Sustainable development is a global political concept, a normative framework for aligning human well-being with the well-being of the natural environment over the long-term. As a political concept, sustainable development remains contested. The UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) might appear to be clear and unambiguous goals for political and business decision makers, yet there is a central contradiction at their core: economic growth driven through investments and market forces is intended to help us achieve a more sustainable development, yet the consequences of economic growth in the past have create global ”un-sustainabilities” when it comes to climate change, loss of biodiversity but also economic inequalities within and across countries. From its beginning, the modern sustainable development discourse had a complicated relationship with growth, as can be seen in the first report to the Club of Rome titled ”Limits to Growth“, through the Brundtland Report’s understanding of sustainable development and some mild questions about the sustainability production and consumption patterns of the global north, all the way to our current notions of a green economy and green growth. Over the past decade and half, the alternative discourse on ”décroissance”, on degrowth or postgrowth, has gained traction in a variety of European countries and also made interesting connections to southern movements like Buen Vivir in South America or Radical Ecological Democracy (RED). In this contribution we will seek to understand the contradictions between sustainable development and economic growth, the limits to green growth, and the alternative perspectives for human, social and natural well-being degrowth can offer us. Keynote at Universidade Nove de Lisboa on 5 April 2018 at "Globalisation XXI: Connected Societies" conference.

1. Sustainable growth or sustainable degrowth?
On the hard problem of sustainable development
Prof. Dr. André Reichel
International School of Management | ISM
www.andrereichel.de

2. The development of sustainable development
Pfister, T., Schweighofer, M., & Reichel, A. (2016). Sustainability. London: Routledge
Dresner, S. (2008). The Principles of Sustainability (2nd ed.). London: Earthscan.
Resource
Imperative
Global
Justice
Triple P
Economics
Universal Idea
of Humankind

3. The SDGs and their sustainability
https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/sdgs
http://www.stockholmresilience.org/research/research-news/2017-02-28-contributions-to-agenda-2030.html

4. The SDGs and their (un-)sustainability
Wackernagel, M., Hanscom, L., & Lin, D. (2017). Making the Sustainable Development Goals Consistent with
Sustainability. Frontiers in Energy Research, 5, 18. https://doi.org/10.3389/fenrg.2017.00018

5. Economic growth
https://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2013/08/economic-history-1
https://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2014/11/secular-stagnation-graphics
• Long-term,
• steady state expansion of supply & demand,
• measured in real GDP (Gross Domestic Product)

6. Decoupling as the great hope of »Green Growth«
• Decoupling of GDP growth and environmental impact growth
• through investments in environmental technologies
• and the creation of »green markets«
Economic Activity (GDP)
»Growth«
Resource Use:
Relative Decoupling
Resource Use:
Absolute Decoupling
Resource Use:
Sufficient Absolute Decoupling
GDP
Resource Use
Time
Reduction Target

7. Decoupling as the great hope of »Green Growth«
• While energy use per unit of GPD has decreased
significantly, CO2 intensity changes rather slowly.
• At the same time, energy use in total has increased
sharply and CO2 emissions, while plateauing for the
last three years, have started to rise again.
• We can only observe relative decoupling of economic
growth and CO2 emissions in the global economy, not
absolute and certainly not sufficient decoupling; if the
global economy should expand with 3% p.a., carbon
intensity has to drop with 9% p.a. in order to maintain
the 2C guardrail for mitigating climate change.
Jackson, R. B., Le Quéré, C., Andrew, R. M., Canadell, J. G., Peters, G. P., Roy, J., & Wu, L. (2017). Warning signs for
stabilizing global CO2 emissions. Environmental Research Letters, 12(11), 110202

8. Decoupling as the great hope of »Green Growth«
Polimeni, J. M., Mayumi, K., Giampietro, M., & Alcott, B. (2008). The Jevons paradox and the myth of resource
efficiency improvements. London: Earthscan.

