Wealthy countries continue their quest for exponential economic growth under the argument that there is a possibility to de-link or decouple carbon economies from economic growth. Degrowthers have debunked this issue in many studies. There is no possibility to “green the economy” and carry on with business-as-usual logic. “Greening” is a smokescreen that has been used to maintain the same predatory and extractive economic dynamic to the benefit of elites. Calls for “green economies” have been unveiled by degrowthers as mere aspirations and discursive delays that have criminal impacts worldwide.

Degrowthers are proposing a paradigm that promotes accelerated transformations of harmful practices in our current economic systems. Degrowth is in principle anti-capitalist, with a framing based on an analysis of the urgent steps required to depart from the capitalist system, and how that transition can be made. Therefore, a focus on degrowing specific sectors to promote the economic planning of the development of other sectors is part of the rational planning that degrowthers propose for a speedy transformation of economic dynamics, bearing in mind planetary boundaries.

This paper, the third in a series of primers on degrowth published in 2024 and written by Emilia Reyes, explores several dimensions of degrowth: of harmful sectors in Global North and South; for the wealthy in the Global North and South; and for Global North people (not just governments), alongside a post-extractivist vision for the Global South.