Degrowth: the next 5 years (Opinion)

Motivation

After attending the 10th Degrowth Conference in Zagreb and listening and talking to a lot of people, I would like to share some of the conclusions and open a necessary discussion of what we should be working on in the next 5 years.

I think nothing summarizes better the state of things than the 5-minute contribution of Pr. Julia Steinberger (min 45-50 of the video). 

Let's get directly into my 3 key observations:

It is all about the details now...

Degrowth offers a solid critique of the hegemony of capitalism and growth as an imperative, . It managed to include components of environmental justice and decolonization, gender and race struggles into a diagnosis that despite being too European-centric, can be leveraged by our society to dismantle capitalism and achieve universal well-being within planetary boundaries.

The challenge for Degrowth is now on the details of its implementation, accepting it will take multiple forms. 

To illustrate this, I would like to share a few examples that should make my point:

• Work time reductions: there is a consensus that work time reductions have to be a key policy proposal in the post growth policy package and also a societal goal. The reality though is that a future without fossil fuels and extractivism, where small-scale energy and food provisioning systems expand will be much more labor intensive. Even with the democratic decommission of industrial farming, fossil fuels, and superfluous consumption (fast fashion, exotic holidays, cars), it remains unclear the extent to which Degrowth will lead to a shorten working week, although there is no question it will lead to a more meaningful and socially desirable work. We do not know the embedded labor from the GN (Global North) consumption (will know thanks to the REAL project), but it is likely that a fair trade system will require more labor from the GN to provision in the GN (all else equal) and less in the GS(Global South) (as a likely net exporter of labor). As much as there is income inequality there is inequality in labor dedication, and it is key to tackle this if we aim to refocus productive capacity beyond reducing working hours of the same work and unequal exchange relations. Many times we hear work time reduction should not reduce total salary, and this will apply to care and other underpaid workers, but it is really going to reduce excess consumption in the GN and create more political and community engagement in the current alienated culture? We see almost everywhere that more income means more consumption and hence more footprint. If working less is not matched with sufficiency and in many cases less superfluous consumption, it is not going to be a good policy to reduce unequal footprints.
• Reparations to the GS: There is a consensus in Degrowth that a reparation schema has to be in place to stop historical and present plundering and climate cost-shifting from the GN to the GS.  We can even say that the publications on the amount of the reparation have vast support from the community.  What is missing now is a discussion over the implementation of the reparations schema: 1) Who will pay those reparations? All citizens who happen to live in the GN now? Is the GN entirely geographic or limited to certain powers and peoples? Are we going to enforce reparations of large corporations wherever their headquarters are? How do existing debt and adjustment programs coexist with that measure? 2) How is this money going to be transferred? After the experience of international aid, are we confident to give unconditionally amounts of money that in some cases exceed the entire GS countries's GDP without any accountability of how this is used? Are we going to transfer money to governments with democratic deficiencies, or clearly coopted by large corporate interests? I am raising this question not to postpone the implementation, but to rather ensure we achieve what we aim to do, which is to give back to those who has been stolen so they can freely decide what to do with the merits of their work and commons. 
• Demand side degrowth:  demand side degrowth is a necessary break and slowdown mechanism to make time for deliberated change and ensure global justice. The research from Julia Steinberger et al is essential to show that most of superfluous footprint is not only a geographical phenomenon, but entirely related to but on top incomes. We know before intuitively but now we have the data, that the rich use their excess income to fly more, buy SUVs... while the lowest income use most of their income for basic provisioning. We need to discuss strategies to make superfluous consumption an impossibility while ensuring access to housing, care and health, pluriversal education, safe energy, and nutritious food is made universal. I missed discussion of the best strategies to achieve that beyond politically unpalatable bans, unconditional nationalizations or small-scale cooperatives.  We need a plan to make wasteful uses of the commons impossible. I want to finish with a critique on the lack of questioning of certain consumption patterns in the working class, mainly in the GN (but not exclusively). I hear over an over that the working class needs a car (which have a NPV of 500k euros and for the majority of  Europe is used in cities with public transport) or cannot afford nutritious bio food (while we know that a plant based bio diet is cheaper that a industrial animal and processed foods).  We need to challenge the consumption basket and show that for moderate to low incomes there are ways to live better lives with lower footprints and budgets (please remember I start by a cap on top incomes superfluous consumption). Even those which suffer from tight budgets squeezes an iPhone, videogames, processed foods and combustion vehicles. 
• Supply side degrowth: Even if we manage to reduce demand sufficiently, we need to change how and what we produce less. There is an existing infrastructure (energy grid, factories) and organizational legacy (large, medium, small corporations and governments) that needs to be reused. It makes political (as we cannot exclude those) but also ecological sense (as we have to reuse as much as possible existing stocks and social structures). Small is beautiful, yes, but big is right here and at least in the short term, we need to shape and not to rebuild small only. Industrial ecology can help a lot to shape existing economic structures and reduce the metabolism of existing organizations. We need to differentiate short term strategies from long term ones. It is likely that are short term a hybrid of bottom up provisioning that coexist with large scale ways of provisioning leads to sufficiency while reducing fast enough global footprints.

