Degrowth Policies

When discussing degrowth policies, the key to meaningful and genuine conversations is understanding and respecting the context of those you're engaging with. 

Understanding Context: It's important to focus conversations on topics that directly impact the individual's life. The context in which someone operates—be it their profession, community, or personal challenges—guides which degrowth policies are most pertinent and interesting to them.

Listening and Empathy: Before diving into policy discussions, take the time to listen. Ask about the challenges they face, their hopes for the future, and what changes they wish to see in their community. Empathise with this and try to use this knowledge to find common ground.

Speaking to Everyday Concerns: Most of your conversations should emphasise policies that speak to "bread and butter" issues—those that promise tangible improvements to day-to-day life and well-being. 

Approaching with Humility: Recognise that the transition to a degrowth society can seem daunting or scary to many. It represents a significant shift from the status quo, with unknowns that can be frightening. Approach these conversations with humility, gentleness, and respect. Acknowledge the fears and reservations of such a transition and highlight the supportive measures and benefits that degrowth policies offer to ease these concerns.

There are hundreds of proposed policies, that could all work together to bring about a degrowth transition. To navigate this diversity, we have followed the excellent example set out by a paper that mapped 530 policies - external link and structured our content around 13 thematic areas (which you can navigate with the table of contents), each reflecting a critical aspect of degrowth. 

Further, to allow for a more meaningful understanding of both the objectives of degrowth and the practical steps required to realise them, we distinguish policy ends and policy means:

Policy Ends (Goals, Objectives, Targets): The 'what'—the outcomes we aim to achieve through degrowth. These goals guide our vision and outline the desired end states that reflect our values and priorities in the degrowth movement. These are labelled below as "Objective:".

Policy Means (Methods, Instruments, Calibration): The 'how'—the tools, methods, and processes we employ to achieve our degrowth objectives. This includes a range of policy instruments and interventions designed to address specific challenges and opportunities within each thematic area. These are listed below each objective.

Increasing Well-being Without Economic Growth
Objective: Enhance societal well-being and happiness through non-material means, focusing on social equity, environmental health, and quality of life beyond mere economic indicators.

• Universal Basic Services: Guarantee public access to essential services, including education, healthcare, public transport, housing, food, and essential utilities to ensure a high quality of life independent of economic growth.
• Reduced Workweek: Shorten the workweek to 3-4 days to distribute employment more equitably, aiming to decrease unemployment and give people more free time.
• Job Guarantee: Create a federally funded but locally administered employment programme offering jobs to all, focusing on projects that yield social and environmental benefits, ensuring meaningful employment opportunities.
• Basic Income: Establish a guaranteed minimum income for individuals unable to work or unemployed (looking at you, AI), securing a dignified standard of living for everyone.

Actively deconstruct current colonial relations between the Global South and the Global North 
Objective: Objective: Rectify historical injustices and foster global equity, self-determination and economic independence, empowering Global South nations to pursue their developmental paths independently.

• Debt Cancellation: Push for the cancellation of debts, particularly for countries in the Global South, to relieve economic constraints and allow for much-needed investment in public services.
• Enhance Sovereignty: Support initiatives that increase Global South nations' monetary, food, and energy sovereignty—empowering regions to invest in their communities and lessen external dependencies.
• End Resource Appropriation: Cease the extraction and appropriation of labour and natural resources from the Global South, ensuring these regions retain full benefits from their assets.
• Ecological Reparations: Implement reparative measures including grants, debt cancellation and climate adaptation funding.
• Trade and Monetary Reform: Transform trade, mining, and global monetary and financial systems to ensure fair practices and equitable opportunities for all nations.
• Technology and Patent Reform: Facilitate technology transfer and rethink patent laws to promote innovation access, particularly benefiting countries in the Global South.

Reducing Material and Energy Used in Production and Consumption
Objective: Minimise the ecological footprint of goods and services, fostering sustainable, equitable and regenerative production and consumption patterns.

