Degrowth is Having a Moment

Pass it on.

Last week, I was in Barcelona, Spain for a meeting organized by Research and Degrowth International. I am one of the participants in the Post-Growth Finance Action Circle.

The Action Circles are meant to become a global catalyst for post-growth transformations. The project brings together stakeholders from various sectors who advocate for socio-environmental justice and seek transformational change in their respective sectors (finance in this case) movements or political contexts.

The goal of each Circle is to develop actionable policies, alliances and strategies for a just transition towards a post-growth society. Each Circle features talks by renowned post-growth academics. Meetings of all the Circles are held online, culminating with an in-person meeting of participants from all Circles in Barcelona.

Over the last year, the Finance Action Circle has held virtual meetings with members of the circle, who are generally financial professionals knowledgeable about degrowth. Each meeting has guest lecturers talking to us about a different aspect of degrowth, these speakers included degrowth and sustainability experts such as; Jason Hickel, Florian Barras, Jennifer Hinton, Christopher Marquis and others.

Turi was not impressed with our efforts at the Barcelona Finance Action Circle.

We met in Barcelona last week so that the people involved in the circle could meet each other and the R&D team and to plan about what comes next.

What comes next.

The R&D team will be working with some members of the circle to draft a report that synthesizes some of our discussions and aims to move the financial world toward a post-growth future. I will not be one of the main authors of the paper but will review it and offer my thoughts when helpful, but the paper is in very capable hands.

Expect the paper in the last quarter of this year, although there is no date set in stone. With the beginning of Arketa Institute recently and our paper, By Disaster and Design, and the R&D paper coming in the fall, a lot more people in the financial world will be exposed to degrowth ideas - which is only a good thing over the long term.

Speaking of speaking to Finance.

This week, I attended the Finance Montreal Sustainable Finance Summit. I want to thank the people Florian Roulle of Finance Montreal and Gay Herrington (who spoke at the conference) for inviting me. The conference isn’t a degrowth conference, it is a sustainability conference, so many of the discussions were still about green growth, net-zero targets, and panelists promising sustainable “win-win” investment opportunities (wins for the environment and wins for investment - color me skeptical).

But at the beginning of the second day of the conference, Gay Herrington, a Vice President of Schneider Electric, gave a keynote talk on degrowth. I attended the conference the day before, and it was interesting to see the different dynamics from the crowd of financial and sustainability professionals who had listened to a pretty standard conference fair the day before.

Gaya Herrington speaking at the 2025 Finance Montreal Sustainable Finance Summit. Shameless plug for our Arketa Institute Paper.

When Gaya spoke the room was very silent, and I didn't see many people talking on their phones. The degrowth message was brand new to most of these people, and I had many interesting conversations with people at the conference both before and after Gaya’s talk about degrowth.

I told them that I had helped start a degrowth think-tank - and none of them thought I was crazy. There was even a degrowth Montreal group that met on Thursday night at a local restaurant for those already in the “club” and those who were degrowth curious. We had booked a table for 12, but 20 showed up when they heard what we were talking about.

These are of course small numbers at the restaurant and the conference (probably 700 - 1,000 people over 3 days at the conference), but many left knowing about degrowth when they never had before and wanting to know more.

I have about 10 people to follow up with tomorrow who want to know more about degrowth and help however they can.

This movement is growing.

Please spread the word.