DegrowthUKJun 26, 2025

#DegrowthOslo25 Livestream now.
https://isee-degrowth2025.no/live-stream
Sizing sufficiency: Contested framings of scarcity and limits.
Inge Røpke first.

Long thread follows

Live stream

Welcome to the joint 18th Conference of the International Society for Ecological Economics (ISEE) and 11th International Degrowth Conference. It will take place in Oslo (Norway) from the 24th to 27th June 2025. The main theme is: "Building socially just postgrowth futures - linking theory and action".

ISEE-Degrowth 2025 Conference
Show threadDegrowthUKJun 26, 2025
Consumption is too high.
Population is an issue - other species need more space. We should embrace fertility rates below replacement and work through the challenges of transition.
Show threadDegrowthUKJun 26, 2025

Technology often developed in wrong direction due to profitability.

Sufficiency in rich countries is absolutely necessary.

Familiar recipe -
Tax the rich
Transform the collective conditions- for everyday life
Replace the logic of profitability with other logics - e.g. care.

Show threadDegrowthUKJun 26, 2025

Now Lyla Mehta (U Sussex)
The contested nature of scarcity, limits and abundance.
Notion of scarcity is dangerous.
Is linked to modernity.
Only scarce goods become economic.

But scarcity is the result of unequal access.
Neo-Malthusianism.

In realty there is enough food to go around but distribution means, e.g. in India a third of people are under-nourished.

Efficiency arguments prevail over justice.

Show threadDegrowthUKJun 26, 2025
Limits: contested even in degrowth. Real or constructed.
Debates over boundaries at earth system level don't reflect questions of power differentials, inequality, colonialism, etc.
Show threadDegrowthUK
What if the real problem is excess rather than scarcity?
Frugal/radical abundance: as antidote to growth. Degrowth scholars call for self-limitation. What does that look like? More work needed, especially for industrialised countries. If learning from Ubuntu or ecological swaraj, for instance, have to look at at the internal contradictions that aren't merely due to coloniality.
Jun 26, 2025 at 7:32amWeb
Show threadDegrowthUKJun 26, 2025
Many scarcities are not material as such - e.g. scarcity of time.
What would governance look like for self-limitation? So important that burden doesn't fall on the poor. Don't responsibilitise the poor.
Geopolitics are also critical to address in all this - especially solidarity from Europe - stoop wars, militarisation, genocide, which are often done in the name of scarcity.