Topic: Post-growth Pathways for Low-carbon Wellbeing

The journal Carbon Footprints welcomes interdisciplinary research on environmental sustainability, resource use, climate mitigation, ecological economics, industrial ecology, low-carbon transitions, and pathways toward sustainable development. This Special Issue seeks to examine how post-growth approaches may contribute to climate mitigation, reduced carbon footprints, and lower resource throughput.

The Special Issue aims to bring post-growth scholarship into dialogue with industrial ecology and carbon-footprint research by exploring how low-carbon wellbeing can be achieved while reducing greenhouse gas emissions, material throughput, and ecological pressures. It focuses on post-growth perspectives for climate change mitigation and GHG emissions reduction.

This Special Issue aims to:

● Advance scholarly discourse on post-growth pathways for climate mitigation;

● Examine how societal wellbeing can be improved while reducing carbon footprints and resource use;

● Introduce core post-growth concepts and contemporary debates to the industrial ecology and carbon accounting community;

● Develop evidence-based pathways toward low-carbon wellbeing under planetary limits.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

● Carbon footprint implications of reduced dependence on GDP growth;

● Post-growth pathways for greenhouse gas mitigation and climate change adaptation;

● Consumption-based emissions and sufficiency strategies;

● MRIO, integrated assessment, and footprint-based modelling of post-growth scenarios;

● Ecological civilisation and carbon-neutral development;

● Urban decarbonisation beyond growth-oriented planning;

● Circular economy and demand-side mitigation;

● Scenario modelling of post-growth climate futureComparative studies of high wellbeing with low carbon footprints;

● Community-level low-carbon practices and social innovations.

Conference Linkage

This Special Issue is linked to the International Forum on Sustainability, Health and Wellbeing: Insights from China and Beyond, Shanghai, 20-21 July 2026. The conference will bring together scholars from China and internationally to discuss wellbeing, ecological civilisation, post-growth pathways, public health, sustainability transitions, governance innovation, and beyond-GDP development approaches. The Special Issue will be discussed during the conference, and conference participants will be encouraged to contribute submissions.

Post-growth; Low-carbon Wellbeing; Climate Mitigation; Carbon Footprint; Low-carbon Transition; Industrial Ecology; Ecological Economics; Sustainable Development; Circular Economy; Carbon Neutrality