Systems Thinking for Degrowth: Archetypes, Equity, and Strategic Pathways for Global Sustainability

Abstract

South Africa’s overlapping crises, namely ecological overshoot, energy insecurity, unemployment, and inequality, are not isolated challenges but systemic outcomes of a political economy dependent on growth. This article advances a degrowth by design framework that positions systems thinking as the primary driver of transformative change. By embedding Meadows’ leverage points within canonical archetypes such as Limits to Growth, Shifting the Burden, Success to the Successful, and Tragedy of the Commons the analysis demonstrates how reinforcing and balancing feedbacks perpetuate overshoot and social inequity and how targeted leverage strategies can reorient systems toward sufficiency, equity, and ecological repair. The framework integrates decolonial ethics, Ubuntu-informed relational dignity, pluriversal design perspectives, and legislative anchors such as South Africa’s Climate Change Act and Just Energy Transition. While the contribution is primarily conceptual, it is strengthened by illustrative vignettes, descriptive statistics, and the proposal of measurable indicators including material footprint per capita and energy intensity of wellbeing. Acknowledging the limitations of qualitative mapping and partial empirical application, the article outlines a research agenda centred on empirical validation, comparative municipal case studies, participatory action research, and open indicator repositories. The unique contribution lies in reframing degrowth as a diagnostic and prescriptive leverage strategy that is both contextually grounded and transferable. Rooted in South Africa yet relevant across the Global South, the degrowth compass functions as a normative and analytical benchmark to guide contested transitions toward just and ecologically restorative futures.

1. Introduction

The failure to decouple gross domestic product (GDP) from material and energy use at the scale and speed required has re-opened foundational questions about the meaning of prosperity in a resource-constrained world [1,2]. Degrowth scholarship argues that high-income economies must reduce throughput while improving wellbeing, equity, and democratic participation [3,4]. In South Africa, where carbon-intensive energy, deep inequality, and unemployment form a tightly coupled system, degrowth cannot be an austerity project. It must be a re-design of provisioning systems to secure sufficiency, care, and repair, goals that align with constitutional commitments and the Climate Change Act’s architecture for a long-term, just transition [5,6].

Two propositions anchor this article. First, systems thinking is not an optional heuristic but the primary agent of change capable of shifting the structural drivers of overshoot, which are feedbacks, delays, and lock-ins that continually reproduce harm despite incremental fixes [7,8]. Second, degrowth is best understood as an applied leverage-point strategy that reprograms goals and rules, rewires information flows, and ultimately transforms the reigning paradigm from extractivist growth to sufficiency, solidarity, and socio-ecological repair [4,9].

In contrast to green growth, which relies on efficiency gains, post-growth, which often remains at the level of critique, and steady-state economics, which emphasises stability, our contribution is to position degrowth as an applied leverage-point strategy. By embedding Meadows’ leverage points within system archetypes, we provide a novel diagnostic–prescriptive framework that identifies structural interventions capable of guiding Global South transitions. This approach situates systems thinking as the primary agent of change, not only in conceptualising but in operationalising degrowth. The objectives of this article are threefold: to develop a diagnostic and prescriptive framework for degrowth grounded in systems thinking; to apply canonical archetypes to South African socio-ecological crises; and to propose policy pathways that translate leverage points into context-specific strategies for sufficiency, equity, and ecological repair.

2. Methodology

This study employs a systems-thinking methodology anchored in Meadows’ leverage points and canonical systems archetypes. The approach unfolded in three stages. First, we identified four archetypes: Limits to Growth, Shifting the Burden, Success to the Successful, and Tragedy of the Commons based on their documented relevance in sustainability transitions literature and their resonance with South Africa’s overlapping crises [7,8,9]. Second, these archetypes were applied through qualitative causal loop diagramming to map reinforcing and balancing feedbacks in empirical domains such as energy transitions, fiscal sustainability, and ecological resilience. Third, we validated the archetypes’ relevance through triangulation: aligning findings with South Africa’s legislative and policy architecture (e.g., Climate Change Act, Just Energy Transition), corroborating with empirical research and national datasets, and situating them within broader scholarly debates on degrowth [5,10,11]. The four archetypes selected were chosen because they directly map onto South Africa’s energy insecurity, fiscal crises, inequality, and ecological overshoot. Their application was guided by triangulation with legislation, peer-reviewed research, and national policy data.

