‘De-growth’ is an economic approach to development that could be understood as a practical implementation of post-development because it would imply a radical critique of the current development model. However, it cannot integrate the Buen vivir project because it does not propose a comprehensive critique of the dominant political economy.
De-growth was firstly proposed by Georgescu-Roegen (1971) in response to what he observed as irreversible damage inflicted by the policies of economic growth: when a society uses energy it is degraded or transformed into something new, but it cannot be transformed again into its original state. Thus, endless growth will end up with the exhaustion of world resources that support the existence of humanity. For Georgescu- Roegen, the dominant approaches to economics are too materialistic in proposing that the only economic interests of the human are consumption and production; but at the same time these approaches are not materialistic enough because they ignore the physical limitations of natural resources (Martinez-Alier, 2009).
Jeroen and Bergh (2011) propose several critiques of de-growth: First, it is a broad concept that has been developed through different meanings, such as consumption de- growth, work-time de-growth, GDP de-growth and so forth. Thus, it becomes an ambiguous concept which will create confusion rather than contribute to a debate about economic and environmental policies. Second, most de-growth scholars do not propose specific strategies that might guarantee an effective reduction of environmental degradation. Third, de-growth is unlikely to receive social and political support because countries depend on economic growth to support their social and political systems. In general, these scholars argue that the de-growth approach misunderstands the causality between growth and environmental policies. Instead of conceiving de-growth as the first and necessary step to reach environmental aims, they should propose reasonable environmental policies that may generate some degrees of de-growth.
In response, Kallis (2011) argues that the aim of de-growth is not just de-growing the economy but to do it in a socio-environmentally sustainable way. The goal is not necessarily to reduce GDP, it will be reduced as a result of the implementation of a sustainable de-growth. Thus, for Latouche (2009) the goal is ‘selective de-growth’ by initiating a political debate about which activities related to extraction, production and consumption need to be reduced and which ones need still to grow. Finally, Kallis (2011) argues that de-growth is different from sustainable development and its environmental policies because it promotes a qualitatively different political economy. But de-growth cannot escape from the capitalist logic. This perspective believes that Keynesian regulation and social democracy could create a sustainable capitalism,
88 without interfering with the underlying logic of the economic system. However, de- growth and capitalism are contradictory terms (Foster, 2011). Capitalism not only establishes the conditions for growing, but also imposes it (Griethuysen, 2009). As argued by Griethuysen (2009), in the current world of contractual relations among citizens, companies and states, we all are debtors. And debtors who fail to meet the legal and economic constraints (solvency, profitability and time pressure) will be eliminated from the property-based economy (through the seizure, foreclosure or acquisition of their property). In this context, the proposals for de-growth are directly affected by the particular nature of the capitalist rationale, in which ecological concerns are assimilated to capitalism or are ignored. Indeed, environmental concerns might only be considered by economic agents insofar as they are compatible with the proprietary logic. For instance, corporate social responsibility, fair trade or the creation of a carbon market based on exclusive rights to emit, are mechanisms in which socio-ecological concerns are adapted to property’s specific requirements, resulting in further growth, increasing environmental degradation and social inequality through the expansion of extractive activities.
Thus, Griethuysen (2009) argues that in order to avoid an eco-social disaster, a radical reorientation of the socio-economic structure is necessary. It means changing the hierarchy in which individual property is a priority and social and ecological considerations are subordinated to capitalist economic rationality. That is why for Foster (2011) de-growth is only useful if it is conceived as a specific measure within a more ambitious project to overcome capital accumulation and initiate a transition to a more sustainable and egalitarian world, in which the relations between nature and society are deployed in the interest of successive generations and the earth itself. In this project, those who are wealthier would have to consume less in order to reduce the pressure on the environment. The ecological struggle, thus, is directed not only to de-growth but specifically to de-accumulation.
The critiques of de-growth shows that it is not likely to generate important impacts because it can be easily assimilated or excluded from the current political economy. In addition, Latin American scholars are cautious of the a-critical transplant of the ideas of de-growth as the reduction of national economies (Gudynas, 2011; Houtart, 2011), because a certain growth in some sectors is necessary for new strategies under the Buen
vivir (improving infrastructure in housing, health or education).
What is important to highlight regarding de-growth is that the main problem of this perspective, the global capitalist logic, is also an important barrier to the implementation of Buen vivir politics and policies, as I discuss in the next section.
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