Supporters of so-called degrowth proclaim that without radical economic change — and falling GDP — ecological collapse is looming. Detractors, meanwhile, dismiss this as unwarranted techno-pessimism, infused with fuzzy language and untenable or vague policies. Some recent reviews assess this burgeoning area of research. What flaws do they find?

One by Ivan Savin of the Paris Higher School of Commerce and Jeroen van den Bergh of the Autonomous University of Barcelona hands ammunition to the critics, analysing 561 studies containing “degrowth” or “post-growth” in the title. They complain about a plethora of degrowth definitions, and provocatively claim that researchers are “colonising” distinct areas by using the term to package work on, say, recycling.

They also grumble about weak methods, calculating that just over 5 per cent of papers they study perform quantitative data analysis, which they say is often “superficial and incomplete”. Another 4 per cent do qualitative data analysis, some of which is shaky. They offer examples, including an analysis of 14 interviews with Canadian environmental activists that is meant to shed light on “l(fā)imited uptake of degrowth discourse in the English-speaking world”.