With the purchasing power of middle and working-class citizens shrinking as billionaires hoard ever more wealth, many people are searching for a new economic reality in line with their ecological values and planetary boundaries. “People are really hungry for solutions [and] really hungry to find alternatives,” says Alvaro Alvarez, a journalist and filmmaker of the recent BBC documentary Less Is More: Can Degrowth Save the World? Alvarez joins Mongabay’s podcast to detail real-life solutions harnessing the concepts behind “degrowth” in the city of Barcelona, which he highlights in the film and which have garnered widespread interest. Since its genesis in the 1970s, degrowth has charted “a planned reduction of energy and resource use designed to bring the economy back into balance with the living world in a way that reduces inequality and improves human well-being,” according to prominent degrowth researcher Jason Hickel. The concept seeks to use natural resources in a way that respects Earth’s planetary boundaries, the safe zones beyond which human activities’ ecological impacts are no longer safe for society. Today, degrowth is gaining traction in Europe, and the attention of audiences in Australia, where Alvarez recently toured the documentary. The responses have been “more than what I expected,” he says, particularly in how degrowth can help solve that nation’s “impossibly unaffordable” home prices. “One of the things that I covered on the documentary is cooperative housing. And I know that here in Australia [housing] is a big issue … people are seeing that [other] people are approaching…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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