This methodological process ensures that archetypes serve as analytical tools for diagnosing structural lock-ins and leverage opportunities, rather than as purely illustrative devices. This is a conceptual article that develops a theoretical framework by integrating systems archetypes with leverage points and applies this framework to South African policy contexts as a form of policy analysis.

3. Systems Thinking as the Engine of Degrowth

Leverage points as strategy. Following [7,9], interventions at the level of parameters, such as tax rates or subsidies, are weak; powerful change arises by altering information flows (for example, radical transparency and public ledgers for carbon and material flows), rules (such as carbon budgets, sectoral caps, and public-interest licensing), and system goals (shifting from GDP expansion to human wellbeing and ecological integrity). The deepest leverage lies in paradigms: narratives and social contracts that define what counts as “success.” Degrowth leverages this deepest tier by reorienting success toward enoughness, reciprocity, and care [2,3,4].

Learning institutions. As Sterman [8] and Senge [12] argue, complex systems routinely defeat linear planning and static policy models. Transition governance should therefore institutionalise reflexive learning: open data; rapid feedback from pilots; scenario co-creation with communities; and iterative policy adjustment. The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) provides tested methods for embedding diverse worldviews and value framings into policy pathways rather than treating them as afterthoughts [13,14,15].

• Challenges of Degrowth

Degrowth in the Global South cannot be a northern austerity script exported intact. Escobar’s designs for the pluriverse emphasise radical interdependence, autonomy, and place-based knowledges as foundations for reimagining socio-ecological futures [16]. Similarly, Kothari et al. highlight how post-development thinking foregrounds ontologies of interdependence and community sovereignty over resources [17].

Within South Africa, Ubuntu-informed ethics provide an essential moral compass. As Metz [18] argues, Ubuntu defines wellbeing through relational dignity, mutual care, and the maintenance of harmonious relationships. This ethic shifts degrowth policies away from deprivation and toward shared sufficiency, communing, and the expansion of care infrastructures.

Integrating these decolonial perspectives ensures that degrowth aligns with local histories, values, and struggles, while safeguarding against technocratic “green extractivism” and the co-option of circular economy strategies by global value chains [19]. It also strengthens the legitimacy of systemic transformation by rooting it in culturally resonant paradigms of justice and reciprocity.

Having established the theoretical foundation of degrowth as a leverage-point strategy, the next section applies systems archetypes to South African contexts. This translation from theory to application demonstrates how abstract systemic patterns manifest in energy, fiscal, and ecological domains.

4. Archetypes of Lock-In and Leverage in South Africa

Systems archetypes provide a powerful lens for diagnosing the feedback structures that perpetuate unsustainable trajectories and for identifying leverage points to reverse them [7,8,12]. Four archetypes are particularly relevant to South Africa’s just transition context.

The Limits to Growth archetype (Figure 1) illustrates how reinforcing economic expansion eventually meets balancing limits imposed by environmental degradation and finite ecological capacity [7,8] At the global level, the Global North is responsible for approximately 92% of greenhouse gas emissions in excess of the planetary boundary for climate stability [1], while the underdeveloped and poorer Global South suffers disproportionately from climate-related disasters such as droughts, floods, and crop failures. These inequities are amplified by the fact that the North’s material throughput far exceeds its fair share of global ecological space, degrading shared commons such as the atmosphere, forests, and oceans as illustrated in Figure 1. In South Africa, analogous constraints emerge domestically as exponential demand for electricity, bulk water, and minerals confronts hard limits, including grid congestion, hydrological variability, and declining ore grades. Attempts to expand capacity through conventional means often exacerbate ecological stress and undermine long-term resilience. High-leverage strategies include reframing system goals from aggregate GDP growth toward sufficiency and equitable provisioning [2], implementing binding carbon and material budgets, prioritising end-use efficiency and demand-flexibility, and investing in public goods such as mass transit, school feeding programmes, and primary healthcare that reduce private resource consumption while safeguarding wellbeing.