• Scale Down Harmful Industries: Equitably reduce the size of industries harmful to the environment, like fossil fuels, industrial animal agriculture, and fast fashion.
• End Planned Obsolescence: Encourage the design of durable, repairable products to reduce waste and extend product lifespans.
• Cut Advertising: Reallocate advertising budgets towards promoting sustainable practices and cultural activities, reducing consumerism.
• Shift to Usership: Encourage models of sharing and renting instead of ownership to lessen the demand for production and reduce waste.
• Money Creation: Support the principle that governments, rather than banks, should be the primary creators of money to finance public goods and diminish inequality.
• Co-operative Models: Advocate for businesses to adopt co-operative and steward-ownership models, prioritising community welfare and environmental sustainability over profits.
• Income and Wealth Equality: Implement income and wealth equality measures, such as setting minimum and maximum wage limits, wage ratios and adopting progressive wealth taxation.
• Fossil Fuel Treaty: Commit to the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty to drastically cut reliance on fossil fuels.

Embrace Diverse and Emancipatory Education
Objective: Promote emancipatory education that nurtures critical thinking, ecological awareness, and community involvement.

Degrowth Pedagogy Training: Develop comprehensive training programmes for teachers, integrating degrowth concepts, critical thinking, and ecological awareness into their teaching methods.

Experiential Learning: Encourage hands-on learning experiences that connect students with their local environments and communities, such as community service projects, outdoor education, and permaculture design courses.

Eco-spirituality in Curricula: Incorporate eco-spirituality into educational content to explore the deep connections between ecological sustainability, personal well-being, and spiritual fulfilment.

Emotional Pedagogies: Implement teaching approaches that recognise and engage with the emotional dimensions of learning about sustainability and degrowth, fostering a compassionate and empathetic understanding of global challenges.


Foster Cultures of Sufficiency
Objective: Highlight the importance of sufficiency, sustainable living, and the value of "enough" through education.

Sustainable Lifestyle Education: Offer programmes and initiatives that teach sustainable lifestyle practices, including minimalism, the simpler way, the right to simplicity, eco-masculinities, the slow food philosophy, and low-impact living.

Community-Oriented Learning Spaces: Transform schools and educational institutions into community learning hubs that promote sustainability, sufficiency, and community engagement. This could involve school gardens, community-supported agriculture (CSA) programmes, and local sustainability/sufficiency workshops.


Revitalise Indigenous and Local Knowledge:
Objective: Incorporate and restore indigenous learning and traditional ecological knowledge within educational systems.

This can be achieved through critical community and liberation psychology, spaces for creativity and reflection, and library activism that prioritises indigenous narratives.


Build Ecological and Social Consciousness:
Objective: Implement robust ecological education at all levels, emphasising the interconnectedness of social and environmental well-being.

This involves education for a steady-state and circular economy, empowerment through ecological and social justice education, and promoting pluralism in economics education.


Encourage Multilingualism and Cultural Awareness:
Objective: Advocate for learning multiple languages and understanding diverse cultures to counteract English-language hegemony and foster global solidarity.

Instruments for this objective could include language exchange programmes, multicultural education initiatives, and resources that highlight cultural diversity.

Reduce Environmental Pressures
Objective: Implement strategies to significantly lower the ecological impact on our planet by reducing resource use, emissions, and pollution.

Diminishing Caps on Resource Use, Emissions, and Pollution: Introduce policies that set progressively lower limits on the amount of natural resources consumed, greenhouse gases emitted, and pollutants released. These policies should prioritise resource-intensive industries such as petrochemicals, steel, iron, cement and automotive. This could require a global democratic cap and share programme or a mandated reduction of 40-50% of the biophysical footprint in overshooting nations. 

Ecological Tax Reform: Reform tax systems to incentivise sustainable practices and penalise environmental degradation. Taxes on carbon emissions, resource extraction, natural capital depletion, and pollution can discourage harmful activities. Divesting from unethical industries such as fossil fuels, mining, and arms simultaneously is also key.

