How this session will contribute to ecological economics and degrowth: We will discuss strategies for policy-effectiveness of post-growth scenarios.
After a short front loading of 4 presentations of about 5 minutes each, we will interactively discuss the potential strategic contribution of community models and/or degrowth scenario blueprints to ensuring and/or strengthening policy-relevance and policy-impact of degrowth (“post-growth”, “demand side management”) scenarios on national and global levels - especially for the IPCC process.
In particular, we will reflect on how a community modeling and/or scenario blueprinting process might contribute to a strategic goal of communicating more post-growth scenarios that can be used in science, policy, (social) media, degrowth activism, and other outlets or communities. The main issues to be discussed are:
- What would different stakeholders (activists, policy makers, social scientists, others) want to understand through the different models?
- Following from this, what kind of scenarios and indicators would be useful?
- How should the tools be adapted to the given needs, and/or what new tools are needed?
- Who would be key partners involved in carrying out this collaborative agenda?
Envisioned work process and workshop format
The targeted audience is academics (both modelers and non-modelers), activists, and policy-oriented professionals or stakeholders that are involved with or interested in the post-growth (degrowth) communities. These communities have emerged as a response to the limitations of the current economic growth model. They embrace degrowth principles, and emphasize well-being, sustainability, and social equity over economic growth. As “consistency machines” that support thinking, models play a crucial supporting role in becoming more specific about post-growth pathways by quantifying elements of scenarios and related policies - therewith helping to inform decision-making. The current post-growth modeling community includes in particular groups across Europe: The WILIAM (external link) model (outcome of LOCOMOTION (external link) project), for instance, was developed to address questions around the crisis of the current economic growth model, and is available as an open source model (see the WILIAM model Wiki (external link)) on this Github repository (external link). Another modeling community exists around the country-level EUROGREEN (external link) economic model with a strong focus on the labor market. Other established IAMs around the world (MESSAGE, IMAGE, REMIND, IFs, IMACLIM, etc.) are also starting to explore post-growth pathways, with two papers exploring degrowth in MESSAGEix-Australia, and another exploring global degrowth in the International Futures (IFs) model. Additional points of coalescence may be the “A Post-Growth Deal (REAL)” project (e.g. discussed at the 2023 degrowth conference in Zagreb (external link)), and the work that will be done under the Europe Horizon call “Broadening the range of policy options in transition pathwayanalysis (external link)”. This is only a selection for illustration - we do not intend to exclude any existing communities or models and also recognize the important work and perspectives provided by stock-flow consistent (financial) models, as well as new work on linking agent-based models to demand-side mitigation change feasibility.
Different post-growth modeling efforts provide different pieces of the possible in understanding post-growth transitions, but they also face different limitations. Tools building on existing models may face difficulties in making new changes consistent with other unchanged parts of the model framework, whereas new models face development issues including calibration and understanding complex models. Additionally, not everything can be measured. As post-growth scenarios often involve fundamental societal, power, and value shifts with radical economic change, meaningfully representing such difficult-to-quantify dynamics will remain a challenge. Another problem is the lack of empirical evidence for degrowth economies. We intend to broadly ground this session in the respective (modeling) communities up front. Therefore, some preparatory work for the workshop will be done via common texts and meetings of main stakeholders in the degrowth (modeling) community. The organizers will contact the main members of the post-growth modeling community up front to facilitate this process - besides inviting broadly to the workshop itself.
The actual workshop at the conference workshop is then foreseen to take a rather interactive format:
First, the core organizers will give four impulse statements (see presenters named above) showing the ground to be covered and ideas that are on the table.
Second, all active participants will have the chance to be heard and contribute. To facilitate this, we will use speaking in a circle (“the power of the circle”), to get the basic ideas by participants out into the group.
Third, in an interactive collective knowledge creation, condensing and clustering exercise, participants will be invited to write their ideas on the strategic elements of the community modeling process on (paper) cards, and to cluster the ideas in the room.
- First, we will do this for topic (1) community modeling and/or scenario blueprints, where we intend to further structure and materialize the advantages and disadvantages of these approaches that we have already discussed in the initial presentations and in the talking circle.
- Next, we will particularly dive into the (2) policy-strategies for this potential community model, and how to place potential output of such models (e.g. post-growth scenarios) in different outlets (academic, social and “conventional” media, policy briefs, etc.) most effectively and to a broad audience. Here, we will also consider the limitations of post-growth modeling.
- Each round will last for about 15 min. In both rounds the first half of the group will lay out the cards in clusters they choose themselves, the second half of the group will then have the chance to re-cluster the cards and find headings for the clusters.
- Finally, in a harvesting process, we will devise strategies that follow from this exercise, and potentially set up a group forum (social media, maybe co-working platforms) to continue these discussions beyond the 2024 ESEE-Degrowth conference. As a concrete outcome we thus expect some operational ideas on the strategic goal of community models and to establish working groups that are linked by a common goal, but can work independently. Ideally, at the end and as a concrete outcome of the workshop, we might come up with a 5 to 10-year tentative strategic plan for a post-growth modeling community and at least coalesce our understanding around the idea of a community model.