engleski

Europeans for environmentally-motivated Degrowth - How many, how strong?

Dominant socio-economic model of the Global North, based on the imperative of economic growth, is leading core and peripheral societies to an unsustainable path overwhelmed by environmental, social and economic detrimental effects within this century. One of the transformational scenarios to avoid a whole-scale socio-economic and environmental collapse is a shift to policies aligned with the democratically-driven degrowth strategy, and the connected life-practices and cultural patterns. It is important to stress at the outset that the term ‘degrowth’ is a provocative, performative name and not a literal description of a political-economic strategy focused exclusively on the continued reduction of the GDP index. It is rather a call for the opposite, a liberation of the public debate from the narrow path of economism, in lieu of creating social structures that will use fewer natural resources and organise themselves to live radically differently. The main goal of this paper is to explore to what extent the environmentally-motivated degrowth democratic potential is present among European populations on the level of attitudes and self-reported behaviour. In order to do so we use the ISSP research module Environment survey data from 2010/2011, analysing comparative findings for 19 European ‘old’ and ‘new’ democracies. Our findings indicate the prevalence of common awareness of environmental limits to growth among all participating European national populations, but a different potential to apply them in a degrowth scenario between ‘richer’ and ‘poorer’ states, as well as between younger and older European degrowthers.

degrowth, environmental limits, comparative survey, social transformation, Europe, ISSP

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