Moratoria on Resource Extraction and Big Infrastructure: Enact temporary halts on new resource extraction projects (like mining and deforestation) and large-scale infrastructure developments (such as dams and highways) that threaten ecosystems and biodiversity. 

Halt Fossil Fuel Use
Objective: Cease society's reliance on fossil fuels.

Abolish Fossil Fuel Subsidies: Eliminate financial support and subsidies for fossil fuel industries equitably and justly.

Phase-Out of Existing Fossil Fuels: Implement strategies for the gradual discontinuation of fossil fuel extraction and use (80-100% reduction by 2050), beginning with hyper-polluting power plants and ensuring a just transition for workers and communities dependent on these industries as well as universal basic electricity to households.

Nationalise to Phase-Out Fossil Companies: Take fossil fuel companies into public ownership to manage the phase-out process, prioritising environmental protection and workers' rights over profits.


Promote Energy Democracy
Objective: Ensure community control and equitable access to energy, fostering sustainable and renewable energy systems owned and managed by local communities.

Convivial Community-Owned Renewable Systems: Support the development of renewable energy projects owned and operated by local communities, enhancing energy access and sovereignty.

Build Off-Grid Systems: Encourage establishing off-grid renewable energy systems, particularly in remote or underserved areas, to provide sustainable and independent energy solutions.

Oppose Large-Scale Renewable Systems: Advocate for energy solutions that are scalable and adaptable to local needs, avoiding the ecological and social issues associated with large-scale renewable energy projects.


Reduce Energy Demand and Use
Objective: Implement strategies to significantly lower energy consumption and waste, promoting efficiency and sufficiency in energy use.

Energy Efficiency Improvements: Implement policies that enhance energy efficiency in buildings, transportation, and industry, reducing overall energy demand.

Promote Energy Sufficiency: Encourage practices and lifestyles that align with energy sufficiency, such as reducing unnecessary consumption, optimising energy use in homes and businesses, and supporting local, low-energy solutions.


Restore and Preserve Biodiversity
Objective: Implement measures to protect, restore, and enhance the diversity of life on Earth, from genes and species to ecosystems.

Legislate the Rights of Nature: Recognise ecosystems and natural entities as legal subjects with rights, enabling legal actions to protect biodiversity. Strengthen regulations to stop the commercialisation of nature and establish a coherent network of marine protected areas.

Create Resource Sanctuaries: Designate protected areas as sanctuaries for biodiversity, prohibiting activities that could harm wildlife or degrade natural habitats. Advocate for the preservation of knowledge, languages and techniques that protect life.


Promote Stable Demography
Objective: Encourage democratic demographic stability by achieving sustainable population levels.

Bottom-up Empowerment of Women: Support policies and programmes that empower women to make informed decisions about reproduction, including access to contraception and reproductive health services.

Educational and Vocational Opportunities for Women and Girls: Increase access to education and vocational training for women and girls, recognising the strong link between education and reduced fertility rates.

Promote Financial Democracy
Objective: Enhance democratic control over financial systems to ensure they serve the public good, prioritise sustainability, and support economic equity.

Democratise and Decentralise Money Creation: Advocate for public authorities, rather than private banks, to have the primary power to create money, ensuring that monetary policy serves community needs and environmental sustainability. This includes breaking up large financial institutions, enforcing full reserve banking and banning interest on loans. 

Support Community-Owned Financial Institutions: Encourage the development and use of locally-owned and operated credit unions, cooperative banks, and mutual credit systems, which are more accountable to local communities and can direct investment towards local and sustainable projects.

Implement Progressive Taxation: Reform tax systems to include progressive taxation on wealth and capital, financial transaction taxes, global standards for international tax and investment policies, and elimination of tax havens, ensuring a fair distribution of resources and contribution to society.


Foster Ethical and Non-Speculative Finance
Objective: Shift financial practices towards ethical, transparent, and sustainable investments, reducing short-term speculation and prioritising long-term ecological and social well-being.

Support Non-Speculative Currencies and Exchange Systems: Promote the use of local or regional currencies, time banks, collective finance, and other non-debt-based exchange systems that encourage community resilience and sustainability over profit.

