Mario Sassi is the Secretary of the Italian Degrowth Association, a member of the International Degrowth Network, and a Zen Soto Shu practitioner who received the bodhisattva precepts in 2020.
Background
Until some years ago, my life as a manager, consultant and entrepreneur was materialistic and non-spiritual. Then, I had a big existential crisis, after which I discovered Buddhism and the political and economic philosophy of degrowth as a crucial perspectives for my new life as a socially engaged citizen and Buddhist. Here, I’ll try to explain why I found great affinities and resonances between socially engaged Buddhism and degrowth. I hope to contribute to the discussion about the SBN article on the The core life tasks and beliefs for a radically engaged Buddhist, whose core ideas I agree with.
I think degrowth can provide some insights about the core task of cultivating wisdom, in the form of a ‘critical and comprehensive understanding of the essential aspects of the human condition and our relationship to the rest of nature’. Degrowth also helps us to be socially engaged through ‘forms of collective praxis in sanghas, communities, and political movements which promote individual transformation and a liberatory society based on mindfulness and compassion.’
First of all, what is degrowth?
Degrowth signifies, first and foremost, a critique of growth. It calls for moving public debate away from the idiom of economism, profits, and production levels while urging the abolishment of economic growth as a social objective. Beyond that, degrowth also signifies a desired direction, one in which societies will use fewer natural resources and will organise and live differently than today. ‘Sharing’, ‘simplicity’, ‘conviviality’, ‘care’ and the ‘commons’ are primary characteristics of what this society might look like. Finally, degrowth is often associated with the idea that smaller can be beautiful.
Ecological economists define degrowth as an equitable downscaling of production and consumption that will reduce societies’ throughput of energy and raw materials. However, our emphasis here is on different, not only less. Degrowth signifies a society with a smaller metabolism, but more importantly, a society with a metabolism which has a different structure and serves new functions consistent with secular Buddhist values of mindfulness, care, and compassion.
Degrowth does not call for doing less of the same. The objective is not to make an elephant leaner, but to turn an elephant into a snail. In a degrowth society everything will be different: different activities, different forms and uses of energy, different relations, different gender roles, different allocations of time between paid and non-paid work, different relations with the non-human world.
Degrowth offers a frame that connects diverse ideas, concepts and proposals; however, there are some centers of gravity within this frame. The first is the criticism of growth. Next is the criticism of capitalism, a social system that requires and perpetuates growth. Two other strong currents in the degrowth literature are, first, the criticism of the GDP as the measure of economic wealth, and second, the criticism of commodification, the process of conversion of social products, services and human relations into commodities with a monetary value.
However, degrowth is not limited only to criticism. On the constructive side, the degrowth imaginary centres around the reproductive economy of care and the reclaiming of old – and the creation of new – commons. Caring in common is embodied in new forms of living and producing, such as eco-communities and cooperatives and can be supported by new government institutions, such as work-sharing or a basic and maximum income, institutions which can liberate our time from paid work and make it available for unpaid communal and caring activities.
Degrowth is not the same as negative GDP growth. Still, a reduction of GDP, as currently counted, is a likely outcome of actions promoted in the name of degrowth. A green, caring and communal economy is likely to secure a good life, but unlikely to increase gross domestic activity two or three per cent per year.[1]
In summary, for those like me who are fond of definitions, here are three definitions of degrowth:
- an umbrella concept for the more radical academic, political and social movements that emphasise the need to reduce production and consumption and define goals other than economic growth. Degrowth means living well with less and differently, prioritising wellbeing, equity and sustainability, with policies to shape work and care, income and investment that avoid exploitative and unsustainable practices, so that societies can degrowth by design and not by disaster.’ (Kallis et al, 2020)
- ‘A decolonisation of the imaginary and implementation of other possible worlds’ (Federico Demaria & Serge Latouche in Kothari et al)
- ‘A planned and democratic reduction (where necessary) of energy and resource consumption, to bring the economy back into balance with the living world and improve human well-being’ (Kallis and Latouche in Jason Hickel, 2021)
The 8-R’s
Similarly to the Buddhist eightfold path, also Serge Latouche (2009) has tried to define the proposals of degrowth, meant to facilitate a ‘virtuous cycle of quiet contraction’, into eight interdependent changes, known as the 8-Rs of degrowth: re-evaluate; reconceptualise; restructure; redistribute; relocalise; reduce; reuse; and recycle.
