Library

By: Anke Schaffartzik, Brototi Roy

Coal is on the rise in India: despite the devasting impacts of the climate crisis, the awareness for land and forest rights, and political talk of a coal phase-out. In this article, we demonstrate that despite the renewables-led rhetoric, India is in the midst of a transition to (not away from) greater use of coal in its fossil energy system and in the electricity system in particular. We inv...

By: Andrea Palframan

RAVEN DeBriefs are conversations between Indigenous thinkers, legal experts, organizers and community leaders exploring the shifting legal landscape upon which moments of crisis — and opportunity — are built. Season 1, Episode 4 - COVID Capitalism: The Case Against Coastal Gas Link with Caily DiPuma: Find out how Wet'suwet'en Nation are pushing back against fracked gas with a legal challe...

By: Julien-François Gerber

Abstract: Degrowth refers to a radical politico-economic reorganisation that leads to smaller and more equitable social metabolisms. Degrowth posits that such a transition is indispensable but also desirable. However, the conditions of its realisation require more research. This article argues that critical agrarian studies (CAS) and degrowth can enrich each other. The Agrarian Question and the...

By: Arnim Scheidel, Brototi Roy, Daniela Del Bene, Federico Demaria, Grettel Navas, Irmak Ertör, Joan Martínez-Alier, Juan Liu, Leah Temper, Sara Mingorría, Sofía Avila

Recent research and policies recognize the importance of environmental defenders for global sustainability and emphasize their need for protection against violence and repression. However, effective support may benefit from a more systematic understanding of the underlying environmental conflicts, as well as from better knowledge on the factors that enable environmental defenders to mobilize ...

By: Olivia Taylor, Peter Newell

With fires, storms, social protests, and climate strikes sweeping the world, 2019 should have been a tipping point in how the world responds to global heating. This was the backdrop to the COP25 climate change summit which took place in Madrid in December 2019. This paper assesses the outcomes of the meeting and the path towards the critically important meeting in Glasgow at the end of 2020...

By: Håkan Johansson, Kaja Emilsson, Magnus Wennerhag

Present debates suppose a close linkage between economic, social, and environmental sustainability and suggest that individual wellbeing and living standards need to be understood as directly linked to environmental concerns. Because social movements are often seen as an avant-garde in pushing for change, this article analyzes climate protesters’ support for three key frames in current periods ...

By: Irina Velicu

While the critique to economic growth is quintessential in the degrowth scholarship, one may observe a similar focus in various environmental justice movements around the world. This is particularly visible when it comes to the increasing perception that mega-development projects are both unjust and unsustainable, threatening the survival of people and environments. In this paper, we illustra...

By: David Barkin, Mario Enrique Fuente-Carrasco, Ricardo Clark-Tapia

The Mexican neoliberal political regime created a hegemonic governance model (top-down) which has tried to impose a single definition for the rules of the distribution of the costs and benefits (environmental and economic) related to the appropriation of “natural resources” (fossil fuels, forests, mineral, water, genetic). Social metabolism is a framework that highlights the contribution of i...

By: Carol Bond, Cle-Anne Gabriel

Post-growth societies seek socio-ecological transformations towards a just and sustainable redistribution and reduced consumption of natural capital. There is no one universally just and ecologically sustainable way of fulfilling these redistribution and consumption objectives; it depends on the criteria used and their underlying ethical teleology. We suggest three distribution criteria, borrow...

By: Anke Schaffartzik, Arnim Scheidel

Degrowth and environmental justice movements share overarching aims of sustainability and justice and pursue them through radical social change and resistances. Both movements are diverse and comprised of groups that originate and operate in different contexts. The ever-growing metabolism of the world economy presents an obstacle to both movements' aims, while a socio-metabolic perspective un...

By: Neera M. Singh

Struggles for Environmental Justice, more widespread in the global South, are often framed as traditional societies defending “old ways of life”; while degrowth, a relatively new movement in the global North is seen as striving for a “new ways of life.” I argue that both assert or aspire for other ways of being and belonging to the world and open possibilities for post-capitalist futures. In th...

By: Patricia E. Perkins

Abstract: Economic inequality reduces the political space for addressing climate change, by producing fear-based populism. Only when the safety, social status, and livelihoods of all members of society are assured will voluntary, democratic decisions be possible to reverse climate change and fairly mitigate its effects. Socio-environmental and climate justice, commoning, and decolonization are...

By: Bill McKibben, Charlotte Hanson, Christoph Schneider, David Powell, Dirk Ehnts, Emanuele Leonardi, Friedrich Bohn, Giacomo D'Alisa, Giorgos Kallis, Giovanna Sissa, Grace Blakeley, Isaac Stanley, Jakob Schäfer, Jason Hickel, Jérémy Rodrigues, Julia Fish, Julian Brave NoiseCat, Laura C. Zanetti-Domingues, Laurie Laybourn-Langton, Mat Lawrence, Nick Dearden, Nick Jacobs, Nicoletta Dentico, Riccardo Mastini, Ruth London, Sam Bright, Sean Sweeney, Skender Fani, Stefania Barca, Teresa Anderson, Tessa Khan, Will Stronge

Europe today confronts two crises. The first is an economic crisis, with rising levels of poverty, insecurity, and homelessness across the continent. The second is a climate and environmental crisis, with severe consequences for Europe’s front-line communities and even more perilous ones on the horizon. Both crises are the products of Europe’s political decisions, and they are closely bound t...

By: Bengi Akbulut, Federico Demaria, Joan Martínez-Alier, Julien-François Gerber

Environmental destructions, overconsumption and overdevelopment are felt by an increasing number of people. Voices for ‘prosperity without growth’ have strengthened and environmental conflicts are on the rise worldwide. This introduction to the special issue explores the possibility of an alliance between post-growth and ecological distribution conflicts (EDCs). It argues that among the vario...

By: Dianne Rocheleau, Padini Nirmal

Abstract: A growing coalition of degrowth scholar-activist(s) seeks to transform degrowth into an interdisciplinary and international field bridging a rising network of social and environmental justice movements. We offer constructive decolonial and feminist critiques to foster their productive alliances with multiple feminisms, Indigenous, post-development and pluriversal thought and design (...

By: Karl Frost

Abstract: Environmental Injustice has been intrinsic to Canadian extractivism, with First Nations displaced from their traditional territories and their cultural identity suppressed through an explicit policy of cultural genocide to make way for colonial extractivist practices. Likewise, this extractivism has long been legitimized in Canada through a rhetoric of economic growth. This paper pre...

By: Neera M. Singh

Abstract: Struggles for Environmental Justice, more widespread in the global South, are often framed as traditional societies defending “old ways of life”; while degrowth, a relatively new movement in the global North is seen as striving for a “new ways of life.” I argue that both assert or aspire for other ways of being and belonging to the world and open possibilities for post-capitalist fut...

By: Emanuele Leonardi

The article aims at showing the relevance of understanding the transformations of class composition for strengthening the connection between degrowth and environmental justice (EJ). In particular, I suggest the heterodox line of Autonomist Marxism as enabling factor of such connection. From an ecological perspective, the changing components of the working-class can be grasped by assessing the h...