Degrowth as a transition strategy

Since the beginning of the industrial revolution environmentalists have drawn attention to the coming ecological crisis as one of the significant consequences of this transformational societal change. The emerging field of ‘degrowth’ is a new movement addressing the issues of this ecological crisis and its potential disruptive impact for organisational and societal sustainability. Degrowth strongly criticises the logics that underpin today’s economic systems and continues a long trend of drawing societal attention to the ecological limits of growth that constrain humanity’s cultural practices and activities. In recent times limits to growth of our current economic activities have been recognised as a significant barrier to the progress of capitalism as we understand this system today (see Farley in this volume). Awareness of the limits of natural systems underpinning our economy was prompted by the Club of Rome research publication Limits to Growth (Meadows et al. 1972), which despite early criticism of its modelling has proved to be an accurate predictor of the problems we face today (Turner 2008).