Wednesday
7th Jun 2023
Half of the world's work is unpaid, and women carry out most of it. According to estimates, activities like cooking, cleaning, collecting food or caring for children and the elderly may be valued at up to 60 percent of GDP.
From a human point of view GDP is not a great measure. Yet it's been the economic dogma for decades now. But what should we use then? This is what we'll be exploring (among other things) in Growth Week.
GDP is an unreliable indicator of economies' capacity to thrive in times of change. And the over-reliance on GDP won't get our economies on track to meet environmental and social goals when crises hit.
EUobserver sat down with the economist and historian Matthias Schmelzer to talk about his recent work on degrowth, why growth is such a powerful paradigm, and how to imagine a world not based on ever-increasing consumption and waste.
EUobserver sat down with Joseph Stiglitz to talk about his recent work on sustainable growth and how to design an economy that is conducive to rapid decarbonisation.
Can moving beyond growth help land societies in a more stable future? Olivia Lazard's researches explores the geopolitics of climate-disrupted futures and ecological breakdown.
Four-day workweek pilots are springing up everywhere — do they work? And for whom? Is it possible to scale up these models in an EU that is primarily committed to growth?
We, the undersigned academics and civil society organisations, see the geopolitical crisis as an opportunity to disengage from the socially and ecologically harmful growth competition and instead embrace a wellbeing cooperation.
An EU that renounces the economic growth dogma could more easily reduce its dependence on energy and materials from Russia and China, thus gaining resilience. Reducing its security dependence on the US, however, is a tougher nut to crack.
