Degrowth: Mitigating and Preparing for Ecological Destruction
Alice Seedling

Our world is in crisis. We are facing mass ecological destruction, increasingly extreme inequality, and irreversible climate change. Despite these intersecting and overlapping crises, governments, corporations and some NGOs continue to push forward under the thin veil of ‘progress’. They pretend that a few market and technology changes will allow economies to continue growing, fueling and fueled by increasing production. They say that ‘progress’ and ‘well-being’ are about jobs and growth, and that by simply replacing coal with solar and wind power, they can name them ‘green’ jobs and ‘green’ growth. But solar panels and wind turbines don’t grow from seeds. They require land, metals and production, all of which involve more ecological destruction. If countries like Australia keep increasing energy and resource demand through increasing production, shifting away from fossil fuels becomes even harder and more resource intensive. So why stay wedded to a concept of GDP growth, a concept which was never meant to measure well-being? We could instead re-imagine our ways of living to focus on sustainability and well-being, like some people around the world have been doing for generations.

Degrowth is an idea that critiques the global capitalist system which pursues growth at all costs, causing human exploitation, environmental destruction and the collapse of ecosystems. It advocates for societies that prioritise social and ecological well-being instead of corporate profits, over-production and excess consumption. This requires radical redistribution of wealth, a reduction in the material size of the global economy, and crucially, a shift in common values towards care, solidarity and autonomy. Degrowth means transforming societies to ensure environmental justice and a good life for all within planetary boundaries.

For most of us in the so-called ‘developed’ world, degrowth means an overall decrease in our consumption, though in every country including our own there are still people who need more resources to meet their basic needs. According to Ted Trainer, if we agree that everyone on the earth is entitled to the same share of the earth’s resources while at the same time stopping the huge damage to the earth, then the average Australian needs to reduce the impact of our consumption to one tenth of their current levels.^[1] This requires a huge shift in the way we meet our needs, both as individuals and as local communities, moving towards more reciprocal, communal and place-based practice.

Arguably this shift would lead to much more connection, meaning and well-being than exists for many of us right now. Increasing depression, anxiety and loneliness can be seen in Australia and many other overconsuming countries, and it is clear that more GDP growth is not solving the problem. Degrowth means less transactions and more relationships, both to other people and to the rest of the planet. Relationships obviously come with their own difficulties, but decreasing alienation to people and place is shown to greatly help many people suffering from depression, anxiety and loneliness. Having people around you who know you and care for you, plus the feelings of accomplishment and meaning that come from building, creating, growing and fixing the things that sustain your world, these are priceless for thriving and resilience.

Pursuing degrowth is a strategic and effective way to both mitigate the damage being done by overproduction and overconsumption from growth focused economies, as well as a way to build the skills we need as individuals and communities to live through the disasters brought on by ecological destruction. Even if our efforts fail to avoid the worst of overlapping crises of ecology and climate, we will at least have more skills to work together and help others survive and thrive as human and ‘natural’ disasters get worse.

A significant obstacle to this necessary shift to a degrowth world is a lack of imagination. Perhaps one of the most common arguments against degrowth is the idea that it simply isn’t possible, or politically feasible. In this piece, I imagine what life in a radically simplified society might actually look like, intending to inspire the belief that this is indeed very possible and feasible. Humans can achieve amazing things when we believe they are worth fighting for, and I hope that this outline inspires people to get on board to fight for a paradigm shift that will actually stop the destruction many of us want to avoid. I have included short stories throughout the piece to help you imagine what living in a degrowth world could look like.

An important thing to note: the changes I talk about in the four sections below will become a lot easier as we reduce and get rid of the unnecessary parts of our economy—advertising for profit, extreme luxury goods (eg. private jets), militaries, planned obsolescence, etc. We also need land redistribution, so everyone has access to the space and resources needed to grow and build what they need to survive.

There are many policies that governments could put in place to support these changes, though due to the incredible lobbying power of those benefiting from profit driven destruction, it is unlikely they will carry them out. Governments will only change if we force them to, which includes stating clearly what needs to happen, and how. It will be incredibly difficult to take back land and resources from a corporate political class that has the police and military to back it up. However, these changes are both possible and entirely necessary. We can see glimpses of the possibilities through successful blockades and autonomous zones, for example the ZAD in France that defeated an airport and continues to hold the land outside of capitalism, with those that live there autonomously and democratically deciding how their society works and how their needs are met. We can only get to the world we need by imagining it and knowing it is possible first.

