich array of thinking from literatures including ecological economics, eco-socialism, degrowth, and sustainable consumption. For decades a huge amount has been written in critique of growth economics, but the literature on what a post-growth economy would look like, or how to get there, is far less developed. This is inhibiting the movement for change.

I acknowledge that most people do not recognise the need for a post-growth economy and therefore would reject my policy proposals as unacceptable. But as the limits to growth tighten their grip on economies in coming years and decades, I believe the debate will inevitably evolve, and the question will not be whether a post-growth economy is required, but rather how to create one – by design rather than disaster.

Definitions

In order to be for or against ‘growth’ it is important to understand what that term means, so I will begin with some definitions. Growth can be understood in various ways, including:

An increase in the resource/energy requirements of an economy (quantitative growth);
An increase in the productivity per unit of resource/energy (qualitative growth);
An increase in Gross Domestic Product (GDP growth);
An increase in wellbeing or happiness (wellbeing growth).

These are all legitimate ways to understand growth but they are not synonymous. One form of growth may or may not lead to other forms of growth. Some forms of growth may have limits, others may not. Fuzzy thinking about these forms of growth has produced unnecessary confusion and disagreement.

So where does the controversy lie?

How the Growth Economy is Defended

Nobody is against growth in wellbeing and even economists agree that economies cannot grow quantitatively forever on a finite planet. The real ‘limits to growth’ controversy lies in relation to the concepts of GDP and qualitative growth.

Defenders of growth argue that there is no reason why we cannot ‘decouple’ GDP growth from environmental impact in such a way that avoids any perceived limits to growth. These growth advocates might acknowledge that current forms of GDP growth are not sustainable, but nevertheless argue that what we need is ‘green growth’; that is, growth based in qualitative improvement not quantitative expansion.

This view is based in neoclassical economic theory. It maintains that if natural resources begin to get scarce, prices will go up, and this will set in motion two important dynamics. First of all, increased prices will dis-incentivise consumption of that resource and encourage alternatives or substitution, thus reducing demand of the scarce resource and mitigating the problem. Secondly, increased prices would incentivise the development of new technologies, new markets, or new substitutes, which will increase the production of the scarce resource, lead to its more efficient use, and provide new alternatives.

Furthermore, when markets are working properly and all the costs of production are ‘internalised’, the prices that result will mean human beings will only ever consume natural resources or pollute the environment to an ‘optimal’ degree. From this perspective, overconsumption of resources can only result from ‘market failures’, so all we need to do is fix those failures and deregulate the market, and then the environment will take care of itself as the ‘invisible hand’ maximises overall wellbeing. For these reasons, economists tend to argue that economies will never face limits to GDP growth. Those silly limits to growth theorists just don’t understand economics. Growth is good and more growth is better!

The conclusion drawn from this neoclassical code of beliefs is that all nations on the planet (including the richest) should continue pursuing growth in GDP, while aiming to decouple that growth from environmental impact by way of qualitative growth. Not only is this the dominant understanding at the national level, it shapes international discourse too, with the United Nations recently stating that ‘sustained growth’ is indispensable to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. I beg to differ.

The Case for a Post-Growth Economy

Such arguments for why there are no limits to growth are often coherent in theory, but when applied to practice their flaws become evident. In Prosperity without Growth, for example, Tim Jackson (2009) showed that if developed nations were to grow GDP by 2% over coming decades and by 2050 the global population had achieved a similar standard of living, the global economy would be 15 times larger than it is today in terms of GDP. If the global economy grew at 3% from then on it would be 30 times larger than the current economy by 2073, and 60 times larger by the end of this century.

Given that the global economy is already in gross ecological overshoot, it is utterly implausible to think that planetary ecosystems could withstand the impacts of a global economy that was 15, 30, or 60 times larger, in terms of GDP, than it is today. Even a global economy twice or four times as big should be of profound ecological concern. What makes this growth trajectory all the more implausible is that if we asked politicians whether they would prefer 4% GDP growth to 3%, they would all say yes, and the exponential growth scenario just outlined would become even more absurd. Gaia forbid we get what we are aiming for!

