A team of researchers from the Universita Autónoma de Barcelona, Spain, defend that it is possible to ensure good lives for everyone while also protecting the climate, according to a study published in Nature Climate Change. However, the authors note that this requires shifting how our economies work. Instead of focusing on capital accumulation and elite consumption, the idea is to reorient production and distribution toward human well-being and ecological transformation.
Right now, governments’ efforts to meet climate targets are falling short because wealthier economies are still chasing economic growth instead of putting the environment first. As production and consumption continue to ramp up, cutting emissions becomes harder. Because of this, the Paris Agreement goals are increasingly slipping out of reach, putting both ecosystems and societies at risk.
A team of researchers from the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (ICTA-UAB), the University of Lausanne, and the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) offers another path: wealthy economies can deliver strong social outcomes without relying on constant economic expansion. Instead, they need to focus on well-being and distributing resources more fairly. This shift could also enable much faster reductions in emissions. So far, though, these kinds of pathways haven’t really been included in climate mitigation scenarios.
This isn’t just about producing less within the current system, “but about changing what is produced and how it is distributed, reducing socially and ecologically harmful goods and services, and increasing production aimed at satisfying human needs and ecological goals,” said Aljoša Slameršak, the study’s lead author and a researcher at ICTA-UAB.
He also emphasized that “Human well-being should be assessed based on the degree of basic human need satisfaction, such as access to housing, healthcare, and food, and not solely through economic indicators, such as income or a country’s level of economic activity.”
The paper identifies several key mechanisms involved in a post-growth transition. “Post-growth implies the redistribution and restructuring of the economy to provide the essentials for a decent standard of living for everyone, while keeping additional non-essential consumption within levels compatible with planetary boundaries. This requires substantially reducing current inequalities,” explained study co-author Joel Millward-Hopkins from the University of Lausanne. The researchers also argued that resource use in the Global North and Global South should gradually move toward similar levels, enough to support high well-being while staying within ecological limits.
Although several studies have examined the transformative potential of individual post-growth principles, they haven’t yet been combined into comprehensive post-growth scenarios. “We lack modelling tools capable of integrating several of these principles at once, to assess how social and ecological objectives could advance together and anticipate possible negative interactions,” added Yannick Oswald from the University of Lausanne.
Even so, existing research already offers encouraging signs. “The encouraging news is that existing studies show that post-growth principles can be highly transformative even when applied individually. For example, we know that basic needs could be satisfied universally using less than half of the energy and materials currently consumed globally,” said Jarmo S. Kikstra from IIASA.
The team acknowledges that significant obstacles stand in the way of a post-growth transition. “A post-growth transition implies profound changes in social, economic, and institutional arrangements. Future research should explore how such changes can be better represented in models and scenarios,” said Vivien Fisch-Romito from the University of Lausanne.
According to the authors, these kinds of transformations will likely face resistance from powerful groups that benefit from the current system. However, they note that growth-focused climate scenarios also rely on major assumptions — especially the widespread use of negative-emissions technologies. “The key difference is that post-growth envisions deep systemic change that, at least in principle, can be achieved through democratic deliberation and social struggle, whereas the feasibility of unproven technologies in growth-oriented scenarios remains speculative and possibly physically unachievable,” they concluded.
Slameršak, A., Fisch-Romito, V., Hickel, J. et al. Principles for a post-growth scenario of ambitious mitigation and high human well-being. Nat. Clim. Chang. (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-026-02580-6