New research outlines pathway to achieve high well-being and a safe climate without economic growth

Roadmap shows how to achieve good lives for all and a safe climate by reorienting production and distribution toward well-being and ecological transformation instead of capital accumulation and elite consumption.

Governments’ attempts to achieve climate goals are falling short, in large part because wealthy economies are continuing to pursue economic growth. As these economies ramp up production and consumption, they make climate mitigation more difficult to achieve. As a result, the Paris Agreement is slipping out of reach, putting nature and human societies in jeopardy.  

Post-growth research offers a solution, showing that wealthy economies can achieve positive social outcomes without perpetual growth, by orienting production toward well-being and by sharing resources more equitably.  This approach can enable much faster emissions reductions.  However, so far, such pathways have not yet been explored in climate mitigation scenarios. 

A study by the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (ICTA-UAB), the University of Lausanne, and the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), recently published in Nature Climate Change, establishes the principles for modelling post-growth scenarios. The study points out that existing post-growth and degrowth scenarios do not consistently apply the core principles of a post-growth transition, leaving much of the potential alternatives unexplored. In many cases, existing scenarios represent stagnating or declining GDP, without transforming production and distribution.

According to Aljoša Slameršak, lead author of the study and researcher at ICTA-UAB, post-growth is not about producing less within the same economic system, “but about changing what is produced and how it is distributed, reducing socially and ecologically harmful goods and services, and increasing production aimed at satisfying human needs and ecological goals.”

“Human well-being should be assessed based on the degree of basic human need satisfaction, such as access to housing, healthcare, and food, and not solely through economic indicators, such as income or a country’s level of economic activity,” adds Slameršak.

From a climate mitigation perspective, the study underlines that analysing post-growth scenarios requires considering targeted demand-side measures and investments in low-carbon technologies capable of reducing emissions. Representing innovation purely through aggregate growth does not allow for an adequate evaluation of the real impact of post-growth policies.

The article identifies several key mechanisms of the post-growth transition. “Post-growth implies the redistribution and restructuring of the economy to provide the essentials for a decent standard of living for everyone, while keeping additional non-essential consumption within levels compatible with planetary boundaries. This requires substantially reducing current inequalities,” comments study co-author Joel Millward-Hopkins of the University of Lausanne. The authors also argue that resource use in the Global North and Global South should gradually converge toward levels sufficient for high well-being within ecological limits.

Although several studies have quantified the transformative potential of individual post-growth principles, these do not directly represent complete post-growth scenarios. Yannick Oswald, a co-author of the University of Lausanne comments: “We lack modelling tools capable of integrating several of these principles at once, to assess how social and ecological objectives could advance together and anticipate possible negative interactions.”

Still, the results of previous research are promising. “The encouraging news is that existing studies show that post-growth principles can be highly transformative even when applied individually. For example, we know that basic needs could be satisfied universally using less than half of the energy and materials currently consumed globally,” says Jarmo S. Kikstra, co-author from the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA).

Finally, the study acknowledges that despite its social and ecological potential, major barriers exist to a post-growth transition. “A post-growth transition implies profound changes in social, economic, and institutional arrangements. Future research should explore how such changes can be better represented in models and scenarios,” says Vivien Fisch-Romito, a co-author of the University of Lausanne.

According to the authors, such transformations are likely to face resistance from established actors who benefit from the existing system. However, the authors note that growth-oriented scenarios also depend on far-reaching assumptions, most notably the large-scale deployment of negative emissions technologies. “The key difference is that post-growth envisions deep systemic change that, at least in principle, can be achieved through democratic deliberation and social struggle, whereas the feasibility of unproven technologies in growth-oriented scenarios remains speculative and possibly physically unachievable,” they conclude.

 

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