Yes, we need to do our very best to decouple GDP from environmental impact via qualitative growth, by exploiting appropriate technology and implementing smart design. That is absolutely necessary to achieve sustainability. And there is huge potential for efficiency improvements both in terms of cleaner production, increased recycling, and less-impactful consumer choices. Nobody is denying that. But when we think through the basic arithmetic of growth it becomes perfectly clear that compound GDP growth quickly renders the growth model a recipe for ecological and thus humanitarian disaster. We need an alternative model of economic progress, as well as a culture and set of institutions that facilitate a transition ‘beyond growth’.

In short, the fatal problem with the growth model is that it relies on an extent of decoupling that quickly becomes unachievable. We simply cannot make a growing supply of food, clothes, houses, cars, appliances, gadgets, etc. with 15, 30, or 60 times less energy and resources than we do today. To make matters worse for the defenders of ‘green growth’, research published in 2015 by the US Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (Wiedmann et al, 2015) has debunked the widespread myth that the developed nations are already in process of significant decoupling. It turns out that what developed nations have mainly been doing is outsourcing energy and resource intensive manufacturing and ‘recoupling’ it elsewhere, especially China. The consequence is that as the world naïvely pursues green growth, the environmental crisis continues to worsen. Technology and ‘free markets’ are not the salvation they promised to be.

In order to move toward a just and sustainable global economy, the developed nations must reduce their resource demands to a ‘fair share’ ecological footprint – which might imply an 80% reduction or more (depending on the resource and context) if the global population is to achieve a similar material living standard. But such significant quantitative reductions cannot be achieved if we persist with the dominant economics of GDP growth. It follows that the developed nations need to initiate policies for a post- growth economy at once, and in time the developing nations will also need to transition to a post-growth economy, so that the global economy comes to operate within the sustainable carrying capacity of the planet while providing a sufficient material standing of living for all people. This is humanity’s defining challenge in coming years and decades.

Policies for a Post-Growth Economy

As outlined below, a post-growth economy will require, among other things, developing new macroeconomic policies and institutions, confronting the population challenge, and culturally embracing post-consumerist lifestyles of material sufficiency. The following proposals are not intended to be comprehensive, and they are not presented as a blueprint that could be applied independent of context. Instead, the review simply outlines a range of key issues that would need to be addressed in any ‘top down’ transition to a post-growth economy. After outlining what the structures of a post-growth economy might look like, I consider the question of whether such an economy could be legislated into existence in a globalised market economy, or whether a post-growth economy is inconsistent with globalisation as we know it.

1) Explicit adoption of post-growth measures of progress:

In order to transcend the growth model, the first thing needed is to adopt better and more nuanced measures of progress than GDP (Stiglitz, Sen, and Fitoussi, 2010). What we measure, and how we measure it, It is now widely recognised that GDP is a deeply flawed measure of societal progress, yet it remains the dominant way to assess politico-economic success. GDP is merely an aggregate of market transactions, making no distinction between economic activities that contribute positively to sustainable wellbeing and those that diminish it. For example, GDP can be growing while at the same time our environment is being degraded, inequality is worsening, and social wellbeing is stagnant. Accordingly, a politics and economics ‘beyond growth’ must begin by explicitly adopting some post-growth measure of progress, such as the Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI). Although it is not a perfect metric, the GPI takes into account a wide range of social, economic, and environmental factors that GDP ignores, thus representing a vast improvement over GDP. Public understanding of and support for such post-growth accounting systems would open up political space for political parties to defend policy and institutional changes – such as those outlined below – which would genuinely improve social wellbeing and enhance ecological conditions, even if these would not maximise growth in GDP. If we do not measure progress accurately we cannot expect to progress.

2) Reduce overconsumption via diminishing ‘resource caps’:

One of the defining problems with the growth paradigm is that the developed nations now have resource and energy demands that could not possibly be universalised to all nations. The quantitative ‘scale’ of our economies is overblown. It follows that any transition to a just and sustainable world requires the developed nations to stop overconsuming the world’s scarce resources and reduce resource and energy demands significantly.

