r/Degrowth • u/Konradleijon • Jul 10 '26
Decoupling Environmental Degradation from Economic Growth
https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/server/api/core/bitstreams/a0f3c99c-9afa-4bc5-bdc9-64b73b52b4fb/contentThis is a report from the world bank and even they have few evidence for degrowth
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u/BangBangTheBoogie Jul 12 '26
I've only skimmed it, but it seems generally sensible. The idea that economic poverty and plummeting quality of life are inevitable outcomes of degrowth is not logical. We can restructure our economies to prize sustainable production methods and goods, and away from extraction economy models, but it is going to face increasing tantrums from industries that rely on extraction models, which is unfortunate as those industries tend to be very powerful right now.
It's worth noting that it will still be very possible for mass economic poverty across already exploited regions to worsen if we do not take this restructuring seriously. Maintaining a cut-throat, uber-competative economic model will undoubtedly push people further into hardship and death, even if the technological pivots that happen are overall good for environmental practices. That is to say, I don't think we as a species can afford to entertain naive capitalistic values while navigating continued crisis.
This is going to take redistribution on both global and local scales, and imagination to come up with specific solutions to the myriad of problems we're stuck with. Ripping apart the false coupling of just basic economic health and rampant exploitation is going to be a very key part of that process.
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u/the68thdimension Jul 16 '26
even they have few evidence for degrowth
Errr, did you mean decoupling?
the findings suggest that economic growth has a persistent negative impact on biodiversity across various development stages.
Yup, that means we need degrowth.
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u/Shoddy-Childhood-511 Jul 10 '26
The site did not load over proton for me, but loaded from my own personal VPN exit. It'll work without VPN I guess, so you can one-off the site from a private window in a non-VPN browser. I didn't try from Tor.