Environmental experts advocate post-growth

I have told you about my published article in the last blog post. In the meantime, my co-author Steffen Lange and I wrote a short explanatory blog post on it for the blog ‘postwachstum.de’. Again, I received the permit to share an English translation of our article here with you. You can read the German original here.

Criticism of growth finds favour at the Federal Environment Agency

Economic growth is polarising. Commonly, it is seen as desirable, as a sign of increasing prosperity and well-being of the population. In the context of the climate crisis and other ecological challenges of our time, there are now calls for green growth. In Germany, Economics and Climate Minister Robert Habeck is backing a crystal-clear strategy of green growth, and the European Green Deal also follows this guiding principle.

Criticism of growth now enjoys majority support among experts

However, growing “Gallic villages” have long contradicted this narrative. In recent years and decades, numerous concepts have emerged in the academic and activist space that question the goal of continued economic growth. These include A-growth, Degrowth and Post-growth.

How these concepts compare to Green Growth has been quite unknown until now. There are only a few studies that look at this; on the general population in Spain and Canada and on the attitudes of academics – primarily with economists. Surprisingly, we have not found a study that specifically asks environmental professionals about this tension.

We have collected the opinions and knowledge of the employees of the Federal Environment Agency, as the largest environmental authority in Europe, on this topic with an online survey. On the one hand, it became clear that knowledge about this central issue for environmental protection and the corresponding concepts is fundamentally expandable.

The most important result, however, was that in all the measures surveyed, the growth-critical approaches were preferred (sometimes very clearly) to the concept of green growth. The most popular approaches were those such as A-Growth, which occupy a ‘middle’ position between Green Growth and Degrowth. Among environmental experts, the Gallic villages have thus now renounced Rome and founded their own state.

A-growth and Post-growth get the highest approval, Degrowth is more popular than Green Growth

Green Growth says that growth and sustainability are compatible, or even that we need economic growth to protect the environment. Degrowth advocates, on the other hand, are convinced that the economic and societal changes needed to sufficiently reduce environmental impacts cannot go hand in hand with continued economic growth. A-Growth, as a middle position, sees neutrality towards economic growth or the increase or decrease of gross domestic product (GDP) as the best strategy for sustainability because it would be more likely to be socially and politically accepted than a degrowth strategy. A-Growth was indeed more popular than Degrowth in our survey, with Degrowth also more popular than Green Growth.

In addition, we included Post-growth in the survey. Post-growth can be understood either more like Degrowth or more like A-Growth, depending on how the term is interpreted. In our study, the terms were not sharply delineated by definitions, which means that A-Growth and Post-Growth in combination can be seen as the preferred strategy.

It was also interesting to note the high level of agreement with the so-called precautionary post-growth position, which was surveyed with other questions. Although it was published and presented by the IÖW, RWI – Leibniz Institute for Economic Research and the Wuppertal Institute as a publication of the Federal Environment Agency, it was still completely unknown to more than half of the participants. The precautionary post-growth position states that against the background of the great uncertainty of the possibility of a far-reaching decoupling of economic growth and environmental impacts, social systems should be designed to be (more) independent of growth. These include in particular:

• a more effective design of economic framework conditions, in particular a consistent use of (market-based) instruments to internalise negative environmental externalities in order to comply with planetary boundaries;
• the exploration and development of new paths of social development through participatory search processes, experimental spaces and new approaches in innovation and research policy; and
• identifying and realising potential for making societal institutions more growth-independent.

Likewise, the Federal Environment Agency staff wanted to learn more about the position and the topic in general. Above all, they wished that the office would deal more intensively with this issue and develop its own positions on it. Especially the employees who were already more familiar with the topic stood out as growth sceptics.

Politics has the chance to become more courageous

In conjunction with the other studies on the topic mentioned above, it is clear that growth-critical approaches are well received by both experts and the population. Policymakers should seize this opportunity to establish consistent measures for environmental protection. It is necessary to explore these approaches in more depth, for example, to expand the provision-oriented post-growth position and to work out concrete measures for a growth-independent design of social security systems. Such positions can be brought to the highest levels of politics via policy advising organisations such as the Federal Environmental Agency. In view of the 50th “anniversary” of the Club of Rome report “The Limits to Growth”, it is time to give further momentum to growth-critical approaches and to fundamentally rethink our social system.

All background information and the exact research results can be found here:

Cathérine Lehmann, Olivier Delbard, Steffen Lange (2022): Green growth, a-growth or degrowth? Investigating the attitudes of environmental protection specialists at the German Environment Agency. Journal of Cleaner Production, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2021.130306

Next time, we will move on to another topic. I wish you all the best!

Source of header image: https://pixabay.com/de/photos/herbst-pflanze-blume-flora-natur-865157/