Encourage Socially Responsible Investing: Advocate for investment policies and practices that are non-speculative, long-term and prioritise social and environmental criteria, such as a Green New Deal without growth, ecological restoration projects, care services, small-scale renewable energy projects and universal basic services.

Promote Sustainable Farming
Objective: Support agricultural practices that maintain ecological balance, minimise waste and chemical use, and enhance soil fertility.

Institutionalise Artisanal and Organic Farming: Encourage farming methods that rely on biodiversity, natural resources, and minimal chemical inputs, such as organic farming, permaculture, and agroecology.

Support for Small-Scale Farmers: Provide training, financial assistance, and market access to small-scale and peasant farmers to promote diversity and resilience in food systems. Likewise, incentivise intensive community, home and urban gardening, local food shops and coops, and permaculture streets.


Enhance Food Sovereignty
Objective: Empower communities to control their own food systems, prioritising local production and decision-making over external and industrial market forces.

Promote Seed Sharing and Local Seed Banks: Support the creation of household, community and regional seed banks and seed-sharing festivals to preserve biodiversity and local crop varieties.

Develop Local Food Networks: Mandate state institutions to procure a portion of their food from local sources, shorten agricultural supply chains, encourage municipal markets, label and tax food miles, and encourage the establishment of food cooperatives, community-supported agriculture (CSA), and local food councils to strengthen local food systems and economies.

Legislate for Land Redistribution: Advocate for policies that redistribute and facilitate access to land for small-scale farmers, peasants, landless folks or indigenous peoples.


Encourage Sustainable Diets
Objective: Cultivate dietary practices that prioritise health, sustainability, and cultural heritage, through the Slow Food philosophy, local and seasonal eating, and comprehensive educational reforms.

Educate on the Benefits of Plant-Based Diets: Launch public awareness campaigns about the health and environmental benefits of reducing meat and dairy intake, encouraging a shift towards plant-based diets.

Normalise the Slow Food Philosophy: Launch campaigns and workshops to educate on the Slow Food movement's principles, focusing on biodiversity, cultural heritage, and food quality over speed and convenience. Similarly, foster the development of Slow Food communities and facilitate the exchanges of knowledge and best practices among producers, chefs, and consumers.

Promote Local and Seasonal Eating: Introduce organic and local foods in public institutions like schools, hospitals and care facilities. Simultaneously, labelling systems should be implemented that clearly indicate the local and seasonal credentials of food products, helping consumers make informed choices.

Reform Agricultural and Consumer Education: Revise agricultural education in curriculums by including farm visits, school gardening, composting, soil regeneration and the cultivation of diverse and heritage crops.

Defend and Reclaim the Commons
Objective: Protect and restore public and communal access to resources and spaces, ensuring they are managed and preserved for collective benefit rather than private profit.

Local Initiatives:

• Promote community land trusts, cooperative ownership models, citizen self-help groups, giveaway shops, tool libraries, repair cafes, open workshops, and barter clubs.
• Support urban gardening, public parks, community supporter agriculture, the right to roam, and open spaces as commons, fostering community involvement in their care and use.

Regional Strategies:

• Establish regional conservation corridors to protect biodiversity and ecosystems across broader landscapes in a communal and democratic way.
• Develop policies that support the rights of local and indigenous communities to manage natural resources, such as forests, waterways, and fisheries.

Global Actions:

• Advocate for international agreements that recognise and protect the global commons, including the atmosphere, oceans, forests, wetlands, estuaries and polar regions.
• Support the establishment of a Global Climate Trust to manage and distribute environmental resources equitably, democratically and sustainably.
• Incentivise free and open-source software, media, tools, designs and knowledge.
  
  

End the Militarisation and Corrupt Lobbying
Objective: Reduce military spending and activities, redirecting resources towards peacebuilding, environmental protection, and social welfare.

Reduce Military Spending: Advocate for significant reductions in national military budgets. Introduce strict regulations or bans on the international trade of arms, particularly in conflict zones.