Although in theory efficiency gains in production provide one pathway to reduced demand, the reality is that within a growth economy, efficiency gains tend to be reinvested in more growth and consumption, rather than reducing impact. After all, efficiency gains can reduce the costs of production, making a commodity cheaper, thus incentivising increased consumption of the commodity. In order to contain this well documented phenomenon (for a review, see Alexander, 2015: Ch. 1), a post-growth economy would need to introduce diminishing resource caps – that is, well defined limits to resource consumption – to ensure that efficiency gains are directed into reducing overall resource consumption, not directed into more growth. In fact, diminishing resource caps would actually encourage and stimulate efficiency improvements, because producers would know that there would be increasing competition over key resources and so would be driven to eliminate waste and create a ‘circular economy’ where products at the end of their life are reused in the next phase of production. In an age of ecological overshoot, the overconsuming developed nations need to achieve significant absolute reductions in resource demand (absolute decoupling) not just productivity gains (relative decoupling).

Determining where to set the resource caps, how quickly they should be reduced (e.g. 3% per year to allow markets to adjust), and where they should be aiming to stabilise (e.g. an equal per capita share), are open questions that can be debated. Formulating a workable policy in this domain would require, among other things, a highly sophisticated and detailed scientific accounting of resource stocks and flows of the economy. But the first step is simply to recognise that, in the developed nations, diminishing resource caps are a necessary part of achieving the ‘degrowth’ in resource consumption that is required for justice and sustainability.

3) Working hour reductions:

One obvious implication of diminishing resource caps is that a lot less resource-intensive producing and consuming will take place in a post-growth That will almost certainly mean reduced GDP, although there is still great scope for qualitative growth (technological innovation and efficiency improvements). But what implications will a contracting economy have for employment? Growth in GDP is often defended on the grounds that it is required to keep unemployment at manageable levels. If a nation gives up the pursuit of GDP, therefore, it must maintain employment via some other means. Restructuring the labour market is essential for the stability of any post-growth economy. Today, Australians work some of the longest hours in the OECD, but it is not clear such long hours contribute positively to social wellbeing. Could we work less but live more? By reducing the average working week to, say, 28 hours, a post-growth economy would share the available work amongst the working population, thereby minimising or eliminating unemployment even in a non-growing or contracting economy, while at the same time increasing social wellbeing by reducing overwork (Coote and Franklin, 2013). The aim would be to systematically exchange superfluous consumption for increased free time, which would also bring environmental benefits. While some of the increased free time could be spent enjoying local, low-impact leisure activities, some of it would also be spent engaging in the informal economy, such as activities of self-sufficiency (e.g. various forms of household production, growing food, house maintenance, sharing, volunteering, etc.) and local barter. This increased self-sufficiency and community engagement would also mitigate the impacts of reduced income in a post-growth economy by reducing household expenditure on basic needs. In this way a post-growth economy would not induce spiralling unemployment or hardship as is often feared. A deliberately created post-growth or degrowth economy is very different to unplanned recession.

Indeed, planned contraction of the formal economy has the potential to liberate people from the work-to-spend cycle and provide people with more autonomy, meaning, and variety in their working lives.

4) Rethink budget spending for a post-growth transition:

Governments are the most significant player in any economy and have the most spending. Accordingly, if governments decide to take the limits to growth seriously this will require a fundamental rethink of how public funds are invested and spent. Broadly speaking, within a post-growth paradigm public spending would not aim to facilitate sustained GDP growth but instead support the projects and infrastructure needed to support a swift transition to a post-growth economy. This would include huge divestment from the fossil fuel economy and a co-relative reinvestment in renewable energy systems (see next section). But it would also require huge investment in other forms of ‘green’ infrastructure. The importance of creating new infrastructure highlights the fact that consumption practices in a society do not take place in a vacuum. Instead, our consumption takes place within structures of constraint, and those structures make some lifestyle options easy or necessary, and other lifestyle options difficult or impossible. Currently, many people find themselves ‘locked in’ to high-impact lifestyles due to the structures within which they live their lives (Sanne, 2002). To provide one example: it is very difficult to stop driving a private motor vehicle if there is poor public transport and insufficient bike lanes. Change the infrastructure, however, and new, low-impact lifestyles implied by a post-growth economy would be more easily embraced.