The Shifting the Burden archetype (Figure 2) describes how reliance on short-term symptomatic solutions diverts attention and resources away from the fundamental interventions needed to address systemic problems [7,8]. At the global level, a symptomatic balancing loop is evident in corporate and state “greenwashing,” whereby the Global North funds climate adaptation aid, offsets emissions through carbon markets, and promotes technological fixes such as geoengineering and carbon capture in developing countries. While these measures create the appearance of meaningful action, they leave the structural drivers of ecological overshoot, including overconsumption, extractivist supply chains, and systemic ecological debt, largely untouched as illustrated in Figure 2 [1]. The Global South, contributing minimally to global emissions, bears a disproportionate share of climate impacts, including droughts, floods, sea-level rise, and food insecurity, leading to severe socio-economic and ecological disruption. The fundamental solution lies in a structural transformation of the Global North’s economic model: reducing throughput, dismantling unjust trade structures, centring climate reparations, and supporting Indigenous stewardship of ecosystems. However, over-reliance on short-term or surface-level interventions delays systemic change, preserves unsustainable growth, perpetuates dependency, and undermines the Global South’s sovereignty in climate responses. In South Africa, a parallel dynamic is visible in the energy sector, where reliance on emergency diesel generation and stopgap procurement temporarily relieves supply constraints but entrenches fossil-fuel dependency, increases fiscal stress, and delays investment in grid modernisation, distributed renewables, and demand-side management. High-leverage measures include establishing sunset clauses for diesel use, linking procurement to long-term decarbonisation goals, ring-fencing revenues from environmental levies for structural transition infrastructure, and expanding non-wire alternatives such as community-owned microgrids and storage systems.

In the case of diesel procurement, Eskom’s emergency reliance on open-cycle gas turbines has cost the fiscus approximately R30 billion between 2018 and 2023, with expenditure spiking in years of acute load-shedding [20]. This symptomatic fix diverted resources from renewable investment: procurement rounds under the Integrated Resource Plan experienced repeated delays during the same period. The result is a textbook case of Shifting the Burden, where short-term stabilisation entrenches structural dependence, raising both fiscal stress and long-term carbon lock-in.

The Success to the Successful archetype (Figure 3) captures how reinforcing feedback loops consolidate advantage among dominant actors while marginalising others, both globally and within national systems [7,8]. At the global scale, the economies of the Global North rely heavily on inputs from the Global South, such as raw materials, energy, and labour, without equitable redistribution of wealth, thereby driving resource use and emissions far beyond their fair ecological share as depicted in Figure 3 [1].

This dynamic is compounded by a Shifting the Burden structure in which a symptomatic balancing loop manifests through corporate “greenwashing”: The Global North funds climate adaptation aid, offsets emissions through carbon markets, and promotes technological fixes such as geoengineering and carbon capture in developing countries. While these measures create the appearance of action, they fail to address the root causes of climate degradation, namely overconsumption, extractivist supply chains, and systemic ecological debt. The Global South, contributing minimally to global emissions, bears the disproportionate burden of climate change through droughts, floods, sea-level rise, and food insecurity, experiencing profound socio-economic and ecological disruption.

The fundamental solution lies in restructuring the Global North’s economic model: reducing throughput, dismantling unjust trade structures, centring climate reparations, and supporting Indigenous stewardship of ecosystems. However, by focusing on short-term or surface-level interventions, the Global North delays systemic transformation, preserves unsustainable growth trajectories, perpetuates dependency, and undermines the Global South’s sovereignty in climate response. Within South Africa, analogous reinforcing loops occur domestically: capital, technical expertise, and grid access concentrate among incumbents, while community-based and SMME energy projects face structural barriers to participation. Breaking these cycles requires high-leverage interventions such as expanding public-interest transmission infrastructure, directing concessional finance toward mission-oriented social procurement, building localised repair and remanufacturing ecosystems, and establishing inclusive skills pathways through SARETEC and Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) institutions [21,22]

The Tragedy of the Commons archetype (Figure 4) describes how disproportionate resource consumption leads to long-term degradation and systemic injustice [1,7]. Initially, all nations derive economic and material gains from shared global resources such as fossil fuels, forests, minerals, fisheries, and the atmosphere. These perceived short-term benefits, however, are distributed unequally, with the Global North capturing the majority through a growth model dependent on high material throughput, resource extraction, and externalised environmental costs, often from the Global South. Planetary boundaries, including climate stability, biodiversity, clean water, and fertile land, represent finite ecological limits [23]), yet these commons are being rapidly depleted, largely by Northern consumption patterns as depicted in Figure 4.

While the Global South contributes minimally to global ecological overshoot, it experiences the harshest impacts, such as droughts, desertification, and climate-induced disasters, while reaping few economic benefits. This degradation also undermines its future development prospects by eroding adaptive capacity and ecological resilience. At the level of individual industrialised nations and corporations, self-interest drives continued overuse of carbon space, biodiversity, and raw materials in the absence of enforceable limits. Without statutory carbon budgets, robust monitoring, and community-governed restoration, the collective outcome is collapse: the commons are irreversibly degraded, and the survival of vulnerable populations is placed in acute jeopardy.