To start talking about this shift, I will cover four areas of skills that I think are important—relating to each other, relating to ourselves, food and stuff. This is meant as an exercise in opening the imagination, rather than defining how these things should be done. As you read through these topics, imagine how this could relate to your life, how you might do it differently, what barriers stand in the way, and how they could be overcome. Each section starts with a little story of what this might look like in practice, and outlines some ideas on what we could be doing now and into the future.

Each other

I remember all those years ago when I needed something, I would go to the shop or go to the bank. Now I go to those around me. Being in debt to other people is in some ways more terrifying and exhausting than being in debt to private corporations, but in other ways it feels a lot safer. I am now in the hands of other people, who I see regularly, talk to, and understand where they are at. Yesterday, I needed something to fix the fence keeping the animals out of my veggie patch. The tip heap didn’t have anything, so I went to ask my neighbour. We don’t really get on, they are loud and talkative, while I am quite shy. They have a lot of complaints about how we are living now, and like to talk about how easy supermarkets used to be, and I can’t stand that sort of conversation. There was also a conflict between them and one of my best friends a few months back, and that sits awkwardly on top of our interactions. But they are my neighbour, and I do rely on them. I rely on everyone I live around, and it takes more effort than the supermarket—we need to process and mediate our conflicts when they come up, and have long meetings when there are disagreements on a larger scale. But I’m glad we are (re)learning these skills as a community, and it’s worth it to not be dependent on a market that destroys both earth and people.

We need to redefine our relationship to each other. We need to move away from impersonal transactions that hide the destruction of profit-driven global supply chains, and move towards relationships that support us to meet our needs in ways that benefit the environment around us. Relationships that are place-based, responsible and reciprocal.

Most of us on this continent currently get the majority of our needs met by the impersonal market. The market is driven by seeking profit; if business owners do not prioritise profit above all else they will be pushed out by another business that can offer the customer a more cost-effective product. The profit-seeking market has been taking over more and more areas of our life since capitalism began hundreds of years ago; privatising land, water and life. When we buy something now, it is often impossible to know where it came from, the conditions in which it was made, and who and what was hurt in the process. Pain and destruction is continued through these impersonal transactions, by people who often have no idea about the suffering caused by the production, transport and disposal of their products.

Throughout history, many relationships have been started and maintained based on a debt that is different to the impersonal bank debt we are so familiar with today. A debt where people never fully repay what the other has given—perhaps they give a little more or a little less.^[2] Exact exchange can lead to the ending of a relationship—in a market setting I exchange $10 for some veggies, and then I never need to see the shopkeeper again. Exchanges and gifts that leave one or both people feeling a little bit in debt can create and sustain relationships—something that is much easier on a local scale.

The localisation movement is doing an amazing job of trying to bring our consumption closer to home, and more likely to be truly ethical—not hurting land, water or life. However, it is too easy for us to abandon our ethics at the supermarket door, understandably knowing there are very few accessible and ethical options, options that take a lot of time, research, and more often than not, money. So while individual action is important in this sphere, and will be touched on more below, collective action is much more important in getting the societal changes we need, and making them accessible to others. Many efforts have been made to constrain the market and attempt to subordinate it to more ethical processes, for example by outlawing specific destructive practices. Time and time again, we see the profit driven market slipping around those constraints. A clear example of this is forestry companies managing to continue logging through loopholes and dodgy definitions, despite the existence of legislation to protect forests. Capitalism’s latest attempt to avoid constraints and portray itself as the answer to our problems is greenwashing, and destruction continues as people and governments eat up the rhetoric.

So meeting our needs outside of a profit-seeking market is necessary. And we do this by working on projects with those around us, such as growing food, building things, dealing with conflict, creating events that celebrate and grieve—the list is endless. A communal space like the Catalyst social centre in Coburg is showing how this is possible, bringing together many different groups and people to make collective decisions on how to use a collective space, building together, sharing food, knowledge and other resources. Farmers markets are a place in between the capitalist market and the potential for more reciprocal and local ways of relating, where people make relationships and exchange things beyond money, but not (yet) on a level that helps us escape capitalist transactions.

