Degrowth uniquely solves relations between Global North and South

Given these technologies and materials are largely to service the Global North’s high consumption, a reduction in energy and material use by rich nations would reduce the potential for environmental conflict in the Global South. In addition to reducing conflict over the minerals themselves, it would also help hasten our pursuit of a more sustainable society, thereby reducing the impact of climate change and environmental degradation in countries like Nigeria or Pakistan, both of which experienced major floods this past year.11 As research demonstrates, countries struck by climate-induced disasters see a rise in authoritarian governments and draconian policy shortly in the aftermath.12 A warming world spells increased oppression among the world’s poor both directly by ecological disasters and how governments respond. Moreover, as the United Nations International Resource Panel found, 90 percent of biodiversity loss and water stress are caused by the extraction and processing of natural resources.13 A reduction in energy and material use would thus also reduce biodiversity loss—another area of life-and-death struggle for many (especially Indigenous people) in the Global South.14 Degrowth increasingly appears as one of, if not the only, Northern political programs that can avert ecological collapse, ensure global justice, and provide everyone with good lives.

A scenario where demand for production and consumption is reduced in the Global North would allow Global South countries room for their own development without having to service Northern growth or follow the ecologically destructive path set by the United States and Europe. Degrowth seeks to reverse this unequal ecological exchange where the North and South’s resource use converge.15 In such a scenario, Global South countries could focus on using their productive capacity and resources to meet their own needs. For instance, according to the research by Jason Hickel and colleagues, an estimate of roughly 43 percent of Global North materials have come from the South. They state, “in 2015 the North net appropriated from the South 12 billion tons of embodied raw material equivalents, 822 million hectares of embodied land, 21 exajoules of embodied energy, and 188 million person-years of embodied labor, worth $10.8 trillion in Northern prices—enough to end extreme poverty 70 times over. Over the whole period, drain from the South totalled $242 trillion.”16 Such an analysis, Hickel and his team claim, confirms that unequal ecological exchange is a significant driver of uneven development, inequality, and ecological breakdown. A degrowth program that is international in scope and decolonial in principle will lessen environmental damage, raise living standards for billions of people, and provide some level of equality on the world’s stage.

It should be noted that degrowth is not a zero-sum game where those in the Global North would be “worse off” than before. In fact, life would be much better for the global majority, whether you live in the United States or Ecuador. While it can’t be denied that degrowth would allow us to avert ecological breakdown, the types of policies and provisioning systems at the heart of the degrowth program would put a special emphasis on wellbeing and sustainability in all countries. In a degrowth transition, as opposed to the “grow or die” ethos of modern economics, all people would have access to life’s necessities: healthcare, education, housing, energy, internet—what some call a “social guarantee.”17 Moreover, people would work less and have more free time to enjoy friends, family, and nature; people would buy less consumer goods since these items would have repair mandates; people’s health would improve due to less pollution from fossil fuels and more plant-based diets as well. There is a bevy of research demonstrating how we can collectively live better lives than we do now while reducing our use of energy and materials.18

Critics of degrowth often ask “who would this vision appeal to?” The answer: the people. In my own research analyzing the world’s citizens assemblies, I found that randomly selected citizens preferred policies that fit within the degrowth framework: the reduction of energy use, transportation systems centered around walking, biking, and public transit, and minimizing flights, to name a few.19 In the case of Spain, their citizens’ assembly advocated for increased understanding of degrowth among the population. Poll after poll shows that people prioritize the environment over economic growth.20 Contrary to bad-faith projections coming from both the right as well as some on the left, people are willing to enact much more radical ecological policies than political ideologues are willing to give them credit for.

Scientific experts also agree with the urgency for degrowth. In a study on support for growth-critical or growth-supportive statements, researchers found that the majority of scientific experts support either degrowth or “a-growth” (also called postgrowth).21 In a survey of experts who work for the German Environment Agency, these workers were given explicit and implicit statements about growth where they took a position supporting green growth, a-growth, or degrowth.22 In both the explicit and implicit answers, these experts were found to be much more growth critical than accepting the current economic dogma of green growth. In fact nearly half of the respondents supported degrowth positions when they were implicitly stated, demonstrating the strong scientific foundation of degrowth without the political “baggage” of the term that may turn off some scientists.23 This makes sense since there is no existing evidence for green growth.24 Degrowth, as it has matured, is no longer becoming an evidential question, but one of strategy and how to gain political power.