Short term versus long term strategies

Any good strategy differentiates short-term goals and actions from long-term ones, and limits the time frame to check progress. I would advocate in the short term to be more reformist at the policy level and at the grass root level divide the actions into community provisioning from one side, and also direct action such as blockades or sabotage to existing threats (fossil fuel infrastructure, SUVs, vacation flights...) to a world beyond 2 degrees. 

We can do much more at a local level to provision renewable energy for housing and mobility, and also for regenerative agriculture provisioning. There is a lot of work to be done restoring and protecting ecosystems, they are in general surprisingly cheap and labor intensive and can provide now a great way out to millions of bullshit jobs.

This year we hit many records, the most horrendous are flights and SUV (super unsustainable vehicles) sales, and we need to be more aggressive making flying holydays and SUV almost an impossible feat in times of climate emergency, while every city center becomes car free. This requires a more belligerent climate movement, but also much better strategies that are clearly pointing to luxury and other illegitimated behaviors and not to the general public (like the street blockades of LG).

Most of the industry, whether desirable or not, is highly organized, capitalized, and capable of providing what is necessary. The question is how to quickly change their goal setting from growth to sufficiency.  The reason I propose this is not only due to time constraints and the desirability to reuse existing structures, but also to reduce political fronts and pollarization. It seems easier to enforce a reduction of revenue within financial sustainability (some but lower profits)  that to change the entire productive organization in the next 5 years (proof me wrong please). 

Given the fact that reparations are late and the climate emergency is here, we need to prioritize the implementation of reparations and changes in the rules of global trade and finance. My proposal is that all efforts are made on the detailed implementation discussion and testing of those schemes, first small (by bringing concrete companies and governments to court to pay to concrete peoples and not to fed centralized goverments) and then globally (institutionalizing reparations).

In the long term, we should aim to deal with those organizational structures that are not democratic, too centralized, or owned by large investment groups. Some may argue that this is the preliminary condition to achieve a just transition: changing the role of the state and take back the excessive power of large corporations. This may be correct, but this is exactly the discussion we need to have, I do not believe we can change everything at the same time, and a good strategy is all about prioritizing (we need to discuss what should come first). 

Living in a Post Truth World

We tend to believe that being right, having the scientific community behind you is enough to get the media, political and social coverage to implement radical transformations (FCK that! ; ))

I am afraid this is not true, and the empirical reality is that the progressive governments are losing ground, people are demobilizing in the working class and the extreme right propaganda and false solutions are working very well to win elections and power.

'People do not want change', we hear in green political leaders from the GN (global north), and we can see it in the discourse of many panels working in real politics, or the working unions, which are stuck in the fear of losing further support as green policies are seeing not as liberation from capitalism but rather a moral oppressions from the wonderful freedom of consumerism.

It is essential to have a plan for communication, that is not rooted on moral superiority and the rejection of talking with anyone from the right, but rather on strict pragmatism that reconquers concepts like freedom, security and safety, currently kidnapped by populist parties.

Concluding notes

'Chose to have a positive relevant impact, not to be right' that will be my main message. The Degrowth community is not driven by a desire to expose the holes of capitalism, but rather to liberate society from it, as well as to ensure we have a more just present and a more prosperous future across the globe, for humans and non humans.

Instead of repeating generic mantras that we all agree, it is important to get into the details that expose our flaws, to keep sharpening Degrowth agenda to transform fast while slowing down the excessive metabolism of our societies.

Good plans have strategies that make concrete short term and long term goals, that identify the challenges, opportunities and interactions of this messy world where everything have to change, but it will hardly will change at the same time. 

The Pluriverse has to be made possible and not only visible, decolonization have to become material, lower superfluous demand scenarios have to be realized as a shock plan, while both radical democracy and existing structures of power (as the government) and organizations (like corporations) have to be forced to transition value chains to sufficiency, with the ultimate ambition to reduce centralization and increase democracy in organizing.

I am committed to think, read, talk, write but most importantly ACT in that direction, and I will happily present honest successes and failures in Pontevedra next June 2024 . I see the coming conferences as the week where we all report our efforts and show that we are delivering the work that politicians, journalists and many working unions refuse to do. We have a mandate to convince, persuade, proof that other worlds are possible and that our policies proposals and alternative provisioning systems work.

Are you in?