The viability of degrowth mechanisms as a pathway for addressing climate change has been gaining some important momentum and recognition lately. I'm wondering if this could be an unexploited opportunity worthy of further research as to its funding viability under the climate change umbrella.
The United Nations and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have both recently acknowledged the risk current economic growth poses for climate change. The U.N. stated in its Sustainable Development Goals Report for 2022, “Unsustainable patterns of consumption and production are root causes of the triple planetary crises of climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution.” They have also recently stated that staying below 1.5 degrees is now impossible unless we see “a radical transformation of society.” Thus implying technology alone will not be enough to achieve our global environmental goals. And IPCC reports this year suggested that “degrowth policies should be considered in the fight against climate breakdown."
Additional support has come from the European Research Council (ERC) who has recently funded a six year, 10 million euro research project to study "how to escape from a growth economy and ensure social welfare and planetary sustainability." While more encouraging news comes from Finland, Iceland, Scotland, Wales and New Zealand (all members of the Wellbeing Economy Governments coalition) who announced their countries intend to abandon the idea that the percentage change in gross domestic product is a good indicator of progress, and are "instead reframing economic policy to deliver quality of life for all people in harmony with the environment."
The degrowth arena would also seem to align philosophically with several general principles of the Climate Change Fund:
- Focusing on a "holistic approach"
- a focus on "neglected solutions – blind spots and bottlenecks – underserved by other stakeholders to ensure that each Fund dollar makes as much difference as possible"
- "Early work is more likely to make a real difference and be extraordinarily impactful, so funding these neglected solutions is key"
- funding "audacious advocacy, focusing our grantmaking on organizations leveraging large amounts of money through policy advocacy and thought leadership aimed at influencing the wider conversation"
- "overlooked low hanging fruits"
- "avoid future emissions, while also creating opportunities for the world’s poor and eventually bringing energy poverty to an end"
Considering all of this, potential solutions to climate change via degrowth pathways seems like an interesting and important area worthy of further exploration and research as to it's viability as a funding opportunity.
While many industrialized economies have a lower carbon intensity than a few decades ago, what matters for climate change is not carbon intensity, but total cumulative emissions. Carbon intensity is an often used metric, but it is flawed for achieving climate change goals.
This is what degrowth advocates point out: a relative decoupling between GDP and greenhouse gas emissions can still lead to an increase in total emissions if GDP grows faster than carbon intensity shrinks. Even though there has been a 34% decrease in carbon intensity (CO2e/$) between 1965 and 2015, total emissions increased by 300%. To decrease carbon emissions, we would either need to (a) have absolute and strong decoupling between emissions and GDP and/or (b) reduce society's dependence on GDP to flourish, at least temporarily. The former solution is often called 'ecomodernism', while the latter is 'degrowth' or 'post-growth'. (Background info on decoupling here.)
Obviously, degrowth approaches, too, can have their drawbacks (e.g. lower tax revenues, typically lower tractability). But I would keep away from calling degrowth a "non-starter" and use the scout mindset to explore ideas within it. Personally, I wouldn't support EA going all-in on the degrowth train, but there are probably worthwhile ideas and solutions coming from the degrowth economy that would otherwise be unlikely to get funding, as governments and companies have no incentive to advocate for degrowth. That's worthwhile to explore!
Remember that OP did not argue that EA climate change funding should all go to degrowth approaches, but merely for "further exploration and research as to it's [sic] viability as a funding opportunity". That seems like a fair idea to me.