Demilitarise Security: Invest in community self-governance and crisis experts, abolish the prison industrial complex, demilitarise communities and police forces, invest in community care, education, poverty alleviation, and decriminalise survival (homelessness, etc.)

Regulate Lobbying: Cap or abolish political donations or make them transparent. End the revolving door between politics and business. Invest in independent local journalism and break up the big media conglomerates.


Reform International Organisations
Objective: Democratise global governance structures to make them more equitable and representative, ensuring they serve the interests of all nations and peoples.

Democratise Financial Institutions: Advocate for reforms in the governance of the IMF and World Bank to ensure fair representation and decision-making processes for all member countries, especially those from the Global South.

Abolish Veto Power in the UN: Campaign for the abolition of veto power within the UN Security Council to prevent the dominance of a few nations over global decisions and to foster a more democratic and equitable international order.

Increase Transparency and Accountability: Push for greater transparency and accountability in international organisations, transnational corporations and global NGOs, including mechanisms for civil society participation and oversight.

Rethink Measures of Success
Objective: Adopt and promote a range of social and ecological indicators that better reflect the well-being of societies and the health of the planet, moving beyond GDP.

Alternative Indicators of Social Progress: Introduce and advocate for the use of alternative metrics that capture the quality of life, social equity, environmental sustainability, and happiness. Examples include the Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) and the Happy Planet Index (HPI). Political decisions should be informed by comprehensive data on environmental health, social welfare, and economic stability.

Abandon GDP as the Sole Indicator of Prosperity: Educate policymakers, businesses, and the public on the limitations of GDP as a measure of a country's success, highlighting the need for indicators that account for environmental degradation, resource depletion, unpaid labour, care work, intrinsic value, and social well-being.

Reduce Inequality
Objective: Implement policies to narrow the gap between the rich and the poor, ensuring fair distribution of wealth, land, labour, capital and resources.

Progressive Taxation: Enforce progressive income, wealth, capital gains, and inheritance taxes, including luxury, frequent flyer and high resource/energy consumption taxes. Introduce global minimum corporate taxation. Crack down on tax havens and tax flight.

Minimum and Maximum Income Limits: Establish limits to incomes by setting caps (i.e. 100% tax after maximum needs satisfaction), having a 94% income tax above US$200,000 (as during WW2) or integrating wage rations (the highest paid employee can only make 10x lowest paid employee), and invest in marginalised, neglected and impoverished communities.

Land and Resource Redistribution: End unequal ecological exchange in a planned manner with global south societies leading the change. Cancel odious debt and introduce debt moratoriums. Introduce land reforms by giving land back to indigenous peoples and landless workers. Advocate for progressive cap-and-dividend schemes. Reparations for ecological and colonial harm.


Eradicate Poverty
Objective: Guarantee the universal provisioning of fundamental human needs, creating a foundation for all to live dignified and fulfilling lives.

Universal Basic Services: Ensure access to essential services such as healthcare, education, housing, nutritious food, internet and public transportation for all, free at the point of use.

Basic Income Schemes: Implement universal or unconditional basic income programmes to provide financial security and reduce poverty.

Employment Programmes: Create government-funded employment opportunities, especially in sectors that contribute to the public good and environmental sustainability.


Transformative Justice
Objective: Address systemic injustices and create conditions for equitable opportunities and outcomes for all, particularly marginalised communities.

Legal and Policy Reforms: Reform laws and policies to eliminate discrimination and ensure equal opportunities in education, employment, and political participation.

Community Empowerment: Support initiatives that empower communities to participate in decision-making processes, emphasising the inclusion of marginalised and underrepresented groups.

Restorative Practices: Implement restorative justice practices to address harms and conflicts, fostering healing and reconciliation in communities affected by inequality and injustice.

Foster Socially Useful Production
Objective: Shift production towards goods and services that meet societal needs and are environmentally sustainable rather than those driven solely by profit motives.

