Presentation long abstract

Human societies confront the challenge of achieving wellbeing while living within their fair share of planetary boundaries. Research on degrowth speaks to this challenge and has expanded rapidly, yet much of it remains focused on future scenarios and on policy prescriptions. Empirical understanding of how degrowth-akin dynamics emerge in real places remains limited. And the absence of a systematic analytical framework to compare such territorial dynamics hampers efforts towards cumulative knowledge. Here we propose a tripartite framework for studying what we call “Real-Existing Degrowth territories” (REDs) focussing on the material fabrics, territorial regulations and prevalent social imaginaries that interact in specific territories to produce degrowth outcomes. We propose indicators to assess such outcomes, and put forward variables that can measure important causal attributes. The RED framework enables systematic, comparative research of degrowth-akin processes across scales and geographies, from remote islands and shrinking cities to post-extractivist regions or planned, ecosocialist economies. In doing so, it offers diagnostic insights into how degrowth-akin modes of living, producing, and governing emerge and endure within a growth-dominated world. By identifying and analysing systematically such low-throughput, high-wellbeing territorial systems, the framework offers sustainability science a practical method for investigating diverse, real-world trajectories towards living well within limits.