What we mean by 'degrowth'

A living document started by the S&W Magazine editorial team

Photo by Bàrbara Castro Urío, courtesy of Ephemera Journal’s Organizing for the post-growth economy, published in Chertkovskaya et al. (2025)

This document, started by the the editorial team of the Sufficiency & Wellbeing Magazine, outlines how we understand degrowth. For a topic as multidimensional as degrowth, we decided to format this “definition” as an open-ended list and keep it in a living document, in line with Timothée Parrique’s analysis of degrowth’s (lack of a single) definition. In the spirit of prosocial collaboration, which the degrowth movement values greatly, we welcome comments and additions to this document, which we will incorporate periodically into the existing list.

In summary, we view degrowth as an expansion of social justice to all members of society, alongside the promotion of human well-being within the limits of Earth, through a selective reduction of production and consumption to lighten ecological footprint, planned democratically in the spirit of socio-ecological justice. The following list provides more detail.

We understand degrowth as:

1. a social movement that aims to decolonize the global economy through by delinking Global North consumption from Global South production and neocolonial systems of extraction.

2. an anti-capitalist paradigm that calls for a global downscaling of production and consumption (prosumption), re-organization of economic activities to prioritize wellbeing, and redistribution of wealth

3. requiring a shift in worldview, from a dualist perspective that separates humans and nature, to one that embraces the value of all life

4. a vision of a future where humans live in harmony among all life, economic and political decisions are made democratically, and ...

5. a rejection of growthism

6. a rejection of institutions that use abusive and illegitimate debt, unequal exchange and finance to impose austerity on countries both at the core and the periphery

7. a rejection of ethno-supremacist organizations, projects or states

8. the recognition of social and environmental limits on economic systems, which needs to be assessed

9. the recognition that technology cannot overcome the physical and thermodynamic constraints of growth, and it cannot be the solution to all social challenges

10. A plural framework that acknowledges the impossibility of capitalism to satisfy human needs within planetary boundaries and with justice, as well as almost infinite ways of being.

11. Leveraging Western scientific methods, post-scientific approaches, and ancestral knowledge in a non-hierarchical way, subject to scrutiny

12. recognizing the importance of expertise and knowledge, but not at the expense of democratic planning and human agency

13. evaluating all technology to be subject to convivial and regenerative principles

14. creating spaces of non-violent communication, and supporting the ongoing process of transformation, even with contradictions

15. recognizing and leveraging other areas of knowledge beyond beyond any particular discipline, including ecological economics, and Eurocentric contributions

16. accepting that it does not have all the answers and works towards difficult debates on resistance, industry, culture, migration, freedom, democracy, and war beyond the slogan

17. pointing to mainstream economics as a theology to justify violent implementation of capitalism worldwide

18. defending the unconditional and universal rights to basic services to all humans and defending the unconditional and universal rights to life of all living beings

19. having limits on the freedom of expression, and opposing ideas that put the rights of human collectives and/or nature at risk

20. being internationalist in its framework and strategies, while recognizing local sovereignty

21. understanding both the geopolitics of global eco-social systems but also socioeconomic class as essential frameworks to assess power relations. National averages do not explain it all.

22. acknowledging the disproportionate responsibility of certain national states, corporations and social elites in the pluricrisis, and not blaming humanity at large or entire populations equally

23. accepting that there are many paths that are legitimate and effective to achieve global justice, safety and emancipation for all, including non-humans

24. unconditionally opposing colonialism, apartheid, patriarchy, and racism

25. a paradigm that considers capitalism to be incompatible with human and nature rights, deeply undemocratic, imposes violence and should therefore be dismantled

26. recognizing the need to pursue personal and local transformations, but also recognizing the limits to localized strategies and the need to achieve global justice and the protections of human rights and the rights of nature

27. giving voice to the silenced ones, those whose ideas and livelihoods have for too long been attacked, erased or ridiculed

28. supporting the need for reparations and the dismantling of abusive debt and trade agreements to those countries subject to (neo)colonialism

29. refusing ideologies that portray humans as inherently egoistic, violent and problematic to planetary health

30. considering consider that while there are limits to population, the problem is in inequality, not absolute population at any close time horizon

31. pursuing more economic democracy, so people have a direct relationship to and responsibility for deciding how resources are used

32. recognizing the global exploitation of care work, which is mostly carried by racialised women, and a need for that work to be valued, distributed, and repurposed as such

33. pursuing societies that are regenerative and redistributive by design

34. understanding the urgent need to deal with the global under-provisioning of billions of people, reduce social metabolism in high income countries, and eliminate superfluous and harmful production, to change productive and reproductive systems to return balance to life-supporting systems and our own collective health

35. refusing the imposition of any religion to any population, or discrimination of any type based on religion, ethnicity or origin

36. considering human and nature rights to be beyond electoral processes, private property rights (if any) and in the interest of any collective

37. a policy toolkit that undoes the fundamental forces of capitalism (proportionality, hierarchies, and dispossession)

38. being the context that ought to guide the designing of moral principles for the new economy

39. offering the material boundaries for a compassionate spiritual philosophy without itself being a spiritual philosophy

40. accepting and requiring maximum limits on wealth, as advanced by limitarianism