Greening infrastructure will therefore require a significant revision of government expenditure. Recognising climate change as a national ‘security threat’, for example, and on that basis redirecting a significant portion of military spending toward renewable energy and efficient systems of public transport, is one path to funding the infrastructure (and other post-growth policies) needed for a stable and flourishing post-growth economy.

5) Renewable energy:

In anticipation of the foreseeable stagnation and eventual decline of fossil fuel supplies, and recognising the grave dangers presented by climate change, a post-growth economy would need to transition swiftly to renewable energy and more efficient energy systems and practices. This provides a hugely promising space to meaningfully employ large segments of the population as the fossil fuel economy enters terminal decline. But just as important as ‘greening’ the supply of energy is the challenge (too often neglected) of reducing energy demand. After all, it will be much easier to transition to 100% renewable energy if energy use is significantly reduced through behavioural changes, reduced production and consumption, and more efficient appliances. Indeed, the extremely tight and fast diminishing carbon budget for a safe climate now makes this ‘demand side’ response a necessity (Anderson, 2013; Anderson, 2015), yet the significantly reduced energy demand required for a safe climate is incompatible with the growth model, because energy is what drives economic growth (see Ayres and Warr, 2009). Accordingly, a post-growth politics would initiate a transition to 100% renewable energy financed in part by a strong carbon tax, and undertake a public education campaign to facilitate reduced energy demand. Given how hard it will be to fully replace the fossil fuel economy with renewable energy (especially the 94 million barrels of oil currently consumed everyday), it is also worth highlighting that a post-carbon economy will have to adapt to an energy descent context and is likely to be a far more localised economy than the globalised, fossil fuel dependent economy we know today (Moriarty and Honnery, 2008). While there would still be some limited space for global trade in a post-growth economy, most production would seek, by default, to use local resources from the bioregion to meet mostly local needs, thereby shortening the links between production and consumption. As well as running the economy on renewables, a post-growth strategy could also involve placing a moratorium on the cutting down of old growth forests and planting up huge tracts of land with trees to sequester carbon. Any coherent climate strategy must also address the huge carbon footprint of meat (especially red meat) and accordingly promote significantly reduced meat consumption (see Harvey, 2016).

6) Banking and finance reform:

Currently, our systems of banking and finance essentially have a ‘growth imperative’ built into their Money is loaned into existence by private banks as interest-bearing debt, and in order to pay back that debt plus the interest, this requires an expansion of the money supply (Trainer, 2011). Furthermore, there is so much public and private debt today that the only way it could be paid back is via decades of continued GDP growth. This type of banking system requires growth for stability and yet limitless economic growth, as argued above, is the driving force behind the environmental crisis. In order to move toward a stable, post-growth economy, part of the institutional restructuring required involves deep reform of banking and finance systems. This is a complex transition that could take various forms, but at base it would require the state taking responsibility for creating banking and finance systems that do not require growth for stability, and strictly regulating these systems to ensure equity. A post-growth transition might also require ‘debt jubilees’ in some circumstances, especially in developing nations that are unjustly being suffocated by interest payments to rich world lenders. Developing nations, for example, receive about $136 billion in aid from donor countries but pay about $600 billion servicing debt (see Hickel, 2013). No fancy theorising can plausibly defend such a situation as just.

7) Population policies:

