ABSTRACT
Global environmental change and persisting social inequalities pose a challenge to the assumption that economic growth may reduce poverty without creating other negative consequences. A common response to this challenge has consisted of research and discourses on governance reform to allow some sort of reconciliation between economic growth and socio-ecological degradation (e.g. ecological modernization, or inclusive/shared growth). In opposition to such reconciliatory responses, sustainable de-growth acknowledges upfront the impossibility and undesirability of continuous growth. As Barry suggests in Chapter 9 (this volume), the ideology of growth, which is structurally coupled with capitalist political economy, is increasingly identified as a major underlying cause of climate change and natural resources depletion. Therefore, a ‘post-capitalist’ political economy perspective is needed that questions economic growth.
