COVID-19 shows that a degrowth transition is possible

Planning, economic regulation, limiting certain social practices, high levels of community cooperation and a slowing down of life (of course not for all, but for many), have all been responses to COVID-19. Similar measures have previously been labelled ‘politically impossible’ or ‘unrealistic’ in the context of ecological and other social crises, yet they have now become a reality across the world. COVID-19, like many other crises, highlights the potential for transformative action (and change) when societies decide that the crisis at hand warrants discarding the previous bounds of normalcy. For example, the Spanish government pledged to provide a regular payment to its poorest citizens in the wake of the corona crisis, and Scotland is seriously considering a comprehensive universal basic income (UBI) (Harris, 2020b). Rent strikes have been coordinated across the United States (Lowrey, 2020), sending a clear message that shelter is more important than absentee rents. People across the world are now planning domestic summer holidays based on the assumption that plane travel is unlikely, a restriction that would have been unthinkable pre-corona but is now being accepted as common-sense. The corona crisis has not only illustrated the possibilities of radical policy proposals (e.g. UBI and rent moratoriums), but it has also shown through lived experience that shopping, traveling and working less does not cause the sky to fall in, and maybe this has provoked us to reconsider what is most important in life. If anything, the corona crisis teaches us that our lived environments can change rapidly and drastically, but also that societal responses can be swift and prioritise the most vulnerable in society, if there is a desire. A degrowth society, generalising these principles of social justice and ecological sustainability, would reduce the probability that such crises occur in the first place, and be far more resilient to a world full of unpredictability. From analysis to action Given how much society has changed due to COVID-19, it is clear that the potential exists to actively reorganize society around degrowth principles, even though this would be a significantly greater task. Of course, we should be aware that there is a historical precedent for right-wing, populist, and neoliberal governments exploiting crises such as the current one to re-embed their agendas and consolidate their power. After the financial crisis of 2008-2009, these powers enacted austerity policies for the majority and bailed out the financial and insurance sector with public money (Mirowski, 2013). We can already see this scenario repeating itself, with bailouts of KLM-Air France (€10bn; Morgan, 2020a), Lufthansa (€10bn; Russell, 2020), and Renault (€5bn; Morgan, 2020b), among others. However, there is mounting resistance against a return to the status quo and business as usual. We have seen states planning, regulating and being challenged, communities creating mutual aid networks, and individuals radically adjusting their lifestyles. We have witnessed degrowth-aligned activism, organizing and policy-making across all scales of society. The global anti-aviation network, Stay Grounded, has denounced the bailouts of an unsustainable industry with public funds, demanding national governments to “save people not planes” (Stay Grounded, 2020). In the United States, flourishing networks of mutual aid, community support and local resilience are responses of necessity to a crisis which has disproportionately impacted people of colour. The demands of Black Lives Matter for rent cancellation and food sovereignty explicitly link the vulnerabilities revealed by COVID-19 and highlight alternative ways of meeting basic human needs (Black Lives Matter Los Angeles, 2020). In Hawai’i, the State Commission on the Status of Women (2020) has developed an explicit feminist economic recovery plan to deal with the negative effects of COVID-19. Its policy recommendations include drastic changes to the ways in which women’s work is valued and compensated, and calls for the strengthening of education, childcare and healthcare programs. The municipality of Amsterdam is employing Kate Raworth’s model of ‘doughnut economics’ to guide a post-COVID recovery which prioritizes social and ecological wellbeing rather than economic growth (Boffey, 2020b). Finally, millions of acts of cooperation, solidarity and kindness that do not make the news, but abound in our neighbourhoods and communities, testify every day that humans are not selfish, utility-maximizing individuals, but care deeply for each other and their environments. Moreover, from within the degrowth community a strong case has been made for a post-COVID economic system aligned with degrowth principles. This took the form of an open letter that was signed by more than 2,000 degrowth academics, activists and practitioners, and appeared in media outlets all over the world (Degrowth.info, 2020). This open letter, ‘New Roots for the economy: re-imagining the future after the corona crisis’, outlined five key principles to tackle the crisis induced by COVID-19 and build a just and more sustainable society. The principles are as follows: (1) put life at the centre of our economic systems; (2) radically re-evaluate how much and what work is necessary for a good life for all; (3) organize society around the provision of essential goods and services; (4) democratize society; and (5) base political and economic systems on the principle of solidarity (New Roots Collective, 2020). The letter highlights the vulnerability of growth-based economies to crises (including pandemics), calls for the decommodification of health services, and highlights the potential of this crisis for society to properly value care work as well as other basic health services). We believe that the degrowth movement has a lot to offer in this moment of crisis, on the one hand in drawing the links between our unsustainable economic system and COVID-19, and on the other hand by presenting degrowth as a radically fair and more sustainable alternative based on the principles outlined above. Yet, for the movement to have a meaningful impact, it must ally and work with other emancipatory projects and social movements, going beyond diagnostics and theories towards the important, though messy work of organizing collectively and building these desired futures.