As population grows more resources are required to provide for the basic material needs of humanity (food, clothing, shelter, ), increasing our demands on an already overburdened planet. It is absolutely imperative that nations around the world unite to confront the population challenge directly, rather than just assuming that the problem will be solved when the developing world gets rich. Population policies will inevitably be controversial but the world needs bold and equitable leadership on this issue. Research suggests that the world is facing a population of around 9.5 billion by mid-century and 11 billion by the end of this century (Gerland et al, 2014), which would be utterly catastrophic from both social and environmental perspectives. As Paul Ehrlich famously noted, ‘whatever problem you’re interested in, you’re not going to solve it unless you also solve the population problem.’ The first thing needed is a global fund that focuses on providing the education, empowerment, and contraception required to minimise the estimated 87 million unintended pregnancies that occur every year (WHO, 2016). If these unplanned pregnancies were avoided, a significant part of the population problem would be resolved. Furthermore, all financial incentives that encourage population growth should be abolished and the benefits of small families should be highlighted. Command-and-control policies, such as one or two child policies, should be a last resort, but even such controversial policies would arguably be preferable to a world of 11 billion people. I think everyone who casually dismisses the limits to growth perspective should be given a Petri dish with a swab of bacteria in it and watch as the colony grows until it consumes all the available nutrients or is poisoned by its own waste. From a distance, Earth today would look very much like that Petri dish. Bacteria mightn’t show the insight to stop growing on a finite resource base – but will humanity? We are at the crossroads and are in the process of choosing out collective fate.

8) Reimagining the good life beyond consumer culture:

Despite the environmental necessity of population stabilisation and eventual decline, the fact remains that currently there are 4 billion people on Earth, all of whom have the right to the material conditions needed to live a full and dignified human life. Nevertheless, if the global economy is to raise the material living standards of the great multitudes currently living in destitution, this is likely to put further pressure on global ecosystems. Therefore, in order to leave some ‘ecological room’ for the poorest people to develop their economic capacities in some form, high-impact consumer lifestyles must be swiftly transcended and rich nations must initiate a degrowth process of planned economic contraction. There is no conceivable way that seven billion people, let alone eleven billion, could live sustainably on Earth in material affluence. Globalising affluence, quite simply, would be ecologically catastrophic. Accordingly, members of the global consumer class need to reimagine the good life beyond consumer culture and develop new conceptions of human flourishing based on sufficiency, moderation, frugality, and non-materialistic sources of meaning and satisfaction. From a consumption perspective, this might mean driving less and cycling more; growing local organic food; putting on woollen clothing rather than always turning on the heater; taking shorter showers; flying less or not at all; eating less meat; making and mending rather than buying new; sharing more; and in countless other ways rethinking lifestyles in ways that radically reduce energy and resource burdens. In sum, a post-growth economy would not aim to provide affluence for all but modest sufficiency for all – which is what justice and sustainability requires.

A necessary part of any post-growth politics would therefore require a public relations campaign that openly challenged consumerist lifestyles and highlighted the social and environmental benefits of a ‘simpler life’ with less stuff but more free time. Linked to such an education campaign would be a strategy to minimise exposure to advertising that currently glorifies and encourages consumerism. For example, a post-growth economy might follow the city of Sao Paulo by banning all outdoor advertising on billboards, shop fronts, vehicles, etc.

9) Distributive justice:

Last but not least, environmental concerns cannot be isolated from social justice The conventional path to poverty alleviation is via the strategy of GDP growth, on the assumption that ‘a rising tide will lift all boats’. Given that a post-growth economy deliberately seeks a non-growing economy – on the assumption that a rising tide will sink all boats – poverty alleviation must be achieved more directly, via redistribution, both nationally and internationally. In other words (and to change the metaphor), a post-growth economy would eliminate poverty and achieve distributive equity not by baking an ever-larger economic pie but by slicing it differently. Any attempt to systemically redistribute wealth via taxation or property reform will be highly controversial, especially in our neoliberal age, but present concentrations of wealth demand a political response. Research published this year (see Elliot, 2016) shows that the richest 62 people on the planet now own more than the poorest half of humanity. Dwell on that for a moment. Furthermore, it has been shown that, as the US seeks to recover from the Global Financial Crisis, 95% of GDP growth has gone to the top 1% of the population (Saez, 2012).