Circular economy (CE) frameworks aim to reduce waste, extend product lifecycles, and recover materials through reuse, remanufacturing, and recycling [24]. While these measures can improve resource efficiency, they are not substituting for absolute reductions in material and energy throughput. Without explicit limits, CE initiatives risk becoming an efficiency-led extension of the growth paradigm, potentially accelerating overall consumption through rebound effects [25]. A degrowth-aligned circular strategy referred to in Figure 5 addresses these shortcomings by embedding strong ecological ceilings and social foundations within its design, thereby reframing the CE as a tool for sufficiency rather than expansion.

This reorientation requires statutory caps on virgin resource extraction and fossil energy use, mandatory product design standards for durability and repairability, and the localisation of value chains wherever feasible to shorten supply loops and strengthen community resilience [2]. Critical infrastructures, such as energy grids, data platforms, and logistics networks, should be treated as commons under democratic control to prevent monopolisation and extractive rent-seeking [16]. Labour transitions must be safeguarded through universal basic services, wage guarantees in repair and reuse sectors, and the recognition of care work as central to socio-ecological wellbeing.

South Africa’s emerging circular economy frameworks, combined with the legislative architecture of the Climate Change Act [5] and the Just Energy Transition (JET) investment and implementation plans [10,11], provide a potential legal and institutional runway for these shifts. Yet it is the degrowth compass, centred on sufficiency, equity, and ecological repair, that supplies the directional bearing, ensuring that the CE serves as an instrument of transformative downscaling rather than “green growth” repackaged.

5. Policy Architecture: Rules, Information, and Goals

Translating degrowth from a conceptual framework into a functioning governance system requires deliberate intervention at the structural levels of rules, information flows, and system goals [7,9]. Rules determine the permissible behaviours and incentive structures within socio-economic systems, information flows shape the transparency and accountability of decision-making, and system goals define the overarching purpose that guides institutional and market activity.

Rules. The Climate Change Act [5] offers a legislative foundation for binding, declining sectoral carbon budgets and for establishing municipal adaptation duties supported by dedicated finance. These rules can be expanded to include mandatory repairability standards, right-to-repair provisions, and product take-back obligations in manufacturing and retail sectors. Public procurement criteria should prioritise social and ecological outcomes over lowest-cost bids, thereby reorienting state expenditure toward transformative objectives [24].

Information. Effective governance depends on open and auditable public ledgers for carbon budgets, material footprints, and ecosystem condition indicators at both national and municipal scales. Transparent data systems, such as the Monitoring, Reporting and Verification (MRV) frameworks envisaged in the Climate Change Act, can be strengthened through participatory monitoring, citizen science, and independent audits. Values-explicit scenario planning, informed by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) approach [13,14], should be institutionalised in energy, water, and land-use strategies to make trade-offs visible and publicly contestable.

Goals. The primary measure of national progress should shift from aggregate GDP to multidimensional wellbeing dashboards that track universal basic service provision, inequality reduction, decent work in care and repair sectors, biodiversity health, and contraction of the national material footprint [2,25]. Aligning these goals with constitutional rights and planetary boundaries would ensure that economic activity operates within safe ecological limits while advancing social justice.

To ensure feasibility and justice, policy levers must be sequenced. A staged implementation logic distinguishes between immediate stabilisation measures (e.g., capping diesel costs, decommissioning the dirtiest coal plants, expanding universal basic services), medium-term transition investments (e.g., scaling renewables and community microgrids, localisation of repair and reuse economies), and long-term consolidation (e.g., embedding statutory resource caps, shifting infrastructures to commons governance). This sequencing ensures that urgent decarbonisation does not undermine community resilience but rather builds the foundations for a sufficiency-oriented provisioning system.

Operationalising a degrowth by design strategy in South Africa requires implementation pathways (Figure 6) that simultaneously reduce material and energy throughput, enhance social wellbeing, and restore ecological systems. These pathways should be grounded in the leverage points identified earlier and aligned with existing legislative and policy frameworks such as the Climate Change Act [5] and the Just Energy Transition Investment Plan [10].

Just Energy Transition (JET). Prioritising investments in grid reinforcement, energy storage, and distributed renewable generation will reduce reliance on centralised fossil fuel plants while improving resilience to supply disruptions. The prohibition of new coal-fired generation and the redirection of concessional finance toward community ownership models can democratise energy access. Worker reskilling programmes, particularly through institutions such as the South African Renewable Energy Technology Centre, are critical for enabling labour mobility from fossil-intensive sectors to renewable and repair-oriented industries [21,22].

