Author: Jennifer Wilkins

Let's think about the sustainability agenda and goals such as eradicating hunger and poverty. Are they the right goals? By focusing on the effects, are we ignoring the causes and therefore the alternatives that we could be building? An article in Nature (4 July 2023) has pulled together some of the evidence pointing to the … Continue reading Rethinking the Global Sustainability Agenda

Max Rashbrooke is a public intellectual in New Zealand, regularly commenting on issues of inequality, wealth, poverty, taxation and democracy. With his 6 May 2023 article on degrowth in Stuff, he appears to have dipped his toe into the waters of degrowth and found them not quite inviting enough to swim in. He's on the … Continue reading Welcome to Degrowth Max Rashbrooke

There is a plausible future in which economic growth is too hard - or undesirable - and is dropped as a economic goal. Instead, distributive and regenerative factors would be emphasised in business and policymaking to enhance wellbeing and nature as new economic priorities. Economics would become socio-ecological. You might ask: why should we prep … Continue reading A 4-Step Plan for a Post Growth-Ready New Zealand

The IPCC report, issued on 20 March 2023, is an invaluable synthesis of climate science; however, there is a fundamental issue with IPCC reports in general. They communicate climate science using language that is also used by mainstream economists, such as modelling, equilibrium, financial flows, market barriers, leverage, costs and budgets. This shared lexicon unfortunately … Continue reading IPCC Gives Mainstream Economics A Free Pass

If only our politicians and media were as fixated with wellbeing and environmental growth on a quarterly basis as they are with financial growth. If only we had an environment governor who could intervene to "cool the jets" on materials extraction, waste and pollution in the way our Reserve Bank governor does with interest rate … Continue reading Cool the Extraction Jets

An important new paper on degrowth-oriented business value creation has just been published. We all understand how businesses create value in the growth paradigm - business models organise activities to enable strategies of efficiency, expansion and innovation to create products and services that increase material and financial wealth for stakeholders. Degrowth paradigm value creation and … Continue reading Degrowth-Oriented Value Creation

New Zealanders’ enduring relationship with GDP growth as an economic goal is nostalgic, traceable to the 1960s and a fall in the price of wool. Growth goals have reflected who we are as a nation. We are strivers through thick and thin. Looking forward, however, GDP growth would be misplaced as an economic goal given … Continue reading New Zealand’s Growth Nostalgia

Having access to adequate housing is a human need and human right. Everyone deserves to have a home. In Australia, residential buildings are provided either by the market as private housing or by the state as social housing. Yet, modest income households are falling into a gap between them. Furthermore, housing stock does not meet … Continue reading If the Market and the State Cannot Provide Affordable, Sustainable Housing in Australia, Perhaps ‘Housing for Degrowth’ Can.

In this first ever guest post for Heliocene, New Zealand writer Frances Palmer presents a deeply inquisitive review of Underland by Robert Macfarlane. Reaching into its text and its subtexts, she compels us not only to read the book but, more importantly, to understand why it has been written. Macfarlane, himself, writes that his book … Continue reading Review: Underland by Robert Macfarlane

Morocco footballers celebrated their World Cup successes first with their mums, recognising the daily support their mothers give them. This is analogous to the whole economy, momentarily giving visibility to the fact that women everywhere bear the burden of care work. The economy doesn't only consist of goods and services that are traded. The economy … Continue reading Women’s Work: What’s It Worth?

Political geography professor Matthew Huber argues that degrowth is middle class environmentalism and cannot hope to connect with the working class. Degrowth intellectual Jason Hickel responds, echoing environmentalist Chico Mendes, who said that "ecology without class struggle is just gardening". He writes that “degrowth is justice” and that recognising this is “part of building class … Continue reading Degrowth and Labour Solidarity

Sustainable development, facilitated over the last 50 years by the UN, underpins mainstream business sustainability - the art of balancing decision making over three co-equal pillars: economic growth, environmental protection and social progress. But any business equation that includes economic growth inherently endangers environments and societies because growth (ie development) depends on extraction and exploitation. … Continue reading Sustainable Growth Is Out, Sustainable Degrowth Is In

Degrowth is a democratic, planned reduction in production and consumption to rebalance humanity's relationship with nature and improve human wellbeing. I talk a lot about how businesses and industries need to be aware of degrowth as a resilience issue - meaning they need to prepare to adapt and transform as degrowth forces gather and take … Continue reading Degrowth Policy Example

Clothing company Patagonia’s announcement this week that “Earth is now our only shareholder” has lit up screens around the world. Founder Yvon Chouinard and his family have transferred complete ownership of the company, valued at US$3 billion, to two new entities. The Patagonia Purpose Trust, created to protect the company’s values and overseen by the … Continue reading What Does Earth Really Need From Patagonia?