Degrowth

Degrowth is a political and economic approach that seeks to reduce material and energy use in wealthy societies while improving well-being and ecological sustainability.

Ecological economics: An economic field that studies economies as systems embedded in finite ecosystems. It supplies degrowth’s framework for treating ecological limits as constraints on economic activity.
Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen: A Romanian-American economist who applied thermodynamics to economic production and resource use. His work on economic throughput and entropy became a major intellectual precursor.
Green growth: An approach that seeks to expand economic output while reducing environmental harm through efficiency and clean technology. It shares environmental aims with degrowth but expects economic growth to continue.
Climate mitigation: Actions that reduce greenhouse-gas emissions or increase the removal of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. Lower energy and material demand can reduce emissions, alongside direct decarbonization.
Absolute decoupling: A decline in environmental pressure while economic output increases over the same period. Its feasibility at the speed required for ecological targets is disputed in growth-versus-degrowth debates.
Steady-state economy: An economy designed to maintain stable levels of population and physical throughput within ecological limits. It describes an economic destination often proposed alongside degrowth.
The Limits to Growth: A 1972 report modeling the consequences of continued growth in population, industry, food production, pollution, and resource use. Its scenarios brought global growth limits into public debate.
Post-growth: A broad family of approaches that questions dependence on economic growth as a measure and policy goal. It overlaps with degrowth but includes positions that do not call for deliberate contraction.
Energy descent: A planned or projected decline in the energy available to society, especially from fossil fuels. Degrowth debates how to manage lower energy use without undermining essential services.
Rebound effect: An increase in resource use that offsets some or all of the savings from improved efficiency. Rebound effects complicate claims that efficiency alone can reconcile growth with lower resource use.

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