S26 GIRS Seminars: Methods for Predicting the Effect of Degrowth Policy on Wellbeing

📅 When: Thursday, May 14, 2026
🕐 Time: 1:00–2:00 PM PT
📍 Where: (In-Person) Engineering 6 Building, Room 580B and 💻 ZOOM

Bineh Ndefru, PhD

headshot of Bineh Ndefru

Abstract: As the world faces escalating environmental crises driven by human economic activity, research on planetary boundaries highlights critical ecological limits necessary to sustain human life. High-income countries primarily drive the overshoot of these boundaries, yet conventional economic models continue to promote perpetual growth, hindering key ecological goals like reducing resource use and achieving rapid decarbonization. Ecological economics suggests shifting from growth-centric approaches to post-growth strategies that prioritize reducing unnecessary production and consumption. While concerns exist about potential social consequences to postgrowth pathways, evidence in post-growth literature indicates that both social and ecological objectives can be met simultaneously.

This project aims to advance this research by modeling the relationship between resource use and human wellbeing, identify optimal conditions for decent living within planetary boundaries across diverse contexts, quantify the probability of achieving wellbeing under different policy scenarios, and influence policy debates around degrowth. The model utilizes Bayesian probabilistic methods due to their ability to integrate both qualitative and quantitative data, to capture complex interdependencies among the social and biophysical indicators of wellbeing, make causal inferences, and ultimately provide insights for decisionmakers. Meeting the project objectives will involve developing a comprehensive Bayesian Belief Network (BBN) model as a framework to quantify the likelihood of achieving decent living standards under various scenarios while accounting for uncertainties and diverse regional contexts. This research will take an interdisciplinary approach to gain new insights that will inform policy decisions that prioritize human wellbeing, supporting post-growth economies that align environmental and social objectives globally.

Short Bio: Bineh Ndefru is a Marie Curie postdoctoral researcher at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Institut de Ciència i Tecnologia Ambientals. She received her undergraduate degree in Engineering and Public Policy from Carnegie Mellon University and holds a PhD in Materials Science from University of California, Los Angeles where she focused on probabilistic risk assessment and system modeling. Her research focus within the REAL project (https://www.realpostgrowth.eu/) is to assess the likelihood of achieving decent living standards for all within ecological limits given different policy scenarios.