Encourage Worker-Owned Production Systems: Promote businesses and cooperatives owned and operated by workers, ensuring the production process is socially responsible and community-oriented.

Dismantle large corporations: Scaling down the most socio-ecologically destructive sectors (SUVs, arms, beef, private transportation, advertising, media)

Direct Activism and Sabotage Against Harmful Industries: Support peaceful activism targeting industries that harm the environment or social well-being.


Strengthen Democratic Not-for-Profit Models
Objective: Develop and support not-for-profit business models that prioritise social and environmental goals over profit maximisation, ensuring democratic decision-making processes.

Support for Not-for-Profit Initiatives: Provide funding, training, tax incentives, and legal support for not-for-profit cooperatives and social enterprises.

Promote Commons-Based Peer Production: Foster collaborative efforts to produce goods and services through shared knowledge and resources, emphasising open access and community benefit.


Limit Advertising
Objective: Reduce the pervasive influence of advertising on consumption patterns, focusing on sustainability and the reduction of consumerism.

Regulate Advertising Content: Enact laws to limit advertising, especially for products that are environmentally damaging or promote unsustainable consumption patterns (long-distance vacations, mortgages for large houses, fast food, children's toys, automobiles, etc.).

Ban Advertising in Public Spaces: Prohibit advertisements in public areas, reducing the visual and mental clutter associated with consumerism and prioritising community aesthetics, culture, arts, and well-being.


Enhance Waste Reduction
Objective: Significantly decrease waste generation through sustainable product design, increased recycling, and promoting a culture of reuse and repair.

Promote Design for Repairability and Longevity: Mandate that products are designed to be easily repaired and have a longer lifespan, reducing the need for frequent replacements.

Incentivise Recycling and Composting: Implement policies that encourage recycling and composting, including deposit-return schemes for packaging and mandatory composting programmes for organic waste.

Support Reuse and Sharing Economy Initiatives: Encourage the development of sharing platforms, repair cafes, and libraries of things to minimise waste and reduce the environmental impact of new products.

Ensure Technological Sovereignty
Objective: Empower communities and nations to control their technological development, making it responsive to their needs and values rather than external corporate interests.

Reassess the Role of Technology: Set stringent criteria for the deployment of any climate engineering (solar radiation management, bio-energy with carbon capture and storage), only allow reforestation under specific conditions (diverse, regenerative, resilient and native forests). 

Reduce Patent Monopolies: Implement policies to limit the duration and scope of patents and raise awareness of the benefits of open-source technology, encouraging open innovation and access to technology for all.

Reorient Technoscientific Innovation: Guide scientific research and technological development away from things like arms, surveillance and luxury tech and towards addressing social and environmental challenges, prioritising public welfare over profit.


Advocate for Convivial Tools
Objective: Encourage the creation and use of technology that is accessible, user-friendly, and designed to enhance community well-being.

Support for Convivial Technology Development: Fund and promote the development of technologies that empower users, are easy to repair, and have minimal environmental impact.

Educational Programmes on Technology Use: Provide educational resources and workshops on the ethical use of technology, focusing on skills for critical assessment, repair, and sustainable use.

Promote Technological (Re)Appropriation: Encourage initiatives that allow communities to adapt existing technologies to new uses that reflect local needs and sustainability goals, enhancing autonomy and creativity. This could include repurposing military facilities, malls, or office buildings, restructuring social media to serve as a common good, create open-source drug networks, etc.

Limit Tourism
Objective: Implement strategies to reduce the environmental and social impacts of tourism.

Limit Fossil-Fuel-Based Travel: Introduce measures to decrease high-carbon and distant travel, promoting more sustainable forms of transportation and travel activities. This could include implementing or increasing tourist taxation, reducing shipping activities, restricting cruise ships, progressive taxation on ship size, taxing the full environmental cost of travel, reducing passenger travel levels (especially in sensitive areas), etc.

Moratorium on Tourism Developments: Establish temporary halts on new tourism development projects in environmentally sensitive areas, allowing for assessment and planning to ensure sustainability and social needs are being met.

