Uma “transição com crescimento”: decoupling no Pacto Ecológico Europeu

Abstract

The tension between development, economic growth and environmental preservation has been at the heart of environmental policy since its origins. It was in recognition of this that this paper set out to look at the European Green Deal, a multi-sectoral climate change initiative adopted by the European Union in 2020. The goal of decoupling economic growth, resource extraction and waste disposal – the so-called decoupling – was of particular interest, and the starting question was “given the history of international environmental policy, is the decoupling proposal in the European Green Deal feasible?”. The research hypothesis is that the perpetuation of the growth paradigm is a constant in the products of institutional environmental policy and that decoupling does not represent an attempt to break with the dangerous logic of contradiction in the face of the intensification of extreme climate phenomena. As an exercise in thinking about alternatives to green growth, the work presented the perspectives of ecological economics and degrowth, although far from exhausting them. The technical procedures used included a documentary review centered on the official communication from the European Commission to the other institutions of the European Union and a bibliographical review on the history of environmental policy, the interactions between the environment and international relations theory, ecological economics and degrowth, as well as the bibliography produced on the official document.