Repair, Reuse, and Remanufacture Commons. Establishing municipally supported repair hubs, tool libraries, and skills vouchers can anchor small and medium sized enterprises in sectors such as appliance refurbishment, sustainable mobility, and building retrofits. These initiatives support job creation in low-carbon sectors while extending the lifespan of products and reducing resource demand [24].

Ecosystem Restoration as Infrastructure. Expanding community-led reforestation and wetland restoration projects, such as the Buffelsdraai Landfill Site Community Reforestation Project in Durban [26,27], strengthens climate adaptation, improves biodiversity health, and provides sustainable livelihoods. Integrating these projects with regenerative agriculture and local food systems can improve food security while sequestering carbon and restoring soil health.

Universal Basic Services. Guaranteeing access to clean water, primary healthcare, school feeding programmes, safe public mobility, and affordable digital connectivity reduces private consumption needs and improves quality of life. Universal basic services are particularly effective in decoupling wellbeing from material throughput [2].

Knowledge and Skills Ecosystems. Developing a nested skills architecture across vocational, technical, and higher education can institutionalise the capacities required for care, repair, and ecological stewardship. Stackable credentials that recognise micro-competencies in these areas can enable continuous learning and mobility across sectors as shown in Figure 6.

A degrowth by design strategy requires a robust measurement and learning architecture (Figure 7) that continuously evaluates progress toward ecological and social objectives while enabling adaptive policy responses. Indicators should go beyond GDP and focus on metrics that capture the relationship between material throughput, social equity, and ecological integrity [2,25].

Material Footprint per Capita. Tracking the total amount of raw materials consumed per person provides a direct measure of progress in reducing resource use within ecological limits. This should be monitored alongside sectoral carbon budgets established under the Climate Change Act [5].

Energy Intensity of Wellbeing. Measuring the energy required to deliver universal basic services, such as clean water, healthcare, and mobility, allows policymakers to decouple service provision from energy demand [24].

Distributional Impacts. Inequality indicators, such as the Gini coefficient and the labour share of income, can be used to assess whether degrowth policies are improving equity. Disaggregated data should highlight outcomes for historically marginalised communities [14].

Ecosystem Health Indicators. Metrics such as river water quality, native vegetation cover, soil organic matter, and biodiversity indices track the regeneration of ecological systems. Community-based monitoring, as demonstrated in ecosystem restoration projects like Buffelsdraai [26,27], can provide timely feedback and foster stewardship.

Participatory Learning Systems. Integrating citizen science platforms, participatory scenario planning, and open-access data portals strengthens accountability and collective problem solving [13]. Independent audits of carbon and material accounting systems should be conducted annually to validate performance and recalibrate targets.

This continuous feedback and learning process illustrated in Figure 7; transforms degrowth into a living governance system that is responsive to emerging risks, societal values, and ecological thresholds.

6. Limitations and Future Research

This article is primarily conceptual in scope. It integrates Meadows’ leverage points with canonical systems archetypes to demonstrate how degrowth can be operationalised as a strategy of systemic intervention in the South African context. While this approach offers originality and analytical clarity, it also has several limitations that warrant acknowledgement.

To begin with, the analysis relies predominantly on qualitative systems mapping and conceptual synthesis. Although descriptive statistics and policy vignettes were introduced to enhance diagnostic value, the article does not provide a full empirical test of the hypothesised feedback structures. Future research should therefore undertake empirical verification, for instance by using panel data on municipal energy transitions, fiscal expenditure patterns, and ecological indicators to evaluate whether the predicted shifts in feedback loops are observable in practice.

In addition, the archetypes presented here remain at a national and sectoral level of analysis. While this scale provides clarity on structural dynamics, it does not capture the full diversity of local contexts within South Africa. Further research should extend the framework into detailed case studies that examine specific municipalities, community energy initiatives, and repair economies. Comparative designs, contrasting municipalities with varying levels of capacity or energy poverty, would enable a more granular understanding of how leverage points function in practice.

A further limitation is that, although the article proposes measurable indicators such as material footprint per capita, energy intensity of wellbeing, and ecological repair metrics, these remain largely conceptual. A crucial future step is to build a quantitative measurement framework. This could involve developing a public repository of degrowth-relevant indicators, sourced from national statistics, open data, and international databases, to track progress on throughput reduction, equity outcomes, and ecological resilience.