Local Cooperative Ownership: Support tourism enterprises owned and operated by local communities, ensuring benefits are shared and tourism practices align with community values and ecological limits.


Rethink Tourism
Objective: Transform our perception of tourism to prioritise ecological preservation, cultural integrity, and social equity, fostering a more responsible and sustainable industry.

Promote Slow and Sustainable Tourism: Encourage travel that emphasises connection with local cultures, environmental respect, and meaningful experiences over convenience and quantity. Similarly, we should promote campaigns that help reassess our need for speed, elitism, and social privilege. 

Prioritise the right to live over the right to travel: Oppose UNWTO's proposal to turn tourism into a human right, redefining tourism as "voluntary hosting of visitors in local communities for the benefit of locals". Favour equity, justice, residents, refugees, and the environment over holidays, wealth and ability to pay. 

Limit Long-Distance Trade
Objective: Reduce the environmental impact and social inequalities resulting from extensive global trade networks, promoting more localised and sustainable economic models.

Export Quotas & Reducing Demand: Introduce export quotas to limit the volume of goods that can be shipped long distances, prioritising local and regional consumption and production cycles. Simultaneously, transport demands should be reduced where possible (especially aviation).

Transition Road Freight to Electric or Rail: Encourage the shift from road to rail for freight transport and incentivise smaller scale last mile delivery such as cargo bikes. Ports should also become cooperatives that can limit ship traffic.

Shorter Supply Chains: Support policies and business practices that shorten supply chains, enhancing local production and reducing the environmental impact associated with transporting goods across long distances.


Rethink Trade
Objective: Transform trade agreements and practices to prioritise environmental sustainability, social equity, and the well-being of all communities, particularly those in Global South societies.

Renegotiate Trade Agreements: Advocate for the revision of existing trade agreements to include strict environmental standards, labour rights, and equitable terms for all involved nations, particularly prioritising the needs and rights of the Global South. Particular attention must be put to agricultural subsidies in the Global North.

Ease Intellectual Property Rights: Push for reforms in international intellectual property regulations to allow greater sharing of knowledge, technology, and essential medicines, supporting global health and collective progress. This includes the commonification of patents.

Housing Sufficiency
Objective: Ensure everyone has access to affordable, adequate, and sustainable housing that meets their needs without excess.

Promote Shared Housing and Co-living Spaces: Encourage the development of shared housing models that optimise space use and foster community living, such as social housing, eco-villages, squats, tiny housing, urban villages, cohousing cooperatives, neo-monasticism, transition towns, eco-communes and multigenerational housing.

Prioritise Small, Self-Sufficient Communities: Support policies that encourage the development of small, sustainable communities with a focus on solidarity-based exchange networks and self-sufficiency in: 

• Heating and Cooling: Extra insulation, efficient appliance, west-facing grapevines, thick curtains, appropriate attire etc.
• Energy: Solar panels, micro wind and hydro, small biogas digester, collective compost.
• Food: Edible landscapes, food forests, solar ovens, guerilla gardening, low meat diets, medicinal gardens.
• Water: Solar shower bags, washing lines, electric heat pumps, reclaimed water use, rainwater harvesting.
• Waste: Return ALL human, animal, food and farm scraps to the soil via composting. Minimise or reutulise other waste.
• Transport: Active transport (bikes, walking), walkable cities

Common and Sharing Facilities: Shared cars, community spaces, tools, food gardens, kitchen, cooking, leisure, free or low-cost provision of safe, low-energy kitchen equipment, neighbourhood-sharing facilities, etc. Encouraging a shift from ownership to usership.

Just Mobility
Objective: Create equitable access to transportation, ensuring that mobility options are sustainable, affordable, and accessible to all community members.

Promote Modal Shift to Active and Public Transport: Limit automobiles at the city level and within households, reduce urban speed limits, close roads to cars in city centres, halt motorway and road expansions, and impose heavy taxes on private transport (especially SUVs). Instead, encourage walking, cycling, and the use of public transport as primary modes of urban mobility through infrastructure improvements such as walkable neighbourhoods and cycling infrastructure or by subsidising cargo bikes and local public transport.

