Group - De-growth

Degrowth (in French: décroissance, in Italian: decrescita) is a political, economic, and social movement based on environmentalist, anti-consumerist and anti-capitalist ideas. Degrowth thinkers and activists advocate for the downscaling of production and consumption - the contraction of economies - as overconsumption lies at the root of long term environmental issues and social inequalities. Key to the concept of degrowth is that reducing consumption does not require individual martyring and a decrease in well-being. Rather, 'degrowthists' aim to maximize happiness and well-being through non-consumptive means - sharing work, consuming less, while devoting more time to art, music, family, culture and community . At the individual level, degrowth is achieved by voluntary simplicity. Global solutions, for ‘degrowthists’, involve a relocalization of economic activities in order to end humanity's dependence on fossil fuels and reduce its ecological imprint. Degrowth opposes sustainable development because, while sustainable development aims to address environmental concerns, it does so with the goal of promoting economic growth which has failed to improve the lives of people and inevitably leads to environmental degradation. In this way, degrowth stands in sharp contrast to current forms of productivist capitalism that understand the accumulation of capital and commodities as a desirable end. The movement arose from concerns over the perceived consequences of the productivism associated with industrialist societies (whether capitalist or socialist):