This highlights the point that growth itself will not resolve poverty; we need policies that directly redistribute wealth and ensure a dignified material baseline. There is no single best policy for eliminating poverty or achieving a just distribution of wealth, but key policy options include (i) a basic income for all, which guarantees every permanent resident with a minimal, living wage; (ii) an alternative is the ‘negative income tax’, which guarantees a minimum income for those who earn below a certain threshold; (iii) progressive tax policies (i.e. the more you earn, the higher the tax rate) which could culminate in a top tax rate of 90% or more; (iv) wealth taxes, that systematically transfer 3% of private wealth from the richest to the poorest recognising the large social component in wealth production; and (v) estate taxes of 90% or more to ensure the laws of inheritance and bequest do not create a class system of entrenched wealth and entrenched poverty. These and other tax-and-transfer policies should be explored to eliminate poverty and ensure distributive equity. Obviously, arguments that such policies would inhibit growth do not hold water within a post-growth framework.

I contend that these policy platforms – all in need of detailed elaboration and discussion – should be the opening moves in a ‘top down’ transition to a post-growth economy. To be employed in concert, they clearly challenge the dominant macroeconomics of growth and would require far more social control over the economy than neoliberal capitalism permits today. Markets work well in some circumstances, no doubt, but leaving everything to the market and thinking this will magically advance the common good has been proven dangerously false. It follows that a post-growth economy must be a post-capitalist or eco- socialist economy, with increased democratic planning and perhaps even some rationing of key resources to ensure distributive equity. The policies above also depend upon a society that sees the necessity and desirability of a post-growth economy, hence the special importance of public education campaigns and the emergence of a new, post-consumerist culture of consumption.

Beyond these policy platforms, it should go without saying that any post-growth transition would require an array of other revolutionary reforms, including policies to create (or recreate) a ‘free press’; policies to ensure that campaign financing rules do not permit undue economic influence on the democratic process; policies that ensure affordable housing or access to land; policies to promote alternative corporate forms, such as worker cooperatives; and so forth. I do not pretend to have provided a complete political agenda for a post-growth economy. The proposals above are merely key aspects of such a transition and a good place to begin thinking about how to structure a just and sustainable, post-growth economy.

As well as maintaining and updating the critique of growth and detailing coherent policies for a post- growth economy, it is also important to develop sophisticated transition strategies that would maximise the chances of a post-growth political campaign succeeding. Among other things, this would involve exploring the role grassroots social movements might have to play creating the cultural foundations for a post-growth economy. As suggested above, a clever and sustained ‘social marketing’ campaign promoting a post-growth economy is critical here, in order to weaken the hold the ideology of growth has on society.

Hard Truths about a ‘Top-Down’ Transition

I wish to conclude by acknowledging several hard truths about the feasibility of a ‘top down’ transition to a post-growth economy. The first is to note that cultures around the world, especially in the developed world, are not close to being ready to take the idea of a post-growth economy seriously. In Australia, for example, our current and prospective governments are all firmly embedded in the growth paradigm and they show no signs of questioning it – none at all. At the cultural level, the expectation of ever-increasing affluence (which assumes continued growth) is as strong as ever. In this political and cultural context,the policy proposals outlined above – however necessary they might be to confronting the limits to growth predicament – will strike most people as wildly unrealistic, overly interventionist, and probably undesirable. I am not so deluded as to think otherwise.

The second point to note, subtly linked to the first, is that the powers-that-be would not tolerate these policies for a post-growth economy. To provide a case in point, when a relatively fringe Occupy Movement in 2011 began to challenge undue corporate influence on democracy and make noise about wealth inequality, soon enough the executive branches of government bore down upon the activists and stamped out the opposition. Mainstream media made little effort to understand the movement. Given that a post- growth economy would directly undermine the economic interests of the most powerful corporations and institutions in society, one should expect merciless and sustained resistance from these vested interests if a post-growth movement ever began gaining ascendency.

The third point to note – and probably the most challenging – is that, in a globalised world order, even the bold policies proposed above would be unlikely to produce a stable and flourishing post-growth economy. After all, how would the stock markets react if a government announced a policy agenda that would deliberately aim to contract the economy for environmental and social justice reasons? More specifically, how would the stock markets react if a government, in pursuit of sustainability and global equity, introduced a diminishing resource cap that sought to phase out the most damaging industries and reduce resource consumption by 80% of current Australian levels? I suspect there would be utter turmoil, ultimately leading to an economic crash far greater than the global financial crisis. My point is that it may well be impossible to implement a smooth ‘top down’ transition to a post-growth economy, even if a strong social movement developed that wanted this. The market economies we know today would be unlikely to be able to adjust to the types and speed of foundational changes required. A ‘great disruption’ of some form may be a necessary or inevitable part of the transition beyond growth.