Limit High-Speed Transport Infrastructure: Reduce investments in high-speed transport options (roads, highways, high-speed trains, planes, airports, cruise boats, etc.) that contribute to urban sprawl and environmental degradation. Protest constructions on and off-site. 

Land Justice
Objective: Address inequalities in land ownership and use, ensuring that land is used ethically, sustainably, and equitably.

Restrict the Commodification of Property: Implementing progressive property taxes, maximum quotas for floor area per capita, rent caps and controls, limits to private property, revitalising vacant buildings and land, and putting empty dwellings in the control of community land trusts.

Increase Access to Land for Community Use: Facilitate access to land for community gardens, urban agriculture, and other community-led ecological initiatives.

Enforce Land Redistribution Policies: Advocate for and implement land redistribution to correct historical injustices and provide equitable land access to all, especially indigenous communities and those displaced by development.


Socially Useful and Ecologically Sensitive Planning
Objective: Ensure urban planning and development prioritise social utility, ecological resilience, and sustainability.

Reduce the Level of Urban Built Environment: This can be done by limiting urban sprawl, capping land use for human settlements, capping housing stocks, controlling the development of holiday homes, limiting mobility, and banning developments on agricultural land. 

Retrofit Existing Buildings: Create public houses with passive design, apply incentives and benefits for class-conscious urban rehabilitation, and transform empty or underused buildings into community owned socially and ecologically beneficial spaces.

Reconceptualise Work
Objective: Shift perceptions of work to include unpaid, community, and creative activities as valuable contributions to society alongside traditional employment.

Reduce Time in Paid Waged Labour: Advocate for policies that reduce the standard workweek, allowing individuals more time for community involvement, personal development, and voluntary work. This can be achieved by supporting legislation that guarantees the right to part-time work options for all workers, increasing sick leaves, workplace democracy, maternity/paternity leave and limiting national working hours.

Encourage Self-Defined Work: Foster environments where individuals can define their contributions to society, including artistic, domestic, and voluntary work, as legitimate forms of work. Similarly, reallocating productivity gains into working less and job creation is crucial.


Low Unemployment
Objective: Ensure everyone who wants to work has access to meaningful employment opportunities, with an emphasis on jobs that contribute positively to society and the environment.

Job Guarantee Programmes: Implement nationally-funded but locally administered job guarantee schemes that provide employment in socially and ecologically beneficial sectors at a living wage. 

Support for Job Sharing: Promote job-sharing arrangements to spread available work more evenly across the workforce, reducing unemployment and increasing leisure time.


Redistribute (Re)productive Activities
Objective: Achieve a more equitable distribution of paid and unpaid work, recognising and valuing caregiving and domestic labour.

Incentivise Equitable Sharing of Domestic and Care Work: Implement policies that encourage the equitable sharing of domestic and care responsibilities among all family members, regardless of gender. incentives for men to equitably share care work, expanding community volunteering and funding pensions according to unpaid care work is key.

Support Community and Cooperative Child & Senior Care Models: Encourage the development of community-driven and cooperative child/senior care solutions that provide affordable and high-quality care.


Social-Ecological Jobs
Objective: Create and promote employment opportunities that directly contribute to ecological sustainability and social well-being, ensuring that work supports the transition to a post-growth and regenerative economy.

Train Workers for the Green Economy: Invest in community education and (re)training both directly and through funding of nonprofit or community organisations to help redevelop basic household skills (e.g. social farms, medicinal herbs, repairing, sowing, carpentry, etc.)

Promote Ecological Restoration and Community Energy as Employment: Support initiatives that employ individuals in ecological restoration projects, such as reforestation, wetland restoration, and urban greening efforts. Similarly, encourage the development and implementation of small-scale, community-owned renewable energy projects, such as solar micro-grids and local wind turbines, creating jobs in installation, maintenance, and management within local communities.

Learn more about degrowth in the pages below: