This article presents the intellectual origins of degrowth, to explain how such a paradigm understands the question of sustainability.

Special attention is paid to the social and ecological limits to growth and to the social–ecological transformation envisioned by the degrowth paradigm. The paper concludes by stressing the contribution of degrowth to sustainability science and practice, and argue for a re-politicization of the science and practice of sustainability.

The degrowth paradigm emerged as an attempt to problematize the sustainable development paradigm, and the concept of a ‘green economy’. It emphasises a contradiction between sustainability and economic growth and argues that the pathway towards a sustainable future is to be found in a democratic and redistributive downscaling of the biophysical size of the global economy.

[Adapted from source]