9. Degrowth as an alternative?
Latouche, S. (2009). Farewell to growth. Cambridge ; Malden, MA: Polity.
Jackson, T. (2009). Prosperity without growth: Economics of a finite planet. London: Earthscan.
D’Alisa, G., Demaria, F., & Kallis, G. (Eds.). (2015). Degrowth: a vocabulary for a new era. London: Routledge.
• From »décroissance«, a term introduced by Serge Latouche:
• Deliberate downscaling of production and consumption
• that increases human well-being
• and enhances ecological equity on the planet
Postgrowth
Degrowth
Steady-State Economy
(Herman E. Daly)
Bioeconomics & Entropy Economics
(Nicholas Gergescu-Roegen)
»Everything that comes after the growth story«
(Postgrowth Institute)
Conservative
Social-Liberal
Reformist
Sufficiency
Oriented
Anti-
Capitalist
Feminist
Buddhist Economics
(Ernst F. Schumacher)
Conviviality
(Ivan Illich)

10. Overview of degrowth perspectives
Muraca, B., & Schmelzer, M. (2017). Sustainable degrowth. In: Iris Borowy & Matthias Schmelzer (Eds.) 2017.
History of the Future of Economic Growth: Historical Roots of Current Debates on Sustainable Degrowth,
Routledge: London, pp 174-192.
Conservative Social-reformist Sufficiency oriented Anti-capitalist Feminist
Diagnosis Economic, ecological
and social limits to
growth
Fixation on GDP
growth leads to
multiple ecological
crises
Decoupling of growth
and environmental
impact is impposible,
over-consumption is
the main problem
Capitalism as driver of
growth, environmental
degradation and
»imperial(ist)
lifestyles«
Economic growth
endangers the
reproduction of social
ties, deepens gender
imbalances, and leads
to degradation of self-
sufficiency
Means Self-restraint, deep
culture change, cutting
back on social security,
strengthening civil
society and its
initiatives
Eco-taxes, suffiency
policies, forms of basic
income, focus on
alternative welfare
measures (beyond
GDP)
Consuming less (not
just »green«),
lifestyles of sufficiency
(»enoughness«),
economic self-
sufficiency, regional
economic cycles
Solidarity economy,
economic democracy,
basic and maximum
income, governmental
regulation of private
investments
De-commercialisation,
local economies, and
non-monetary self-
sufficiency
Ends Adaptation to
unavoidable
contraction
Growth independence Planned, deliberate
contraction
Planned, deliberate
contraction
Gender-just deliberate
contraction
Actors Politics, consumers Politics (, civil society) Consumers, civil
society
Critical civil society,
trade unions
Critical civil society

11. General policy suggestions from degrowth
http://seri.at/en/projects/completed-projects/implications-of-a-persistent-low-growth-path-a-scenario-analysis/
Friends of the Earth Europe. (2018). Sufficiency: Moving Beyond the Gospel of Eco-Efficiency. Brussels.
Degrowth policy suggestions (by SERI for the Austrian economy)
• Reduction of working hours by 10%
This measure was designed cost-neutral, i.e. wages increase by the degree of induced productivity effects.
• Introduction of a cost-neutral eco-social tax reform of levies
Petroleum tax was increased and social security contributions reduced with the reduction being equally
shared between employees and employers.
• Reduction of environmentally harmful subsidies
About 1bn EUR annually until 2025.
• Promotion of private demand for services
Demand for labor-intensive services of private consumption was assumed to increase at a standard rate of
about 3% until 2025 while at the same time private households reduce their consumption expenditures for
environmental harmful goods.
Additional sufficiency oriented policies (advocated by FoEE)
• Tax breaks on environmentally positive behaviour
Especially reduction of sales taxes on public transportations and product repairs.
• Regulations on material efficiency and eco-effectiveness
Longevity, repairability, re-usability, and recyclability of products (e.g. EU Ecodesign Directive, Germany’s
Circular Economy Law and Electrical & Electronic Equipment Act
• Reforming laws on competition
Negative environmental externalities as unfair competition.

12. Double decoupling as middle ground
Göpel, M. (2016). The Great Mindshift (Vol. 2). Cham: Springer International Publishing.
Material-
economic
wealth
Ecological
footprint
Quality of
Life
1st order decoupling
Technological efficiency
(»Green Growth«)
2nd order decoupling
Lifestyles of sufficiency
(Beyond Growth)

13. http://www.andrereichel.de/
linkedin.com/in/reichelandre
@andrereichel
Sustainable growth or sustainable degrowth?
Prof. Dr. André Reichel
International School of Management | ISM