REAL - A Post-Growth Deal
REAL is a European Research Council (ERC) Synergy project led by Profs Julia Steinberger (UNIL Lausanne), Jason Hickel and Giorgos Kallis (UAB Barcelona), running from 2023-2029.
What is REAL?
A Post-growth Deal
REAL investigates the policies, politics and provisioning systems that are necessary for a just post-growth transition that enables well-being for all within planetary boundaries.
Breakthrough Science
REAL develops and brings together new empirical analysis, modelling, political theories, and ethnographic case studies to generate the knowledge basis for radical system change.
Synergy
The three Principal Investigators and 30-plus researchers each bring diverse and complementary skills to the project: quantitative and qualitative, from the natural and the social sciences. REAL is a truly trans-disciplinary project.
Funded by the ERC
REAL is funded by the European Research Council’s Synergy grants, one of the most prestigious schemes supporting innovative research in Europe.
How can we sustain human well-being within planetary boundaries?
What policies and provisioning systems could enable societies to prosper without growth? How can we achieve convergence between global North and global South to levels of resource use that are sufficient for human well-being and compatible with planetary boundaries? What politics and alliances are necessary to reach these goals, and how can the public be engaged? What new scientific paradigm could answer such questions?
By modelling plausible provisioning systems and policy trajectories, by learning from ongoing political processes, and by engaging stakeholders and the public, the REAL project aspires to develop concrete, evidence-based proposals for how to move towards a more socially just and ecologically sustainable economy – A Post-Growth Deal.
We organize our research around what we call the ‘the Five Ps’ of Post-growth.
Post-growth Possibilities
Mapping out the possibility space within planetary boundaries, defining necessary conditions for universal human wellbeing, and modelling North-South convergence.
Post-growth Policies
Advancing coherent policy frameworks for Post-growth Deals, from the perspective of both Global South and North countries, with special consideration of unequal exchange.
Post-growth Provision
Democratising economic decision-making to transform production-consumption relations, with care given to the diversity of provisioning systems.
Post-growth Politics
Connecting post-growth agendas with political change, from social movements to party politics to geopolitics.
Post-growth Practice
Bringing post-growth into practice, via local, national and international dialogues.
