The ERGO Framework facilitates a structured overview of the manifold approaches and projects related to sufficiency politics (Schneidewind & Zahrnt 2013). ERGO represents the three approaches Enable, Frame (in German: Rahmen), Design (in German: Gestaltung), and Orientation. The latter draws on the principle of “four lessens” (four Es in the original German text) by Wolfgang Sachs (1993).

Sufficiency Politics can consist in enabling educational and labour policies, political framing through market intervention and models of well-being, as well as creative policy design in the fields of mobility and food.

By virtue of visualisation, we can bring to light the connections between projects and approaches, and locate them within our framework as well as on different levels of political decision-making.

The 40 approaches listed here represent a significant number of possible courses of action but still leave space for additions. About 20 exemplary projects and initiatives show how sufficiency politics can be being implemented.

All of the approaches are related to sufficiency politics. They show how civil society, pushing or working together will governmental actors, can create conditions which make it easier to live a good life.

The ERGO Framework helps different actors to merge their perspectives and coordinate their efforts to design campaigns or the like. At which political level should, for example, a campaign concerned with deceleration be aimed? Should a policy proposal rather concern food or traffic? Additionally, actors can locate their own existing strategies, projects, and initiatives within a larger context with the help of the ERGO Framework.