To make matters more challenging still, in a globalised economy, it is not clear whether a single nation could adopt a post-growth economy without inducing a range of antagonistic reactions from other nations. On the one hand, there is a web of international ‘free trade’ agreements that make such a move highly problematic, and could even provoke sanctions from international institutions or other governments. On the other hand, in a globalised economy there is always the threat of capital flight the moment a government threatens to defy the neoliberal logic of profit-maximisation or talks of wealth redistribution. There is also the geopolitical risk of being a leader in a post-growth transition, as this may involve fewer funds available for military forces, weakening a nation’s relative power globally. All of these issues radically call into question the feasibility of a ‘top down’ transition to a post-growth economy, and yet these challenges are rarely acknowledged in the post-growth literature.

Despite a ‘top down’ transition facing huge, perhaps insurmountable, obstacles, governments are going to act in one way or another, and their influence matters. It follows that we should be pressuring them to do everything they can to assist in the emergence of a post-growth economy, even if, in the end, we may need the build the post-growth economy ourselves, at the grassroots level, with or without state support.

Conclusion

So where does that leave us? In the paradoxical position, I would argue, of knowing that a planned transition to a post-growth economy is both necessary and seemingly impossible. If there are indeed little grounds for thinking that a ‘top down’ transition is likely or possible without inducing deep economic disruption and instability, one strategic deduction is that a post-growth economy, if it is to emerge, may have to be driven into existence ‘from below’, with local communities coming together to do it themselves. One could adopt a ‘theory of change’ based in anarchism or participatory democracy, in which a new, post-growth Economy B is slowly built up at the grassroots level, with active social movements more or less ignoring the state, and over time this new economy becomes dominant as the old, growth- orientated Economy A deteriorates (Trainer, 2010). Indeed, it could be argued that, at this early stage in the transition, the most important thing a concerned citizen can do is to work on changing culture at the local, community level, trusting that, over time, if a large social movement develops which demands a post- growth economy, the structures and systems necessary for such an economy will eventually filter upwards as culture radicalises and develops a more engaged political consciousness. Admittedly, these strategies are unlikely to take down Empire in the near-term, but arguably they embody a more coherent political intelligence than the conventional approach of thinking that a post-growth economy could be smoothly introduced via ‘top down’ parliamentary politics.

The ultimate message from this analysis, therefore, is that those concerned about limits to growth should be splitting their energies between two main activities: (1) raising awareness about the limits to growth and the inability of capitalism to resolve those limits; and (2) attempting to establish examples of the post- growth economy at the local, community level, and working on building the new systems and cultures required for such examples to proliferate and take root. Fortunately these activities are likely to help build resilience even if they fail to produce a post-growth economy. Thus, if we face a future where the growth economy grows itself to death, which seems to be the most likely scenario, then building up local resilience and self-sufficiency now will prove to be time and energy well spent. In the end, it is likely that only when a deep crisis arrives will an ethics of sufficiency come to inform our economic thinking and practice more broadly.

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Credits

Issues paper No. 6 April 2016

About MSSI Issues Papers

MSSI strives to inform and stimulate public conversation about key sustainability questions facing our society. Our Issues Papers provide information and trigger discussion about these issues. Each paper encapsulates the insights of a thinker or practitioner in sustainability. Although material is often closely informed by peer- reviewed academic research, the papers themselves are presented in a clear, discursive style that appeals to a broad readership. The views and opinions contained within MSSI publications are solely those of the author/s and do not reflect those held by MSSI, the University of Melbourne or any other relevant party.While MSSI endeavours to provide reliable analysis and believes the material it presents is accurate, it will not be liable for any claim by any party acting on the information in this paper. © Copyright protects this material.

