Advocacy Brief
Aug 1, 2024by Emilia Reyes
Degrowth for Multilateral Activism (Primer Series: Degrowth for Global Justice #3)
This paper, the third and final in the series, outlines the significance of the degrowth framework in the context of global struggles for justice, especially within the multilateral arena.
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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:
“Degrowth’s particular strengths include its strong analysis of the biophysical metabolism of capitalism, the global justice and resource implications of ecological modernization, the ideological hegemony perpetuated by growth-based economics, and its advancement of more deeply transformative policy proposals for an economy based on autonomy, care, and sufficiency.”
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.
While the economic and environmental justice movements have contemplated the transition towards a different system, the degrowth community more clearly highlights the acceleration of that transition, as well as the formulation of those steps. As Fitzpat rick, Parrique and Cosme state: “[the] latest evidence suggest[s] that a rapid, global, and absolute decoupling of environmental impact from economic growth is highly unlikely, if not biophysically impossible.” The framework of degrowth, and novel proposals it makes, is key to strengthen demands made by the economic justice movement, especially those addressing the reform of the global financial a rchitecture.
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