ABSTRACT
The history and destiny of the idea of sustainability, and of a sustainable development, can be symbolically captured by two images, both of which are logos. The concept of sustainable development is the offspring of two lineages that are often mixed together when trying to narrate its historical background. The degrowth movement goes beyond the narrow paradigm of alternative environmental management and articulates a critique of growth not only from an economic and environmentalist perspective, but also from structural and cultural ones. The chapter draws on the work of an interdisciplinary group of scholars from the university of Greifswald, Germany who developed a framework that was later adopted by the German Advisory Council for the Environment in its report to the government in 2002. However, it is precisely at the level of normative claims, with respect to different understandings of justice, that different conceptions of sustainability policies collide and can be unmasked as reproducing unacceptable forms of injustice.