At the beginning of this piece I mentioned how in a highly interconnected global system, growth in the North impacts those in the South. While reducing the demand for energy and materials would likely help reduce conflict in these countries, lessen impact on local ecosystems, and allow them to use their productive capacity to meet their own needs, it is possible that without careful attention, degrowth may also exert unforeseen, negative impacts on the South. Firstly, the degrowth movement is largely composed of individuals who are white, Western, and materially well-off. This poses a risk that the policies and proposals on offer from the degrowth movement may not be inclusive and diverse to include the Global majority. Although the degrowth movement has been clear that its intentions are directed towards the Global North, this lack of direct contact has resulted in Global South’s environmental justice movements questioning the applicability, framing, and analysis of degrowth.25 In a series of interviews with environmental justice organizers in the Global South, Beatriz Rodríguez-Labajos and her team found that, “For many people in the South – especially social movements – ‘degrowth’ will not make sense because of their own history and experiences, having often suffered from situations of poverty and scarcity of the most basic needs. Some ‘growth’ to reach more security in terms of survival is regarded as logical. Therefore, focusing the struggle on degrowth is not only perceived as ‘missing the point’, but is also in some ways a ‘luxury’ debate.” As the labor movement saying goes, “if you are not at the table, you are on the menu.” While degrowth has comprehensive policy focused on the Global North, the most direct way to clarify degrowth’s intentions is to make a concerted effort to directly engage with movements in the Global South in bringing the ingredients and drafting the degrowth menu. We can build off the efforts already being made, especially with recently increased support among Global South political and thought leaders.26

Furthermore, as the degrowth movement has developed, so has its strategy.27 In its earlier stages, the degrowth movement was largely focused on the local scale with an emphasis on bottom-up organizing. Since then, degrowth scholars and activists have recognized the need for a complementary strategy of both bottom-up organizing and centrally directed implementation. Like all political projects that rely on existing institutions, there is an inherent risk that degrowth can be co-opted or lose its connection with the grassroots. In this way, the degrowth movement could become too provincial with electing the right people, playing “pragmatic” politics, and betraying the interests of the Global majority. This critique is not exclusive to degrowth; all major political projects require navigating this difficult political space.

These criticisms are not to condemn degrowth, but rather, to present intellectual clarification and greater coordination between the degrowth movement and its siblings in the South including Buen Vivir, La Via Campesina, and other post-development and ecosocialist movements. On a strategic basis, degrowth could remedy the lack of North-South solidarity where the Northern environmental movement takes direct responsibility for transforming how the Northern ways of life and production systems rely on the labor, energy, and materials from the South (including the waste and ecological consequences), thereby demonstrating our commitment to a decolonized and anti-imperialist ethos. The Northern environmental movements have thus far largely ignored this Global interdependence. Making this point explicit in our organizations’ communications, education, and political advocacy is a first step. Implementing policies that reduce demand and ensure global justice can happen on both local and national levels in which movements target energy efficiency efforts, reduce working weeks, shift tax burdens from labor to consumption, and first and foremost target the wealthy through global redistribution of wealth via luxury taxes and debt relief. Furthermore, Ideas and actions that provide the Global South with the opportunity to take back its fiscal and productive sovereignty will also hasten a move towards degrowth.28

In addition, a key industry for degrowth is the US military. As it stands, the US military is the world’s largest institutional polluter, emitting more greenhouse gasses annually than over 140 other countries, largely due to its massive transportation system.29 Further, the US military has over 585,000 facilities, at least 750 military bases in 80 countries and owns nearly 27 million acres of land in the US alone, whereby they cut down forests, pollute landscapes, and threaten biodiversity in the process.30 Given the US Military’s neocolonial goals of subjugating the Global South, this is one institution the degrowth movement should prioritize in its efforts to promote global social justice and build international solidarity. The military can never be “greened”; it can only be “degrown” or abolished.31

In a recent Upstream Podcast documentary about the green transition, guest participant and human rights activist Sergio Chaparro framed the current “Green New Deal Discourse” into three buckets: a centrist version like the recently passed Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) which seeks public-private partnerships through tax credits; Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s social democratic Green New Deal that centers Keynesian public investment and racial equity; and thirdly, an internationalist ecosocial Green New Deal in which Caparro placed degrowth.32 Unlike either Biden’s IRA or AOC’s Green New Deal which are largely nationalistic, parochial, and predicated on expanding economic growth, degrowth is international in its scope, ecologically sound in its science, and thinking beyond carbon tunnel vision.33 These are the terms and scales we need to be thinking in if we are to avert ecological collapse and transform society for the better. Degrowth offers a framework for coordination and solidarity between Global North and South movements in our strategies, tactics, and vision for a better world — free from the extractivist and unjust nature of colonial capitalism that has sacrificed the South’s autonomy and livelihood for the North’s growth, all the while failing to deliver a decent life to ordinary people in the process. In a highly connected economic-ecological system, there is a moral and material imperative for degrowth.