Towards modelling post-growth climate futures: a review of current modelling practices and next steps

Integrated Assessment Models have become indispensable tools for exploring strategies to mitigate climate change while achieving broader social and environmental goals. However, most modelled pathways assume continued economic growth throughout the century, even for high-income nations. This has sparked calls for modellers to expand their visions of sustainable futures. One suggested approach is post-growth, which shifts the focus of the economy from economic growth to ecological stability, equality, human well-being and enhanced democracy. In this review, we examine current post-growth scenario modelling approaches, spanning national to global scales and single-sector to whole-economy approaches, to identify best practices and key gaps in representing a post-growth transition. We develop a framework for evaluating these scenarios along five key dimensions of post-growth theorisation: feasible technological change, scale-down of harmful production, good life for all, wealth redistribution, and international justice. We then explore current approaches to post-growth scenario modelling, focusing on the types of models used, the mechanisms employed to simulate post-growth scenarios and the representation of post-growth policies. Finally, drawing on the wider post-growth literature, we offer recommendations for improving post-growth model representation, focusing on five main areas: the energy-economy connection, spatial differentiation, sectoral differentiation, the inclusion of different provisioning systems and feasibility considerations.