Currently, especially for those of us who live in cities, our communities are those we choose to be around. We spend time with and rely on our friends, and those in our families we actually like. But those small, often segregated groups can’t meet all our needs, and also often restrict the types of people we spend time with. We need to build a truly place-based community, where we rely on those around us, whether we get on well with them or not. This involves so many skills we have lost, or never had. Collective decision making, conflict resolution, respectfully discussing things with those who disagree with us are all vital. And when people step outside the communally accepted norms of behaviour and enact violence or other harm on others, we need to know how to deal with this in a way that supports everyone—not just send them to a privatised jail. This is the realm of transformative justice, something which will take immense effort and the development of specific skills.

Practicing these skills of living, working and being together are so important for the degrowth movement in finding ways to live that cause significantly less harm. These skills are also needed in the struggles needed to mitigate ecological destruction.

Ourselves

Anika took all of the best cucumbers, again. I am so angry, I want to find them and yell at them. We spent so long in the last community-wide meeting discussing this season’s harvest, where they would go, who should get what. I know it seems petty, and it probably is. My feelings probably come from what happened between Anika and Marty last year, there are definitely lots of unresolved feelings there. I am so glad I’ve been given so much space to practice understanding my thoughts and feelings. I can’t believe this stuff wasn’t taught to young people only a few decades ago! Space to process with others, and frameworks to process my own feelings have really helped me understand my insecurities and why I get so upset about certain things. I can now listen to myself and others with much more patience and understanding, and ask questions to get to the bottom of what is going on.

We need to redefine our relationship to ourselves. Working towards degrowth and meeting our needs within our place-based community is hard work, and involves disagreement, conflict, miscommunication and confusion. Working through difficult issues and difficult times, both collectively and individually, takes a lot of self reflection and communication skills. So many of our conflicts, miscommunications, and difficulties in hard times can be made easier if we have healthier more reflective relationships with ourselves.

We currently live in a society where few of these skills are passed on or practised. Instead, we are bombarded by advertising and social media that increases our insecurity and rewards our impatience and outbursts. If we want a world where people are much more dependent on each other, rather than the market, then we will need to work on our self reflection, emotional regulation and resilience. This looks very different for different people, so all I can do here is give a few ideas.

Unlearning authority and institutionalisation is important for a truly democratic society, where people have initiative and are empowered to contribute how they want, and take part in decision-making as fully as they can and want to. Many of us have been socialised through school, university and/or work to turn up somewhere at a certain time and do what we are told. If we want to create a world where people are autonomous and responsible to choose how they contribute to society, deciding and keeping to our own routines is an important skill. Deciding what we want to work on and prioritise, how to get things done to deadlines we create, how to push through tiredness to get some things done, and let other tasks slide when we know we really need to rest. Co-working, i.e. picking a regular time to work on things with each other, and asking friends/accomplices to check in regularly, can support us to be accountable to what we say we will do.

Processing our emotions so we can decide how to act on them is a hugely important skill for engaging with others, especially in high stress situations. There are many ways to process emotions, from frameworks such as Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) and Acceptance Commitment Therapy (ACT), to group rituals, or even giving yourself an hour a week to journal about where you are at. One framework that sits outside the market is re-evaluation counselling, often known as co-counselling. This is a framework where pairs or groups of people give each other time to talk through what’s going on for them, and how it relates to experiences in their past. It has a strong anti-oppression focus to help people use the clear thinking that comes from processing or discharging their emotions, in order to organise against oppression in their lives and communities. There are thousands of people around the world, including here on Kulin Country, practicing co-counselling every week, supporting activists and everyday people to process emotions to think more clearly.^[3]

Working through our issues is very much influenced by our childhood experiences. Amazing new research has been done understanding how trauma wires itself into our brains, for example through the work of Gabor Maté and the well known book ‘The Body Keeps the Score‘.

Practices such as mediation, yoga and mindfulness, especially when grounded in their histories, can also be very useful. Often they involve giving ourselves time to feel and process our emotions and experiences, while also making sure to look outside of ourselves and our egos. Each person and group needs to find what works for them, which can often take a lot of experimentation.