Production Editor Claire Denby, Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute, [email protected]

About the author

Author Dr Samuel Alexander is a lecturer with the Office for Environmental Programs and a Research Fellow with the Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute, University of Melbourne. He currently teaches a course called ‘Consumerism and the Growth Economy: Interdisciplinary Perspectives’ into the Master of Environment, University of Melbourne. His books include: Sufficiency Economy: Enough, for Everyone, Forever (2015); Prosperous Descent: Crisis as Opportunity in an Age of Limits (2015); Simple Living in History: Pioneers of the Deep Future (2014); Entropia: Life beyond Industrial Civilisation (2013) and Voluntary Simplicity:The Poetic Alternative to Consumer Culture (2009).

Acknowledgements

Many thanks to Brendan Gleeson, John Wiseman, Hans Baer, Michael Green and Mark Burch for sharing insightful feedback on a draft of this paper and helping me improve it.

Citing this report

Please cite this paper as Alexander, S 2016, Policies for a Post-Growth Economy, MSSI Issues Paper No. 6, Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute,The University of Melbourne. See other issues papers: www.sustainable.unimelb.edu.au/publications ISBN: 978 0 7340 4947 6

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Post-growth – P2P Foundation

The EU needs a stability and wellbeing pact, not more growth

Is it time for a post-growth economy?

The growth-driven economic model we have adopted is killing our planet.

From “Green Growth” to Post-Growth

The Logic of “Green Growth”

Growth as Distributed Fascism

Post-Growth as Localism

12 Steps to Post-Growth Sustainable Business

How on Earth: The Future is Not for Profit

“If our economy builds financial circulation into its DNA by continuing to adopt not-for-profit forms of business, we can ensure a fair distribution of our common wealth”.

John Thackara on Sustainability, Design and Old Growth

The Real Circular Economy

How Relocalising Production With Not-For-Profit Business Models Helps Build Resilient and Prosperous Societies

Table of Contents

Introduction

ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINT AND OVERSHOOT

If it took Britain the exploitation of half the globe to be what it is today, how many globes will it take India?

Mahatma Gandhi, 1908

ECOLOGICAL CITIES AND ECOLOGICAL DEFICITS

Ecocity Builders [16]

FAB CITIES, RELOCALISATION OF PRODUCTION AND THE FUTURE OF WORK

The first city to become self-sufficient – simultaneously increasing employment by creating opportunities through open innovation, and radically reducing carbon emissions by re-localising production – will lead the future of urban development globally.

Tomas Diez, Fab City Global Initiative[30]

POST GROWTH, CIRCULAR BUSINESS MODELS AND NOT-FOR-PROFIT BUSINESS

Donnie Maclurcan and Jennifer Hinton, Post Growth Institute[52]

THE REAL CIRCULAR ECONOMY

Electric light did not come about from the continuous improvement of candles.

Oren Harari

Supplementary Material and Credits

References

Acknowledgments

Footnotes

French Development Agency Champions the Commons as New Vision for Development

If Degrowth is an ‘irresponsible agenda’, can we achieve slow (quasi-circular) growth?

But how to do this ?

Policies for a Post-Growth Economy

Table of Contents

1) Explicit adoption of post-growth measures of progress:

2) Reduce overconsumption via diminishing ‘resource caps’:

3) Working hour reductions:

4) Rethink budget spending for a post-growth transition:

5) Renewable energy:

6) Banking and finance reform:

7) Population policies:

8) Reimagining the good life beyond consumer culture:

9) Distributive justice:

Introduction

Definitions

How the Growth Economy is Defended

The Case for a Post-Growth Economy

Policies for a Post-Growth Economy

1) Explicit adoption of post-growth measures of progress:

2) Reduce overconsumption via diminishing ‘resource caps’:

3) Working hour reductions:

4) Rethink budget spending for a post-growth transition:

5) Renewable energy:

6) Banking and finance reform:

7) Population policies:

8) Reimagining the good life beyond consumer culture:

9) Distributive justice:

Hard Truths about a ‘Top-Down’ Transition

Conclusion

References

Credits

About MSSI Issues Papers

About the author

Acknowledgements

Citing this report

About MSSI: