Only for the Global North? Questioning the ‘who should degrow’ issue
Gabriela Cabaña Alvear, Vandana OP
Abstract
Global South colonialism energy hydrogenThe idea of degrowth, while critiquing the dominant ideas of economic growth, also proposes an alternative paradigm to organize society and the economy while prioritizing nature and care.One of the major streams of thought that contributed to the emergence of degrowth is the criticism of development that originated in the 1970s and 1980s (Demaria et al., 2013).Despite this, engaging with degrowth from Global South contexts becomes challenging.The political and economic elites in most developing nations often assume that degrowth is a proposal for the Global North (Dengler & Seebacher, 2019).This happens even though degrowth scholars often state the implications of degrowth in terms of 'creating ecological space' for Southern economies to improve people's lives in alternative ways (Hickel 2020;Kallis et al., 2015;Martínez-Alier, 2012).What ramifications does such a superficial reading have for the dominant development discourse and associated political debates in the Global South?We suggest that an argument that degrowth is only relevant for certain nation-states and not elsewhere will lead to digression from the transformative outlook of degrowth.