The promise of a society-centred framework that foregrounds local governance and ecological livelihoods.
Rural Lombok, Indonesia by Yonatan Anugerah via Unsplash.How can welfare systems thrive in a world beyond growth?
A unique study co-authored by Post Growth Fellow, Vierna E. Tobing-David, shows that sustainable welfare can arise from reciprocity and regenerative local economies — rather than from extractive development or trickle-down economics.
The study is among the first to empirically test sustainable welfare theory in a highly decentralized, low-tax, informal economy setting. Challenging the growth-driven assumptions that tend to dominate discussions on the topic, it explores how welfare can be both sustainable and locally embedded, even in contexts often dismissed as ‘less and least developed.’
What’s more, real-world examples reveal the promise of a society-centred framework that prioritizes local governance and ecological livelihoods, especially in Global South contexts.
Reframing development
In mainstream development discourse, welfare is equated with economic growth, industrialization, and integration into global markets. The post-development paradigm challenges these assumptions, calling for alternatives based on local knowledge, cultural context, and ecological realities.
Post-development and post-growth perspectives converge in their call to decenter the logic of extraction, and to listen instead to the myriad ways communities already meet needs with care, sufficiency, and reciprocity.
Post Growth Fellows have explored this topic from various angles, including post-growth alternatives to mineral extraction, feminist decolonial approaches to development, and the surprising intersection of ecological reparations and degrowth.
Sand Futures: Post-Growth Alternatives to Mineral Extraction in the Global South Digging into sand reveals how current development paradigms work in service to capital — and at the expense of people’s…medium.com
Decolonizing Economics: African and Feminist Perspectives on Post-Growth Futures Feminist decolonial discourse helps ensure that progress is more inclusive, just, and transformative for all.medium.com
Why Integrating Ecological Reparations Strengthens the Degrowth Movement Combining these two approaches can build political bridges and allyship globally, while tackling systems of oppression…medium.com
Many pathways to ‘success’
In their study, using qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) across 22 Indonesian villages, the authors found no single path to sustainable welfare. The strongest outcomes emerged where three conditions coexisted:
- Local self-governance — where decisions are made at the most local level possible, by those directly affected, ensuring that power flows from the ground up rather than being imposed from above.
- Ecological economic empowerment — consisting of regenerative, locally controlled livelihoods.
- Provision of universal basic services — including health, education, and infrastructure.
In the context of the study, these are the foundations of sustainable welfare — and they invite us to redefine what success looks like.
Beyond metrics, toward real meaning
Dominant development measures, such as GDP, productivity, or poverty thresholds, routinely miss what matters most. They cannot account for the richness of social life, the depth of collective care, or the ecological balance that sustains long-term wellbeing.
Mutual aid, resilience, the ability to meet needs without exploitation, and the presence of vibrant local ecosystems are the foundations of sustainable welfare.
The study found that sustainable welfare outcomes consistently emerged in villages where ecological economic empowerment was present. This manifested in practices like organic farming, community-managed waste systems, renewable energy, and micro-enterprise networks that localized production and shortened supply chains. Importantly, these were context-specific innovations informed by local relationships and knowledges. Sustainable welfare is not a one-size-fits-all formula.
Young organic farmer in rural Indonesia. By Sony Adam via Unsplash.“A regenerative economy fostering inclusive economic opportunities and absorbing locally produced goods and services” was a defining feature of high-performing villages, the authors note.
This kind of provisioning — embedded in place, culture, and ecology — cannot be captured by conventional metrics. The study suggests that instead we should look to relational indicators: mutual aid, resilience, the ability to meet needs without exploitation, and the presence of vibrant local ecosystems.
Implications for policy, imagination, and post-growth pathways
Rather than asking how these systems can be scaled, exported, or ‘developed,’ a post-development lens urges us to slow down and learn from them on their own terms. The more generative questions become:
- What conditions made this possible?
- What can we unlearn from such communities?
- How might others cultivate similar social, ecological, or political conditions for such systems to take root?
Central to this is recognizing that the future of these villages must be determined by those who live there. Their agency is the foundation of any just transition.
Rather than asking how these systems can be scaled, exported, or ‘developed,’ a post-development lens urges us to slow down and learn from them on their own terms.
The study offers several important policy insights that expand our understanding of what supports sustainable welfare:
- Customized, bottom-up policymaking was key. The highest-performing villages leveraged Indonesia’s Village Fund as an enabler of locally determined initiatives (rather than through top-down mandates). This reflects a ‘sandwich’ model of governance, where centralized financial support is paired with decentralized decision-making. The blend of national and local policy proved more effective than the dominance of one.
- Feedback loops matter. Villages with participatory planning mechanisms, grievance redress systems, and regular community consultations were better able to align welfare programs with actual needs. These democratic practices helped sustain accountability and trust between local government and residents.
- Ecological economic practices were key levers for success. Organic farming, circular waste systems, renewable energy use, and inclusive local markets were all present in villages that achieved sustainable welfare outcomes. These practices were central to how communities met needs while preserving ecological integrity.
The study also warns that without strong local governance and secure community rights over land, resources, and decision-making, such models are vulnerable to being taken out of context to serve technocratic or ‘green growth’ frameworks. This risks them being repurposed to serve extractive logics rather than relational, place-based wellbeing.
Without strong local governance and secure community rights over land, resources, and decision-making, such models are vulnerable to being taken out of context to serve technocratic or ‘green growth’ frameworks.
Post-growth pathways require nurturing conditions that allow communities to regenerate from within. That means investing in autonomy, subsidiarity, and solidarity economies — not just infrastructure or efficiency. It means gradually shifting from extractive development models and toward plural, locally informed visions of what it means to live well together, within limits.
Vierna E. Tobing-David is an evaluation specialist with extensive experience supporting policy design, evaluation and institutional learning in complex development and post-crisis contexts, across public institutions and civil society organisations in Asia and East Africa. Her research interests centre on human development, gender equality, welfare politics and post-growth welfare systems, with a particular focus on how social policy, care, and welfare institutions can be designed to support equity, resilience, and wellbeing beyond growth-centric economic models. She holds a doctoral degree in welfare systems and social policy from the University of Indonesia and has published empirical research on locality-based welfare systems.
Inspired by this article? Here are some ideas for what to do next:
- Read the full journal article, ‘Conditions of Sustainable Welfare: A Cross-Case Empirical Analysis of 22 Locality-Based Welfare Systems in Decentralised Indonesia’ by Virna Emily Tobing-David, Isbandi Rukminto Adi, and Mu’man Nuryana.
- Explore our related articles on post-development, such as Post Growth alternatives to mineral extraction, feminist decolonial approaches to development, and the surprising intersection of ecological reparations and degrowth.
- Explore our related articles on mutual aid and reciprocity, such as strengthening the Black Social Economy, ROSCAs as a model for sustainable economic development, and how the Offers and Needs Market nurtures traditions of reciprocity
- Browse our Bookshop list on Indigenous Mutual Aid.
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