For future generations to meet their needs, and to close the global inequality gap, we need to degrow. That is we need to reduce resource and energy consumption to bring the economy back into balance with the living world in a way that reduces inequality and improves human well-being (Hickel, 2020a,b). This transition has consequences for business, because instead of boosting sales companies need to encourage consumers to make do with less, avoiding build in obsolescence, extending product lives to slow disposal and replacement, focusing on satisfying ‘needs’ rather than ‘wants’ and reducing overall resource consumption through conscious changes in sales and marketing techniques, new revenue models and innovative technology solutions (Bocken & Short, 2016). Overall, we can say that companies have to rethink their business models, therefore I specifically aim to answer the following research question: what could a degrowth business model framework look like? Degrowth business models (DGMs) are supposed to serve the dual aim of (1) obeying planetary boundaries whilst simultaneously (2) contributing to reducing inequality and increasing well-being. That is companies need to develop value propositions that, on the one hand contribute to absolutely reducing resource and energy consumption, and on the other are aimed at production of protected needs (Di Giulio & Defila, 2021). Since degrowth is considered an authentic and legitimate interpretation of sustainable development, SDGs 12-16 can serve as proxies for obeying planetary boundaries, whilst the remaining SDGs (minus SDG8.1 -economic growth) can be regarded as proxies for well-being and reducing inequality.
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Despite continuous improvement, lifelong learning, and plan-do-check-act cycles, every new day the planet is a little worse off than the day before! In the first 10 months of this year alone, an area the size of the Netherlands has been deforested and twice that area has been added to desert! Technology development, continuous improvement and quality approaches are (at most) aimed at doing the best possible. That's not the same as doing the right things. Implementing wrong (disastrous) practices as efficiently as possible is actually accelerating the ever-growing problems we face. In this article it is argued through 8 suggestions how to evolve from prosperity to well-being, to economic degrowth in favour of ecological growth and increasing connectedness.
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Wie maakt zich druk om ons dagelijks eten? Het agro-foodsysteem zorgt voor goedkoop voedsel in de schappen. Tegenwoordig wordt minder dan tien procent van inkomen aan eten besteedt maar… deze zekerheid is aan het wegvallen. Voedsel wordt in toenemende mate geassocieerd met overgewicht, klimaatverandering, verlies aan biodiversiteit, erosie, ondervoeding, dierenleed en onderbetaling van landarbeiders. In dit artikel gaat de aandacht uit naar nieuwe vormen van omgang met voedsel in lijn met de idealen van de ontgroei-beweging. Voor deze nieuwe initiatieven is een belangrijke voorwaarde de beschikbaarheid van betaalbare grond in de stad.
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In order to be able to do paid work, it is a condition that people also do reproductive work. Raising children, taking care of the house, running errands, taking care of the community (family, neighbours), etc. all this is also necessary work. No paid work without this so-called reproductive work. There is a lot to be said about quiet quitting, about people doing their 9 to 5 (office) job as minimally as possible, because it is so far from their "purpose". Since Corona, people are often allowed to work from home. Contrary to expectations, it appears that people can often do their work in solitude with (considerably) fewer hours at home than before in the office. Quietly dropping out, doing less paid work (Degrowth) may have more impact than contributing to even more production, material and energy consumption in an economy of infinite growth from finite resources. By increasing our reproductive work - well-being - we may be able to shape degrowth. Tilting towards a sustainable planet must be done bottom up, from our own Inner Development Goals! Something that seems terrifying, quiet quitting, may be a starting signal of something very beautiful!
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Toerisme’s toenemende luchtvaartafhankelijkheid is een enorme barriere voor echte verduurzaming, terwijl aan dit laatste niet meer te ontkomen is. Dit essay presenteert daarom een radicaal alternatief voor planeetvriendelijk toerisme
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The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, launched during the United Nations Biodiversity Conference in December 2022, encourages governments, companies and investors to publish data on their nature-related risks, dependencies and impacts. These disclosures are intended to drive businesses to recognise, manage and mitigate their reliance on ecosystem goods and services. However, there is a ‘biodiversity blind spot’ that is evident for most organisations and business schools. Business education rarely addresses the root causes of biodiversity loss, such as the unsustainable exploitation of natural resources. As the dominant positioning of Education for Sustainable Development Goals (ESDG) presents biodiversity in anthropocentric instrumental terms inadequate for addressing ecosystem decline, we posit that a more progressive and transformative ecocentric education through ecopedagogy and ecoliteracy is needed. Both approaches include the development of critical thinking about degrowth, the circular economy and conventional stakeholder theory to include non-human stakeholders. Using comparative case studies from Northumbria University, the University of Hong Kong and Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, we illustrate how business education can be transformed to address biodiversity loss, providing theoretical guidance and practical recommendations to academic practitioners and future business leaders.
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Building on the Millennium Development Goals, Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) and Education for Sustainable Development Goals (ESDG) were established. Despite the willingness of many educational institutions worldwide to embrace the SDGs, given escalating sustainability challenges, this article questions whether ESDG is desirable as “an education for the future”. Many challenges outlined by the SDGs are supposed to be solved by “inclusive” or “sustainable” economic growth, assuming that economic growth can be conveniently decoupled from resource consumption. Yet, the current hegemony of the sustainability-through-growth paradigm has actually increased inequalities and pressure on natural resources, exacerbating biodiversity loss, climate change and resulting social tensions. With unreflective support for growth, far from challenging the status quo, the SDGs and consequently, the ESDGs, condone continuing environmental exploitation, depriving millions of species of their right to flourish, and impoverishing future generations. This article creates greater awareness of the paradoxes of sustainable development and encourages teaching for sustainability through various examples of alternative education that emphasizes planetary ethic and degrowth. The alternatives include Indigenous learning, ecopedagogy, ecocentric education, education for steady-state and circular economy, empowerment and liberation. “This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in 'Journal of Environmental Education' on 01/20/20, available online: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00958964.2019.1710444 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/helenkopnina/
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