Considering alternatives to megaprojects for a sustainable future with degrowth principles
Bibliographic record
Abstract
• Despite our current climate challenge and natural resources depletion, megaprojects’ megalomania is on the rise. • ‘Sustainability without megaprojects’ is suggested, using a critical perspective and mobilizing the literature on degrowth. • Degrowth principles of producing less, sharing more and deciding together should orient future research, practice and policy responses. Given the increasing scholarly attention to megaprojects and sustainability, this essay proposes an alternative to building bigger and more megaprojects. Using a critical perspective and mobilizing the literature on degrowth, it is suggested that scaling down could be beneficial on many levels. Megaprojects are ubiquitous, yet they have profound repercussions on the land and resources and on local communities, not always for the better. Suggesting the avenue of ‘sustainability without megaprojects’, some research streams are suggested to pursue this reflection in line with degrowth principles of producing less, sharing more and deciding together. While more research is necessary to understand more thoroughly the implications of degrowth principles to megaprojects framing, there is also a crucial need for political action to debate the alternatives and develop appropriate policy responses.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.019 | 0.017 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.009 | 0.033 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.014 | 0.018 |
| Open science | 0.003 | 0.012 |
| Research integrity | 0.007 | 0.007 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.008 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".