Degrowth: a new logic for the global economy
BMJ 2024; 387 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.q2781 (Published 17 December 2024) Cite this as: BMJ 2024;387:q2781
- Omer Tayyab, researcher1,
- Meghna Goyal, researcher1,
- Morena Hanbury Lemos, researcher1,
- Jason Hickel, professor123
- 1Institute for Environmental Science and Technology, Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain
- 2ICREA, Barcelona, Spain
- 3International Inequalities Institute, London School of Economics and Political Science, London, UK
- Correspondence to: J Hickel jason.hickel{at}uab.cat
We face a bleak reality. We are in the middle of a mass extinction event driven by human economic activity crossing multiple planetary boundaries.1 Yet it remains business as usual for large transnational corporations engaged in record profiteering,2 especially fossil fuel producers. This dynamic is clear in healthcare as well. Many lives could have been saved during the pandemic if vaccine access had not been locked behind intellectual property rights to protect profits for large pharmaceutical companies.34
Our current economic system is clearly willing to sabotage planetary and human health in pursuit of profit, capital accumulation, and economic growth5—as measured by gross domestic product (GDP). Growth in GDP (ie, increased industrial production and consumption) is often incorrectly presented as a proxy for progress, but it represents simply aggregate production. By this metric, producing €1m of bombs is valued the same as producing €1m of medicine. Clearly, it is not aggregate production that matters but what is being produced.6
Additionally, perpetual economic expansion relies on unsustainable use of resources, enabled by the systematic appropriation of labour, land, material resources, and value, especially from countries in the global south.7 Yet the evidence is clear that growth does not necessarily translate to better social outcomes in wealthy economies—because the benefits tend to accrue near the top.8 Growth may be needed for human development in many parts of the global south, but rich economies have gone past that point. A large share of US output is effectively “wasted” from the perspective of human development, in that many other countries achieve better social outcomes with lower GDP.9
Degrowth proposes a new logic for the global economy: greater democratic control over our productive capacities, so that production can be centred around needs satisfaction and human wellbeing in harmony with ecology. A planned reconfiguration of our system of production is needed, beginning with the equitable reduction in global use of materials and energy. Under this logic, less-necessary activities (private jets, fast fashion, cruise ships, advertising, planned obsolescence, weapons, etc) are curtailed through a democratic process, and necessary production occurs in alignment with the health of people and ecosystems. This leads to a truly sustainable society focused directly on meeting human needs (using health outcomes, housing access, food access and other social indicators as policy guides) rather than doing so only partially (and non-inclusively) as an epiphenomenon of economic growth.
Degrowth contrasts with “green growth”—the idea that high income economies can continue to increase production and consumption indefinitely while also decarbonising by 2050. As a concept, green growth re-commits the error of conflating GDP growth with progress but also demands extraordinary leaps of faith in the face of contrary reality. At existing rates of climate mitigation, even the best performing countries will take, on average, more than 200 years to decarbonise.10 The idea also suffers from “carbon tunnel vision,” where all mitigation efforts are focused on greenhouse gas emissions while other planetary boundaries are neglected.11 In short, green growth lacks empirical support and cannot resolve the ecological crisis.12
Shifting the balance
Not all people and nations are equally responsible for the current crises. The affluent economies of the global north (and wealthy elites located all over the world) use extremely high levels of energy and materials.13 They are responsible for around 90% of global carbon emissions in excess of the planetary boundary,1415 and maintain high levels of material consumption by relying on appropriation of resources from the global south.7 Furthermore, states and firms in the global north maintain the conditions for domestic growth and capital accumulation by pushing to cheapen labour and resources abroad through leveraging debt and trade policies to dictate terms in their favour.16 They also intervene to prevent national liberation and sovereign development through military violence.17
Degrowth demands proportionate reparations1819 to the global south through foreign currency or technology transfer and debt cancellation as well as sanctioning and scaling down large transnational conglomerates that cause ecological and societal harm. It calls for reduction in military spending domestically and abroad to eliminate coercion against the global south, ending secretive tax havens and money laundering schemes, and ending foreign interventions in the political sphere to allow room for economic sovereignty. A starting point for such a transformation would be democratic determination of global governance, which is currently determined through economic or military might and implemented without accountability.20
Rich economies must reduce their use of materials and energy to ensure that their ecological impacts remain within planetary boundaries. Some of this can be achieved through efficiency improvements, but for the change to be broad and fast enough, it will require scaling down less- necessary forms of production and consumption.21 In the climate policy literature, this is referred to as “sufficiency oriented mitigation,” and it can be achieved while simultaneously improving social outcomes.2223 These objectives can be realised using capabilities that governments already possess. Policies such as progressive taxation and credit guidance (steering investment away from or towards certain sectors) can be used to reduce destructive production. Public finance and industrial policy can be used to develop socially and ecologically necessary goods such as affordable housing and medicine. And a public job guarantee and universal basic services can be implemented to secure a social foundation that ensures good lives for all.
There is strong popular support24 for these policies, and the world system transformation would substantially benefit the global majority. However, because of serious democratic deficits in our current political system, this support doesn’t manifest itself in policies. As a study on the US showed, the behaviour of its political system is more akin to an oligarchy than a democracy.25
Achieving these objectives will therefore require organised political action. The quest for a socially and ecologically just future requires a struggle: a struggle in the global south to achieve sovereignty and economic liberation, and a struggle of working people everywhere to achieve economic democracy.
Footnotes
Competing interests: We have read and understood BMJ policy on declaration of interests and have no relevant interests to declare.
Provenance and peer review: Commissioned; not externally peer reviewed.