Ecological growth is what the framework means by growth once the word is freed from its equation with economic expansion:
Growth is the increase in an ecology’s capacity to carry more life, greater differentiation, deeper participation, wider possibility, and greater consequence while remaining renewable, legitimate, alive, navigable, and correctable.
It is an increase in viable range, not in volume. A child grows by becoming able to carry more life coherently, not by doubling its intake; a mature forest grows in complexity, resilience, and regenerative depth, not by occupying more land. So growth can sometimes require less — less extraction, bureaucracy, concentrated power, or noise — because if removing something raises the field’s viable capacity, that is growth. It requires differentiation and integration together (more distinct participants and more capacity for relationship), and it must include the future: raising present capacity by consuming future capacity is not growth but liquidation. See The Compass Is Ecological Capacity.