- Could the highly productive national economies also exist with a stagnating economic production over a longer period or even with a decline or is there something like a growth constraint in this respect?
- Which framework conditions must be changed in order to enable in an economy with low (or negative) growth rates a good life for all?
- Which political scientific and social barriers have to be overcome in order to carry out the necessary adaptations?
- How much economic production do we need? How can we achieve it in an ecologically compatible way and make it available for use to everybody?
- Which international regulatory provisions are necessary in a globalised world in order to support sustainable production? Can this happen solely by an economic policy oriented according to structural reforms? How shall globalised markets (financial markets, raw materials markets, etc.) be regulated?
The newly founded enterprises have also attracted many experts and students to the region – this is why investors are also interested in the small town as a location for their shopping centre.
Mrs. Little is happy about the additional offer of shops and hopes that now eventually international fashion chains will settle down in the small town. Mr. Little considers the construction of the shopping centre for his small town to be positive as well. More jobs – especially for commuters – mean more income for the region. However, he is also a little bit concerned about the environment. On the one hand a big plot of land which many inhabitants use as a short-distance recreational area shall be used as a building site. On the other hand, in order to connect the shopping centre to the existing infrastructure of the small town, new and broader roads must be built. Moreover, the traffic volume is rising. The international trade chains must supply their chain stores with goods. And the shopping centre attracts visitors from the whole region.
And the regional retail dealers in the centre of the town view the development exclusively negatively. They are concerned about their existence and complain that the profit of the trade chains is not invested on the spot.
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Conference on "Degrowth in the Americas"
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A great bulk of ecological economists assume, as stated by Daly (2008), that “the rich should reduce their throughput growth to free up resources and ecological space for use by the poor”. Thus, steady-state proponents recently agree (yet obviously not Tim Jackson[1]) to consider de-growth as a means toward a stable and sound economy: “in cases where the size of the economy has surpassed the carrying capacity of the ecosystems that contain it (a condition known as overshoot), de-growth may be required before establishing a steady state economy that can be maintained over the long term”[2].
On the side of de-growth advocates, “sustainable de-growth” is defined as “a socially sustainable and equitable reduction (and eventually stabilization) of society’s throughput”(Kallis, 2011). In other words, both de-growth and steady-state are the complementary processes embedded in the path toward a sustainable economy. This implies not merely a transitory and voluntary reduction of GDP towards a sustainable level of production and consumption, but also and foremost a shift from economic rationality towards an eco-social rationale leading to strong sustainability.
[1] In his report “Prosperity without growth”, Jackson noticed the “dilemma of growth” by both considering economic growth as unsustainable and (dis)regarding (without further explanations) de-growth as unstable (Jackson, 2009)
[2] Center for the advancement of the Steady State Economy: http://steadystate.org/discover/definition/
Daly, H.E. (2008): A Steady-State Economy. A failed growth economy and a steady-state economy are not the same thing; they are the very different alternatives we face. Sustainable Development Commission UK, April 24, 2008
Kallis, G. (2011): In defence of degrowth, Ecological Economics, Volume 70, Issue 5
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