One last skill I will mention while talking about redefining our relationship to ourselves, is practising skills of reason. Understanding how biases work, how to use logic and critical thinking can help us understand ourselves and the world a lot better, as well as help us communicate and search, with others, for as close to the truth as we can get. Importantly, the skills of reason also help us clearly explain why we are acting to transition the world towards something better, unpack the untruths that often allow people to unquestioningly cause harm, and get more people on board.

Food

Today is my turn to cook dinner. In the afternoon I check the communal food stores to see what needs to be eaten. Of course, zucchinis again, so many zucchinis! I’ll cook them into fritters, hopefully that will be different enough from last night for people to not complain too much. Some of the blueberries are finally ripe, so we can have them for dessert. I grab some eggs from the chickens, whatever other veggies I can find around, and get cooking. A few others come to help, and we pass the hours of grating, chopping, and frying reasonably quickly, comparing updates on how different veggies and grains are growing, and just talking shit. It’s fun, but I’m glad I only put my hand up to cook once a week. I prefer working in the garden.

We need to redefine our relationship to food. Working towards a degrowth future means focusing on what we need to live and thrive, and finding local sustainable ways to meet those needs. Changing our food systems from a destructive, fossil fuel intensive, alienated industry, to a practice that brings communities together and closer to the land, will help us lessen the damage done to the environment, but also give us the skills to survive and thrive in increasing disasters.

So many of us grow up not knowing where our food comes from, what a corn or bean plant looks like, or what is in season. We need to live much closer to the earth again, like many people around the world continue to do. We need to consume food that is grown locally and is in season, so it doesn’t need to be shipped across the country or the world, and stored for long periods of time. Fresh local food is tastier and more nutritious. And spending more time growing, harvesting and preparing food gives us a more direct connection to the soil and plants that we rely on. Finding ways to store food with less energy use is essential, such as cellars and preserving through pickling and stewing, have been used for thousands of years. These are the types of skills that help us move beyond dependence on damaging industrial agriculture.

Yes, all of this will take more physical work in food preparation, and many might push against that. The convenience of the supermarket and pre-made meals is very appealing, but it not only causes so much waste, it also disconnects us from our food, and each other. Communal cooking and eating could be so much more common, and make food preparation and cleaning more efficient and enjoyable. There is so much to learn from women and peasant communities, who have been and are the ones doing most of this work. Currently it is estimated that peasants nourish at least 70% of the world’s people, and use less land than industrial agriculture.^[4] The stories of peasant migrants are intimately linked to the community and market gardens of Melbourne.^[5]

People are building community resilience to disaster and lessening the damage to the environment through growing food at home, holding food swaps where people come together to exchange what they’ve grown,^[6] saving food from landfill by jumping in the bins and grabbing it, and community supported agriculture (CSAs) where consumers are sharing some of the farmers’ risk and eaters are more closely connected to the farm and knowledge of food production. A great example of a project that brings together many people around local food is the Oakhill Food Justice Farm in Preston. Once a week students from the local primary school walk over to learn skills and get their hands dirty. Local businesses drop off their waste, which once composted is added to gardens by volunteers, and the food grown goes to locals who need it. If you want to see degrowth in action, go and visit!

Stuff

The blender has broken again. Luckily the repair workshop is tomorrow, and I can be shown once again how to fix it. I feel confident in my bike repair skills, finally, and managed to fix the bike that powers the blender and washing machine last week. Our community is running low on aluminium, so we will have to have another town meeting to discuss turning on the furnace to recycle some more, or just go without if we think the waste isn’t worth it. Our town’s 3D printer is still working really well, and we have a huge supply of soft plastics from the dumps to feed into it. But people are learning old skills and coming up with new ones to make even that obsolete. The only thing we still really need it for is medical supplies.

We need to redefine our relationship to stuff. Right now we can basically buy anything we want (given we have the money for it), regardless of the destruction involved in the creation, use, transport and disposal of the product. This leads to the depressing realities of islands of plastic waste in the oceans, and the fact that in the Australian fashion industry, roughly 260,000 tonnes of clothing reaches landfill each year—that is 10kg per person, per year. Humans can be and are so much more creative than that.

