Degrowth and Environmental Justice II | Degrowth,  Happiness and and wellbeing
Channel: blobMetropolis
Date: 2021-09-04

Description 
How should we discuss welfare when understanding the role of growth and the viability of Growth-led development? One option is to look at subjective happiness. This provides an anti-materialistic view which may superficially appear more compatible with significant reductions in consumption in order to remain within safe ecological limits. However, in cross-sectional data happiness is still linked with GDP. Further happiness is not a holistic measure of welfare at may even obscure a lack of basic needs. 

Eudaimonic welfare refers to a more holistic view of welfare. One way of understanding eudaimonic welfare is to take a basic needs approach. Needs are universal non-substitutable,  satiable and provide a framework for rights and entitlements. 

Neither a needs base approach more a happiness based approach is compatible with global growth led development, due to low rates of decoupling of GDP from both fossil fuel usage and more general indicators of ecological damage. However, meeting needs in a degrowth scenario also remains a major challenge and will require a much more egalitarian society focused on providing for everyone's needs rather than luxury consumption. 

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Sources:

Hickel, J. and Kallis, G., 2020. Is green growth possible?. New political economy, 25(4), pp.469-486.

Easterlin, R.A., McVey, L.A., Switek, M., Sawangfa, O. and Zweig, J.S., 2010. The happiness–income paradox revisited. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 107(52), pp.22463-22468.

Büchs, M. and Koch, M., 2019. Challenges for the degrowth transition: The debate about wellbeing. Futures, 105, pp.155-165.

Hickel, J., 2019. Is it possible to achieve a good life for all within planetary boundaries?. Third World Quarterly, 40(1), pp.18-35

Hickel, Jason. "Degrowth: a theory of radical abundance." real-world economics review 87, no. 19 (2019): 54-68.

Hickel, J., 2020. What does degrowth mean? A few points of clarification. Globalizations, pp.1-7.

Fanning, A.L. and O'Neill, D.W., 2019. The Wellbeing–Consumption paradox: Happiness, health, income, and carbon emissions in growing versus non-growing economies. Journal of Cleaner Production, 212, pp.810-821.
Software used(All open Source):
    • Blender
    • Tenacity

    • Inkscape
   * Krita