However you made your way to this newsletter, allow us to briefly explain what degrowth is. Simply put, degrowth is the idea that our economies should be reduced materially in order for our planet to stay within ecological limits, while everyone can still have a good life. Degrowth is an idea that is still relatively marginal, but is gaining traction globally as we reckon with various socio-ecological crises.
And we, Degrowth Asia, are a collective of people from or currently living in Asia in various fields and spheres like academia, nonprofits, business, agriculture, and more. We first formed as a circle of the International Degrowth Network (IDN) in Apr 2024 and have been meeting regularly to discuss how degrowth relates to different topics, but in an Asian context. In one meeting, we decided to start this quarterly newsletter so that we can share our learnings with a wider audience and hopefully encourage more to join us - check the bottom of this email for how you can do so!
What does it mean to talk about degrowth in Asia? As the largest continent and home to about 60% of the world's population, Asia contains a dazzling multitude of cultures, histories, and ways of being with nature and each other. Naturally, this means that it is also host to many extremes and contradictions. Recently, the World Sufficiency Lab released a tool that maps when each country should reach zero carbon emissions, based on the landmark ICJ advisory opinion that all countries are obliged to make adequate contributions to limit global warming to 1.5ºC that take their historical responsibilities into account. Zooming into Asia, we see that while countries like Russia, Japan, and Singapore already exceeded their fair carbon budget before the turn of the millennium, others such as India, Indonesia and the Philippines still have many decades to go before exhausting theirs. It is clear, then, that there cannot be a single version of degrowth that applies to all of these countries.