2018 Conference

Full Presentation Panel

The notion of endless economic growth, made possible by escalating rates of material throughput and consumption, is inimical to environmental sustainability.  Yet the idea that we might live prosperous and just lives under conditions of low or no growth seems fanciful.  After all, social stability, government efficacy, and economic vitality seem deeply dependent on rates of economic growth that, for better or for worse, are driving critical environmental systems to collapse.  We are captured by an understanding of stability and prosperity that is leading to our demise.

 A new generation of campus environmental programs that release us from the dream of never-ending economic growth is the next critical wave in higher-education sustainability.  The growth of rich-world economies is already slowing; rather than lamenting this slowdown we should be finding ways of using it to drive social justice and environmental restoration.  New campus sustainability programs can show the way.   Additionally, getting to stable low- or no-growth (or, some argue, negative growth) in industrial-world economies appears essential to long-term planetary health.  Innovative campus sustainability efforts that promote environmental and social prosperity under low-growth/no-growth conditions (or what we call here “post-growth,” where the importance of growth is greatly diminished) make it easier to imagine a world without growth.  They open up space for political and programmatic conversations and initiatives essential to a safe and smooth transition to the inevitability of a post-growth world.

This panel assembles a set of individuals and papers that explore what campus sustainability programs for a post-growth world might look like, and how we could begin to implement such programs.  It is hoped that this panel will lead to a larger project that challenges the ‘efficiency and growth’ model of many mainstream campus sustainability programs while acknowledging the impressive higher-ed sustainability accomplishments to date.  The panel is inspired by and builds upon “Higher Education for a Post-Growth World” (Chronicle of Higher Education, online 12 June 2017 at https://michaelmaniatesblog.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/maniates_higher-education-for-a-post-growth-world_12june2017.pdf) and a longer essay (“Suddenly More than Academic: Higher Education for a Post-Growth World”) in State of the World 2017: EarthEd, Island Press.