SDL: Rethinking innovation for changing worlds? Criticism of Limits to Growth at 50

Over the past 12 months, colleagues from the Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU) have run a series of events reflecting on the 50th anniversary of the Limits to Growth. In 1973 a SPRU research team criticised the MIT group’s modelling of global resources and futures, reclaimed industrialisation as an emancipating force, and argued that radical political and social change was needed in order to ensure technological innovation served the planet and people.

This Sussex Development Lecture asks the question: what have we learnt since then? How does a resurgence in debates about growth versus no growth (and now degrowth, agrowth and post-growth) help or hinder routes out of crisis? And how might we rethink innovation and sustainable development for the coming fifty years?

Speakers:
Adrian Smith, Research Fellow in Technology and Society, Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU), University of Sussex
Adrian Ely, Reader in Technology and Sustainability, University of Sussex
Chair:
Anabel Marin, Research Fellow, IDS