Decoupling debunked: Why green growth is not enough

Is economic growth compatible with ecological sustainability? A new report shows that efforts to decouple economic growth from environmental harm, known as ‘green growth’, have not succeeded and are unlikely to succeed in their aim. ‘Decoupling debunked – Evidence and arguments against green growth as a sole strategy for sustainability’ will be released on 9 July 2019. In recent decades, economic growth rose to become the leading measure of changes in prosperity and wellbeing. For that reason, governments have sought to maximise the growth of their gross domestic product (GDP), which tends to involve greater resource use and more pollution. As the climate crisis and environmental degradation worsened, policymakers sought to square the circle of maintaining prosperity while reducing the environmental impact of economic activity by decoupling resource use from economic growth. This policy choice has become known as ‘green growth’.