ABSTRACT
It is not possible to promote and protect global population health within a system based on economic growth. In fact, a socio-economic model primarily oriented toward growth, after a certain threshold, becomes counter-productive: over time, its advantages decrease exponentially until its negative effects outweigh its positive ones. Health is not immune from this process. Growth is based on the indiscriminate exploitation of natural and human capital: undermining the principal determinants of health via producing increasing damage to the environment, greater inequalities, and unhealthy consumerist cultures and lifestyles. This chapter makes the case that degrowth represents a radical alternative to the current political-economic system and its hegemonic orientation toward growth. It outlines how degrowth favors democratically led redistributive initiatives that engender production and consumption downscaling in industrialized countries to secure objectives of environmental sustainability, social justice, and welfare. Accordingly, the socio-economic and cultural changes promoted by degrowth would have substantial positive repercussions for planetary health, and provide the prerequisites to implement several fundamental health policies that remain largely proscribed in existing neoliberal and capitalist systems. In turn, by applying degrowth principles to the health field, the chapter presents the outline of an alternative model of medicine and health systems.
