Degrowth Resources

This isn't an assignment, just a gentle push.

Photo by Ying Ge on Unsplash

So, you want to know more about degrowth. Great, you've come to the right place. In the few short years that I've been reading about and learning about the topic, a lot more resources around degrowth have come online. And as interest and degrowth grows (no pun intended but I'll take it), you'll be able to find more information out there.

What I have here is just a short list of a bunch of different resources I know about to get people started. Many of you will already be familiar with them. One word of caution, this list is just a summary of many of the things I've come across and found useful. What you get out of these things or don't get out of them will depend on you. If you don't find them useful or don't like them, that's fine. I was a little reluctant to put together this list because I don’t want to tell someone that this is the definitive journey through degrowth that you need to take. You don't.

If degrowth is a topic you're interested in just like anything else, explore it on your own, and discover it for yourself. The journey you will take and the things you will learn will be more satisfying if you discover them. Don't treat this like a syllabus where you must check off every box. Take a look see what you like.

Books

The Case for Degrowth – Kallis, Paulson, D’Alisa, Demaria

Less is More – Hickel

The Future is Degrowth – A Guide to a World Beyond Capitalism – Schelzer, Vetea, Vansintjan

Marx in the Anthropocene – Saito

Post Growth – Life After Capitalism – Jackson

Donut Economics – Raworth

Overshoot – Victor

The Limits to Growth (both the original and updates – various authors)

Online resources

Timothée Parrique (timotheeparrique.com) -A great resource to explore. Website is in both French and English. Tim, is a great resource. There is so much great stuff here. Get lost in it. Tim also wrote a book on degrowth in 2023, but he selfishly only published it in French. I’m sure it is brilliant, but I have not read it.

Post Growth Guide – Guide by Oscar Haumann and Marcus Feldthus on what degrowth is and how to go about it from a practical perspective.

Degrowth.org – An academic association dedicated to research, training, and raising awareness about degrowth.

Degrowth.net – The international degrowth network was just set up in 2023. It was set up to help people learn about growth and or and help people organize around egress and learn from each other. Check it out and join a local network if you're so inclined.

Degrowth.info – Degrowth.info is a web portal degrowth.info, that aims to share knowledge about degrowth and help put degrowth into practice.

Resilience.org - resilience.org is brought to you by the post carbon institute. It is exclusively about growth content but there's a lot of great stuff on there including degrowth it's worth checking out.

2023 Beyond Growth Conference – There was a “Beyond Growth Conference held over three days in the European Parliament in May of 2023. The link here shows you some information and a follow-up event, but my advice is to just go to YouTube, type in the 2023 Beyond Growth Conference, and listen to all the speeches.

YouTube – Love or hate YouTube all you like, but just go there and type in the word degrowth and surf to your heart’s content. The good thing is that you will find all different kinds of points of view, which should help you find a lot of different perspectives to support and challenge your own thinking.

Social Media

I have found the most useful resources and most interesting discussions around degrowth on LinkedIn. LinkedIn can be a little tricky because it kind of depends on who you follow and who follows you. But you can go to LinkedIn and just search for degrowth and you'll find plenty. You can find me there and many of the people I've mentioned already. Follow them and as you grow your LinkedIn degrowth community you'll find more and more. You can find degrowth stuff on Twitter (now X), Instagram, Facebook, Threads, Reddit, and other places.

The reason I started writing this Substack was to do my small part in building the larger degrowth community in the world. There are other great degrowth-focused Substacks - check out Protection the Future, and Climate Change is Coming for Us. So, go out there and do your part, whatever you want that to be. I found that the more people understand about degrowth, the more interested they are in a world where we take the degrowth path. So, explore and share your thoughts with family, friends, and anyone with a friendly ear.