How can degrowth serve global justice struggles?

The economic justice movement has long emphasized the need to promote the reform of the global financial architecture, while targeting colonial and imperial dynamics and the need to address historic and structural inequalities. At the same time, the environmental justice movement highlights the negative ecological impacts of the predatory nature of the current economic system. The proposals of degrowth stand between these two movements, filling some gaps that remained unaddressed by both. 

Where the economic justice movement demands redistribution of wealth through, for instance, taxing fossil fuel industries, degrowthers advocate for transiting out of an economic system that exploits the environment by means of extracting material resources. In the same vein, whereas the environmental justice movement demands action to address ecological impacts, the degrowth community provides systemic analysis and solutions to articulate different fields of impact (i.e. planetary boundaries) while targeting economic and social needs. 

An agenda of degrowth for multilateral activism is meant to add to the different layers of global justice. It is not an either/or, but an understanding that a degrowth framework enhances our efforts to speed up the transitions required to face the current ecological emergencies while addressing structural inequalities. Degrowth proposals do not compete with other demands of the global justice movement, but complement them and add emphasis on specific elements. Degrowth can help to emphasize key elements to the fight for global justice. 

This paper identifies several specific points of entry to help identify what could support a comprehensive logic of a degrowth agenda in a multilateral space: reparations, emergency response, and investment in beneficial sectors and a real economy.