White Paper of the Winter School on Limits to Growth Revisited

PÜTTER, F., KREMERS, A. (EDS.) ; CASTRO, RODRIGO

Visselhövede, Hanover

Workshop; Winter School on Limits to Growth Revisited; 2012

VolkswagenStiftung

The original Limits To Growth (LTG) study published in 1972 1 , the ?Report for The Club of Rome?s Project on the Predicament of Mankind?, insistently urged humanity to act. Its vivid and almost haunting description of the consequences of exponential growth which is confronted with finite resources, is still as perspicuous as it was back then: continuous economic and demographical growth will hit the limits of naturally provided resources and very likely lead to overshoot, collapse, and radical decrease of most people?s standard of living, accompanied by international crises, conflicts and catastrophes. This, however, is only one possible future for mankind: Meadows et al. also explored paths to an ?orderly end to growth followed by a long period of relatively high human welfare?. LTG made a strong case for the latter, arguing for ?profound, proactive, societal innovation through technological, cultural and institutional change in order to avoid an increase in the ecological footprint of humanity beyond the carrying capacity of planet Earth?.2  Although the calls for action could not have been coined more urgingly, the LTG study ? and lots of studies following after it ? failed to bring about actual change towards ways of living that are more appropriate to the natural boundaries of planet earth. Forty years after ?Limits to Growth?, humanity?s ecological footprint has not declined but increased. Today, 1.5 planets are needed to regenerate the renewable resources used and to absorb the CO2 emitted at current levels of consumption.3  Between 1980 and 2008, global resource extraction and use increased by 78%.4   However, the world has not grown more universally wealthy; rather the gap between the rich and poor has grown.5  Paradoxically, all this comes along with much more and deeper knowledge of the processes going on on earth. It is a well-known fact, that for instance 95% of the scientific climate change literature since 1934 has been published after 1951.6 Against this background, the Winter School ?Limits to Growth Revisited?, was designed for a twofold purpose: On the one hand, to recapitulate the state of the scientific debates triggered by the study and to identify desiderata and trends for our own future research. On the other hand, we tried to explore possibilities to transform knowledge to action, and to bring about the change we consider urgent to come about. The program started with expert presentations on core themes such as demography, modeling and food security. Afterwards, the plenum identified overarching topics to be further developed in six ad-hoc working groups. After two days of discussion, we participated in an international symposium entitled ?Already Beyond?? in which several panel discussions with experts took place. After the symposium, we reassembled in the working groups and in our plenum to reflect on the symposium and to identify further fields of research. The outcomes of the different groups shall be presented in the next chapters.