There are also risks that must be acknowledged. Conceptual frameworks can be subject to policy co-option, particularly in settings where green growth narratives dominate. The political economy of vested interests, capacity constraints in municipalities, and the fiscal trade-offs of transition all pose challenges to operationalising a degrowth compass. Recognising these risks, future research should combine theoretical refinement with participatory action research that involves policymakers, civil society, and communities in testing and adapting leverage strategies.

In summary, this article contributes an original conceptual framework but should be seen as a starting point rather than a definitive account. Its value lies in opening a diagnostic and prescriptive pathway for degrowth by design, while its limitations point clearly toward a research agenda centred on empirical validation, comparative case studies, quantitative measurement, and participatory experimentation.

7. Conclusions

This paper has advanced a degrowth by design framework for South Africa that positions systems thinking as the primary driver of transformative change. By applying canonical systems archetypes, such as Limits to Growth, Shifting the Burden, Success to the Successful, and Tragedy of the Commons, we have demonstrated how reinforcing and balancing feedbacks, delays, and path dependencies perpetuate ecological overshoot and social inequality, both globally and domestically. Through this lens, degrowth emerges not as an abstract ideal but as a targeted leverage point strategy that acts on system rules, information flows, and paradigms to reorient the economy toward sufficiency, equity, and ecological repair [7,9]

The integration of decolonial ethics, particularly Ubuntu-informed relational dignity [18] and pluriversal design perspectives [16], ensures that degrowth policies are contextually grounded and culturally resonant, resisting the technocratic and extractivist tendencies that can undermine transition agendas. By synthesising legislative mandates, empirical evidence, and systems leverage theory, this paper contributes a paradigmatic reframing of South Africa’s just transition debate. It moves the focus from incremental efficiency improvements to deliberate downscaling of material and energy throughput, coupled with structural redistribution and ecological regeneration. In doing so, it responds to the urgency of planetary boundaries [1,23] while foregrounding the agency of communities, workers, and Indigenous stewards in shaping futures beyond growth.

While the Climate Change Act and JET frameworks [5,10,11] offer an important institutional runway for socio-ecological transition, their current alignment with degrowth is aspirational rather than fully operational. Significant implementation challenges remain, including fiscal trade-offs, capacity gaps, and the political economy of vested interests. The degrowth compass, centred on sufficiency, equity, and ecological repair, should therefore be understood less as a description of present readiness than as a guiding orientation for shaping these frameworks. Its value lies in providing a normative and analytical benchmark to navigate contested transitions, ensuring that evolving instruments such as the Climate Change Act and JET are directed toward transformative rather than efficiency-led outcomes.

At the same time, this article must be understood within its limitations. The analysis has been primarily conceptual, grounded in qualitative systems mapping with partial empirical illustration. While vignettes and descriptive data have been incorporated, there remains a need for systematic empirical validation, longitudinal analysis, and detailed municipal-level case studies. Quantitative measures such as material footprint per capita and energy intensity of wellbeing are proposed but not yet applied. Recognising these constraints highlights the importance of future research agendas that test hypotheses with panel data, trace feedback shifts across comparative municipal cases, and construct open repositories of indicators that link throughput reduction to equity and ecological regeneration.

Despite these limitations, the paper makes a unique contribution. It advances an integrated framework that combines Meadows’ leverage points with systems archetypes, situates degrowth within South African legislative and policy architecture, and embeds decolonial ethics and Ubuntu perspectives into systems analysis. It foregrounds political economy barriers and governance challenges while proposing policy pathways that are sequenced, socially grounded, and contextually resonant.

Beyond South Africa, the framework holds transferable value for other Global South contexts where ecological overshoot and inequality intersect. For instance, in Brazil, deforestation in the Amazon exemplifies a Tragedy of the Commons dynamic, where short-term economic gains from resource exploitation undermine long-term planetary resilience and disproportionately affect Indigenous communities. In India, the energy transition reveals a Shifting the Burden archetype, where short-term coal dependence delays structural transformation while intensifying air pollution, fiscal stress, and climate vulnerability for marginalised populations. These comparative illustrations highlight how the degrowth compass can diagnose systemic traps and propose leverage strategies across diverse Global South contexts. In this sense, the degrowth compass is both a benchmark for critical reflection and a guide for transformative action, offering pathways to reimagine futures beyond growth that are just, equitable, and ecologically restorative.