Degrowth of Infrastructure

Francois SchneiderFilka SekulovaFrancois@degrowth.netFilka@degrowth.net

Recherche et Décroissance www.degrowth.org

ICTA, UAB

Rupia workshop, resources caps25-26 june 2011

Outline

1. Definition

2. Infrastructure and economic growth

3. Rebound effect & Backfire

4. Why infrastructure degrowth

5. How to degrow infrastructures: frugal innovation, adjustment and transformation

What is infrastructure

Infrastructure is generally understood as the technical structures that support a society, such as roads, water supply, sewers, electrical grids, telecommunications.

Infrastructure from extraction to final waste treatment

From Ellul perspective

The technical infrastructure is not a mere sum of individual elements.

Infrastructure has the characteristics of a system.

Growth of infrastructure

The technological system continuously expands following the law of indefinite evolution (Ellul)

Like an ecosystem, it transforms and adapts until its limits (Giampietro).

No external feedback

The infrastructure system lacks one of the essential characteristics found in any organized ensemble: reaction. It is not able to control its errors and dysfunctions, to react on its source and modify itself.

First of all we are not able to conceive the degrowth of infrastructure among the possible options

Capacity to consume and produce

We introduce the concept of capacity to produce and consume, whose growth is highly dependant on hard infrastructure and its augmenting.

Two reasons can explain the Jevons paradox

(concerning hard infrastructure, but not only):

- The more intensive use of infrastructure

- The extension of infrastructure

Intensification with the rebound effect

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Infrastructures are congested

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We develop more efficient use of infrastructures

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Rebound effect: free infrastructure is used to increase production and consumption

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Extensification with growth policies

Capacity to produce and consume is expanded (growth policies)

Production and consumption expand

Production or consumption (economy) cannot grow because limits are met.

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Growth effect or backfire

Capacity to produce and consumeMoney

Hard Infrastructures

Natural Resources availability

Creation of artificial needs

Un-satisfaction of needs

Inequality

Time for work and consumption

Social and ecologicalStandards

Factors limiting the capacity to produce and consume

HumanBehaviour

Institutionalframework

Resourceflows

Intensification I

More efficient use of transport system

Rebound effect

Improvement by Expansion

Backfire etc.

The Infrastructure dimension

The growing efficiency of transport, energy infrastructure use does not reduce impacts such as congestion because transport and energy flows increase

If demand does not fill capacity of infrastructure, it become “unprofitable” and there is a “crisis” of the infrastructure system.

Infrastructure from birth to deaththe system evolves

Why infrastructure degrowth

DemocracyAt present citizens have limited or no impact on the decision-making on large-scale infrastructure.

Ecological impacts & limits to resources Infrastructure construction, use and disposal is associated with high level of polluting emissions, natural resource consumption (including land) which affects present/future generations and ecosystems’ sustainability.

Why infrastructure degrowth

Developmentist imaginaryIn the western imaginary roads, airports, large-scale shopping malls and ski resorts = development → large-scale infrastructure shapes the vision of what a developed society should look like. Infrastructure thus facilitates long-distance, more-efficient, market exchanges, impeding local convivial exchanges.

Good life/well-being If infrastructure obstructs the satisfaction of basic needs of people (for sharing and socialization) it might impair well-being. The dominant presence of cars might impede good life: → less convivial and friendly environment, less space for social interaction and exchange, creates radical monopoly (Illich), noise and pollution.

A degrowth narrative?

Searching for coherence and complementarities in the degrowth alternative

Road traffic capacity

Free space On roads

Bicycle usePublic transportuse Traffic

Congestion

Size, length, numberof roads

Open Localism

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Tolls on roads

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A system view of infrastructure

Having a feedback: more democracy

Having a feedback: more democracyProposals from Barcelona 2010

Support communities fighting against large infrastructure projects.

Degrowth challenges centralized decisions for mono-functional use and the involvement of urban dwellers in transforming the social, political and economic relations in urban spaces.

Ecological degrowth neighbourhood plans (what areas to remove, to recycle, preserve, etc) need to be decided and implemented through collective decision-making.

Frugal innovations

Infrastructure related frugal innovation

Infrastructure related frugal innovation occurs when individuals reduce or stop the use of a specific product and technology, (cars, ski resorts, animal products, goods transported over long-distance).

As a result demand for these goods would decrease together with the infrastructure capacity required for their production.

Adjusment and transformation

When the infrastructure of one element of the production chain decreases the other processes along the chain have to decrease as well.

For example, we shall consider a moratorium, but also the reduction of existing infrastructure.

Some infrastructure projects must clearly be abandoned: nuclear, ammonia production, incinerators, high speed train and large scale dams.

Some infrastructure must be limited: highways, long distance transportation and airports.

Conversion of car-based infrastructure into walking, biking and open common spaces;

Proposals from Barcelona 2010 I

Proposals from Barcelona 2010

Cities would be reshaped and reformed on the basis of smaller scale and distance, and new expansion limited.

Reduce urban sprawl.

Urban life shall be relocalized keeping or developing its multifunctionality and its public spaces.

Make ecocities for all, rather than for a gentrified minority. Build local social and ecological resilience in cities, use zoning to bring back nature in the city and keep neighbourhoods compact.

Combine frugal innovations with adjustment

First : adjustment involve a transformation of the societal metabolism. That is other frugal innovations along the societal metabolism.

Second: this frugal innovation involves an action at the level of higher material and energy flows, instead of acting at the level of the congestion problem.

The total infrastructure capacity is determined by the lower capacity along the chain or we have a crisis (example waste crisis in Napoli).

Engineers and politicians see the problem thereGoodwin

Road network or societal metabolism Optimise and expand

Congestion knot

We shall see the problemthere

Transformation and ajustment

To conclude

Put the priority on reducing consumption and production levels: frugal innovation that allow the idea of limits.

Have adjustments of the capacity after this reduction. Accept a fair level of congestion as it prevents the increase of the system, resolving it by prevention rather than expansion.

A few referencesGrübler Arnulf, the rise and fall of infrastructures, Physica-verlag Heidelberg, 1990

Odum HT, Odum, EC, 2001. A Prosperous Way Down, University Press of Colorado, Boulder, Co, USA.

Gorz, A. Partant F

Illich, I., 1973. Tools for Conviviality. Calder and Boyars, London.

Pfleiderer, RHH, Dieterich, M. 1995. New roads generate new traffic, World Transport Policy & Practice, Vol. 1 No. 1, pp. 29-31

Polimeni, JM, Mayumi, K, Giampietro, M, Alcott, B., 2008. The Jevons Paradox and the Myth of Resource Efficiency Improvements. Earthscan, London, Sterling, VA, USA.

Ellul, J. The technological System

Goodwin, P. et al 1998 evidence on the effects of road capacity reduction on traffic levels,Traffic Egineering and Control, 348-354

Niskanen,WA. Cato Journal, Vol. 11, No. 2 (1991).

Steering papers, moratoria on new infrastructure, and degrowth of cities, Degrowth Barcelona conference 2010

Barcelona Proceedings www.degrowth.org

Schneider et al. Road traffic congestion : the extent of the problem, WTPP, Vol1, number1, 2002 34-41