Trailblazing the Transition: Moving Beyond Limits to Growth in the Netherlands During the Long 1970s

Abstract

The politicization of the environment in the 1970s involved a paradigmatic challenge to the ‘hegemony of growth’. In the Netherlands, this economic growth debate was particularly fierce and long-lasting, with protagonists among left-wing parties, Christian democrats, and right-wing liberals, all advocating some sort of ‘limits to growth’. Moreover, the Dutch growth debate also took on a policymaking dimension. Propelled by earlier attempts to implement ‘selectivity’ in certain policies, the Selective Growth Memorandum of 1976 set out to surpass the hegemony of growth and align environmental and economic objectives. As such, the Dutch growth debate of the early 1970s inspired a rapprochement in which environmental regulation was framed as a positive-sum game in consonance with economic considerations by stimulating investments, productivity, and growth. Even though the memorandum ultimately ended up primarily re-articulating the growth paradigm, this article highlights that discursively, it still prefigured the discourse of ecological modernization that would dominate the environmental discourse in the 1980s and 1990s.