Who are they? A loose-knit alliance of organisations, groups and individuals working toward economic degrowth via various practical projects and educational initiatives.
What do they want? The downscaling of material production and consumption to within sustainable limits.
The means of achieving degrowth tend to be celebratory and inclusive rather than martyrdom through sacrifice. Participation in degrowth can take many forms, including the sharing economy, downshifting, tiny house living, locavorism, and the joys of living simply. The ongoing goal is to shrink one’s own ecological footprint, and to join with communities that proactively do more with less.
Who/what are they fighting? Environmental destruction and social inequality, which are both products of today’s dominant economic growth-at-all-costs paradigm.
Resource depletion and environmental destruction result from our increasing ecological footprint in the face of limits to growth. Degrowthers recognize that since one cannot fight the limits mother nature imposes and expect to win, our systems of production and consumption that are currently growth-dependent need to change.
How do they organise? Degrowth is organised on many different levels, from individual actions to participation in practical group activities and educational events, to large-scale international conferences for collaboration and cross-pollination of ideas and projects.
Success stories: Degrowth is still evolving as a movement that is gaining traction against the economic growth ideology primarily among laypeople, rather than from within the political arena. Although still in its infancy, it is quite possible that many of the successes of the degrowth movement will come from being inclusive, proactive, and prepared for the inevitability of deep social and economic adjustments to environmental limits that will have to be made one way or another.