Advocacy Brief
Aug 1, 2024by Emilia Reyes
Directions of Degrowth: The Global North, harmful sectors and concentration of wealth (Primer Series: Degrowth for Global Justice #2)
This paper, the second in the series, describes the need for degrowth for Global North countries specifically, centering the accountability of extraterritorial impacts and reparations, as well as for the wealthy in both Global North and Global South countries, and harmful economic sectors worldwide.
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Donate TodayIt examines the colonial and imperial dynamics of wealth and harmful economic practices operating in both the Global North and South. Overall, the framework of degrowth is not devised to be applied for Global South countries given the historical oppression they have lived for centuries, and continue to live, under colonial dynamics. Targeted degrowth actions in the Global South need to be conceived in larger systems that should emphasize a transition towards a post-extractive phase.
Global North countries, composed of just 16% of the population, are responsible for 92% of excess global CO2 emissions and 74% of the overshoot of material resource use in the world—almost half of it extracted in the Global South for Global North consumption and use. There is no doubt of the criminal responsibility of Global North countries in the massive destruction of the global ecological balance. Global North countries have also made cynical and blatant efforts to evade their responsibility in global arenas—indicating not just a territorial colonization, but also an atmospheric colonization and appropriation.
The measures supposedly carried out by the Global North to address their climate impacts through Green New Deals (GNDs) are the same colonial proposals under new disguise. Rather than proposing structural transformation, these policies rely on the premise that the Global South will deliver the rare minerals and material resources that will be much needed to promote the “transition” from fossil fuels (coal, oil and gas) to renewable energies. And yet, due to the exponential economic growth paradigm, Global North countries are carrying out green colonialism: rather than reducing their energy base by replacing fossil fuels, they are expanding it by adding the generation of energy through renewable sources.
The implications are clear. On one hand, these wealthy countries are continuing to burn the global carbon budget and accelerating the overshoot of the climate change boundary, aggressively promoting policies aimed towards advancing renewable energy that only protect the concentration of profits under the logic of exponential economic growth. On the other hand, the obscene mineral and resource extraction that will be required in the Global South to feed the demand of wealthy countries will annihilate the ecosystems integrity of the South by means of aggressive mega-projects in land and sea, exhausting the remaining and fragile balance in the biodiversity integrity.
As the planetary boundaries framework explains, climate change and biodiversity integrity are the two cross-cutting boundaries that can impact the rest. If these are overshot, irreversible effects will happen in relation to the other seven planetary boundaries. Through their excessive activities, the wealthy are about to burn almost 70% of the remaining carbon budget before overshooting the environmental tipping point for the climate emergency.