There are many things that governments and corporations could do to address this issue. Stopping the practice of planned obsolescence is a clear first step, as it is madness that so many products are made deliberately unusable solely to increase profits. Ensuring the right to repair is an important part of manufacturing any new products, but of course, the corporations whose profits are boosted by planned obsolescence and lack of repairability lobby politicians to stop these changes taking place.

Heavily restricting and removing advertising from our public and private spaces is also important, as creating insecurity in order to sell more products is not something useful in a sustainable society. It has been estimated that advertising adds 32% to the carbon footprint of everyone in the UK,^[7] and we can imagine that it is similar here in Australia. Some governments have banned outdoor advertising and with sustained pressure others could follow suit. There are also examples of individuals and groups who creatively remove advertising from public spaces, including Kyle McGee’s Democratic Media Please.^[8]

We can relearn the skills of sharing what we do have in proper commons. Commons, as researched by Elinor Ostrom and her team, are resources that are long-enduring, self-organised, and self-governed. This means each resource, piece of land, information, etc. is held in common ownership by the people who use it, and they organise and decide the rules for governing it. Unfortunately the misleading concept of the ‘tragedy of the commons’ has become very widely known, but Garret Hardin who coined the term was instead talking about open access resources, and not commons at all. As Ostrom and others have shown, commons have been created and upheld successfully and sustainably for long periods of time in many parts of the world, definitely not tragedies! So re-commoning land and resources is a large part of building and sharing stuff sustainably. Libraries are a great example of commons that everyone has heard of, and projects like tool libraries are expanding the idea. A local example is the Brunswick Tool Library in Melbourne.

Along with commoning, another important concept in degrowth is convivial technology. Convivial technology refers to technology that is chosen by the communities because it meets certain criteria, such as bringing people together, is accessible and easy to use/make, is adaptable, improves the rest of the living world, and is appropriate to the situation.^[9] Convivial technology exists in opposition to so much of today’s technology that takes power out of people’s hands and puts it in a distant group of technocrats, and often doesn’t enhance living standards or the natural environment. A bike is a great example of convivial technology.

Just like with food, we need to start using the resources that are available to us within the limits of our environment. This can mean using more electricity when the sun is up and the wind is blowing, and limiting our use when there isn’t sun, wind or other renewable resources. Sharing and repairing resources is another huge part of building the world we know we need, as well as getting ready for what we will require during disasters. There are a few repair cafes around Melbourne where you can bring things that have broken and those with the skills will teach you how to fix them.^[10]

Conclusion

Hopefully these brief thoughts have opened up a bigger space for imagination of what is possible in a degrowth world. There are already many projects, communities and individuals working on the things I have explored above, so that anyone (including you!) can move past imagination and into action. Drawing all of these threads together is part of a new ‘degrowth network’ which is emerging on this continent. We need more action, more discussion, and to keep connecting the two together. So please get in touch if you want to continue this conversation, especially if you disagree with some or all of what I’ve written. We can all improve our ideas and practises through respectful disagreement, and move quickly while staying grounded in our values to create the world we know is possible.

To get involved in the degrowth network, email degrowthnework@proton.me

1. Ted Trainer, Degrowth, How Much is Needed?, 2021. ↑

2. David Graeber, Debt: The First 5000 Years, 2011. ↑

3. For example, check out ‘Re-evaluation Counseling.’ ↑

4. GRAIN, Peasants still feed the world, even if FAO claims otherwise, 2022, <https://grain.org/en/article/6790-peasants-still-feed-the-world-even-if-fao-claims-otherwise> ↑

5. PROV, Chinese migrants and market gardens, 2020. <https://prov.vic.gov.au/about-us/our-blog/vegetable-veterans> ↑

6. To find local food swaps in Melbourne: <https://localfoodconnect.org.au/food-swaps> ↑

7. Purpose Disruptors, Advertised Emissions Temperature Check, 2022. ↑

8. See www.democraticmediaplease.net. ↑

9. Andrea Vetter, The Matrix of Convivial Technology, 2017. ↑

10. List of repair initiatives in Melbourne: www.stkildarepaircafe.org.au/other-melb-options/ ↑

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Alice Seedling has been doing activism for about 8 years, focusing on direct action against fossil fuels and extractivism, and now moving into strategic visions to create a world without extractivism, such as degrowth.