- To re-evaluate means shifting cultural values so that free-time and leisure replace the obsession with work/productivism, while foregrounding the pleasure of slow living and simplicity over materialism and fast-paced consumerism.
- These values enable us to reconceptualise key notions such as wealth, poverty, value, scarcity and abundance, and consider them in light of existing ecological limits.
- Of course, degrowth requires restructuring the dominant relations of ownership, production and consumption through a combination of new business models, new forms of property, and a reformed welfare system that fit these new values.
- Inevitably, this restructuring entails a major redistribution of wealth and access to natural resources not only between social classes, but also between the North and the South, as well as between present and future generations.
- Degrowth also aims at relocalising the economy as much as possible by applying ecological criteria, which are typically overshadowed by a focus on widening consumer choice, increasing convenience, and lowering production costs.
- Consumption should be reduced, especially for goods and services with high social/ ecological costs (e.g. fast food; short-haul flights), while reusing and recycling maximise the lifecycle of products and reduce waste.
A focus on ‘reduction’
I would like now to focus on the ‘R’ of reductions, which is part of the definition itself of degrowth and takes it apart from many other theories or ideas.
The key point is that human civilization is currently exceeding a number of critical planetary boundaries and is facing a multidimensional crisis of ecological disruption, including, dangerous climate change, ocean acidification, deforestation, biodiversity collapse and dangerous tipping points (Lenton et al ., 2020; Rockström et al., 2009; Steffen et al., 2018).
This crisis, of which climate change is only the most evident manifestation, is caused by the impact of human activities on the biosphere. The relationship between economic growth and ecological disintegration is now well demonstrated on a global level. Indeed, mainstream economics tells us that to address the environmental problem it is enough to separate (‘decouple’) GDP from ecological impacts, which would allow us to continue pursuing growth, which would thus become ‘green’.
Unfortunately, hopes for ‘green growth’ have little basis. While it is true that GDP can be decoupled from emissions through, for example, the replacement of fossil fuels with renewable ones, there is no historical evidence of long-term absolute decoupling of GDP from resource use (as measured by the material footprint ) or energy (as highlighted by Fig. 1). Indeed, all existing models agree that such decoupling cannot be achieved, even in the most optimistic scenarios (Parrique et al., 2019[2]).
In light of this evidence, voices are increasingly being raised calling for the transition to post-growth and degrowth strategies. The 2018 United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) special report already indicated that, in the absence of new technologies (to date completely hypothetical), the only way to limit the increase in temperatures is for high-income nations to rapidly slow down the pace of production and of material consumption (Grubler et al., 2018; IPCC, 2018). Reducing the flow of materials contracts energy demand, which makes it easier to achieve a rapid transition to renewables, helps address global warming and reduces pressure on other planetary boundaries.
This approach is exactly what goes by the name of degrowth which, in a nutshell, as already said, can also be defined as ‘a democratic, selective and planned reduction in energy and resource consumption, to bring the economy back into balance with the living world in a way that reduces inequality and improves human well-being’.
To be clear, performing some easy calculations on the Overshoot Day by Country data (http://www.overshootday.org/), we can say that “to bring the economy back into balance with the living world” (i.e. moving the overshoot day back to Dec. 31st, where it should be) for coutries like Italy and the U.S. would mean reducing their ecological footprint by 64% and 80% respectively.
Degrowth, therefore, does not have as its objective the reduction of GDP, but the contraction of energy and material flows, which is what matters from an ecological perspective. And yet this decrease in production will imply a reduction in GDP itself, which will have to be managed fairly, with approaches incompatible with concepts such as competitiveness, accumulation, profit, etc.
This is (one of the reasons) why degrowth is against the concept of ‘sustainable development’ that is ritually invoked in all political programmes, that only wants to ‘maintain levels of profit and to avoid changing our habits by making an imperceptible change of direction’. Talk of ‘different’ development or ‘different’ growth is either very naïve or quite duplicitous (Latouche, 2009, p. 12, in Lloveras 2022).
A few other points
Beyond the emphasis on the reductions of our ecological footprint, I think degrowth can bring a few other insights to our discussion about a ‘secular and radically engaged Buddhism’. Of course, these are just brief suggestions, which should and could be further explained.
- Decolonising the imaginary. Degrowth is not an economic, but rather a philosophical and anthropological concept. One of the definitions is about ‘A decolonisation of the imaginary’, i.e., about getting out of the myths of growth, technology, progress, and so on and so forth, which are driving our society in a social and ecological catastrophe; on the contrary, we should learn from other philosophies which recognize the essential need for a better balance between the natural and the human world. Sounds similar to the ‘right view’, doesn't it?
