A broader landscape of post-growth pathways: review of sustainability scenarios integrating biophysical limits, sufficiency, equity and structural change

Most existing climate mitigation scenarios integrate the notions of continued economic growth and material abundance. They can purportedly be sustained with cleaner and more efficient production, greater material circularity, and carbon sequestration, whose technological feasibility and effectiveness are fiercely debated at such scales. The scenario literature for sustainable futures has only recently begun to explore degrowth and post-growth pathways and alternative scenarios with demand-side strategies, low energy demand, lifestyle changes and sufficiency frameworks. Our objective is to collect and analyse the scenario literature that may be of interest to post-growth scholars, encompassing both those explicitly defined as post-growth or degrowth and others with related terms and assumptions. We define 7 pillars through which models and scenarios represent post-growth: Biophysical limits, Low consumption, Activity levels and needs, GDP reduction, Reorganization of the economy, Equity and Technological change. We check the representation of these pillars across 60 economy-wide sustainability modelling studies and assess the underlying mechanisms, policies, fundamental assumptions and models. This way, we assess which post-growth aspects have thus far been explored in scenarios, and identify future research pathways, highlighting unexplored or underrepresented dimensions such as the representation of households, and Global North/Global South and gender inequalities.