Defining Degrowth; 19 March 2025 – 16h00-17h30

If there is one point of consensus in the degrowth scholarship, it is that degrowth defies
consensual definition. As of now, there is no widely accepted definition of the term within the field.
This article analyses 115 definitions of degrowth in English and French ranging from 2006 to 2024 in
order to identify a minimal list of characteristics that narrows down the meaning of degrowth to a more
operational level. Based on that analysis, this paper offers a new definition: degrowth as a downscaling
of production and consumption to reduce ecological footprints, planned democratically in a way that
is equitable while securing wellbeing.

Timothée Parrique is an economist, originally from Versailles, France. He is currently a researcher at HEC Lausanne – The Faculty of Business and Economics of the University of Lausanne in Switzerland. He holds a PhD in economics from the Centre d’Études et de Recherches sur le Développement (University of Clermont Auvergne, France) and the Stockholm Resilience Centre (Stockholm University, Sweden). Titled “The political economy of degrowth” (2019), his dissertation explores the economic implications of degrowth. To know more about the speaker: https://timotheeparrique.com/

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