- The role of communities. Another important ‘R’ for degrowth is relocalising the economy as much as possible, dispersing power at the lowest possible level and providing the maximum autonomy to all local communities - of course, coordinated in some way with each other. This could mark a distance between degrowth on one side and Marxism and ecosocialism on the other side, but it seems to me very similar to the concept of local sanghas.
- Escaping from the economy. Another mantra of Serge Latouche is ‘Getting out of the economy’, in the sense that a new world we envision cannot be based on the ideas of profit, quantification, value (neither exchange value nor use value, both anthropocentric concepts), exchange of equivalents, etc.; on the contrary, we should find other ways of ‘caring in common, embodied in new forms of living and producing’ (as outlined in the first paragraph) such as communal sharing, de-enclosing our common goods, working not for a salary but for the good of the community, and so on and so forth. Quite a radical version of the ‘right livelihood’ outside capitalism, I think…
I hope this can be the beginning of a fruitful dialogue.
[1] From the introduction to D’Alisa et al, 2014
[2] The report by Parrique et al. (2019) has shown that there is neither historical evidence nor realistic predictions that the decoupling between economic growth and environmental impact is likely, especially on the scale in which it would be necessary, much less in a global system in continuous economic growth and in the times necessary to maintain global warming within + 1.5°/2°C. The report highlights the fact that addressing environmental collapse requires a direct reduction in production and consumption in the richest countries, to be achieved by integrating policies for efficiency with policies for sufficiency - as proposed and recommended by degrowth for decades. The report highlights seven reasons why the decoupling hypothesis appears highly compromised, if not clearly unrealistic: the increase in energy spending, the so-called "rebound effect", the shifting of problems, the underestimated impact of services, the limited potential of recycling, insufficient and inappropriate technological change and cost delocalization.
Bibliography
D'Alisa, Demaria, and Kallis. Degrowth - A Vocabulary for a New Era, 2014 https://www.routledge.com/Degrowth-A-Vocabulary-for-a-New-Era/DAlisa-Demaria-Kallis/p/book/9781138000773
Kallis, Paulson, D'Alisa, and DeMaria. The Case for Degrowth, 2020. https://www.wiley.com/en-us/The+Case+for+Degrowth-p-9781509535620
Lenton, T., Rockstrom, J., Gaffney, O., Rahmstorf, S., Richardson, K., Steffen, W., & Schellnuber, H. (2020): Climate tipping points too risky to bet against. Nature, 575(7784), 592–595. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-019-03595-0
Grubler, A. et al. (2018): A low energy demand scenario for meeting the 1.5C target and sustainable development goals without negative emissions technologies. Nature Energy, 3(6), 515–527. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41560-018-0172-6
Jason Hickel (2021), ‘What does degrowth mean?’, Globalizations, v. 18 (7), 2021. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14747731.2020.1812222
IPCC (2018). Global warming of 1.5°c – summary for policymakers. https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/chapter/spm/
Ashish Kothari, Ariel Salleh, Arturo Escobar, Federico Demaria, Alberto Acosta. Pluriverse: A Post-Development Dictionary. https://cup.columbia.edu/book/pluriverse/9788193732984
Latouche, Farewell to Growth, 2009, pag. 33. https://www.wiley.com/en-us/Farewell+to+Growth-p-9780745646176
Lenton, T., Rockstrom, J., Gaffney, O., Rahmstorf, S., Richardson, K., Steffen, W., & Schellnuber, H. (2020): Climate tipping points too risky to bet against. Nature, 575(7784), 592–595. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-019-03595-0
Lloveras, J., Marshall, A.P., Vandeventer, J.S. & Pansera, M. (2022): Sustainability marketing beyond sustainable development: towards a degrowth agenda. Journal of Marketing Management, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/0267257X.2022.2084443
Parrique, T. et al. (2019): Decoupling debunked. Evidence and arguments against green growth as a sole strategy for sustainability. https://eeb.org/library/decoupling-debunked/
Rockström, J., Steffen, W., Noone, K. et al.: A safe operating space for humanity. Nature 461, 472–475 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/461472a
Steffen, W. et al. (2018): Trajectories of the earth system in the anthropocene. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 115(33), 8252–8259. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1810141115
