Africa currently contributes less than 5 per cent of global emissions, but its people have long been on the front lines of climate impacts.Footnote 13 With a per capita carbon emission of 0.12, it will take an average Rwandese 129 years to emit the same quantity of carbon as an average American (with CO2 emissions per capita of 15.52)Footnote 14 in one year. It is predicted that by 2050 as many as 105 million people in Africa could migrate internally due to worsening climate impacts.Footnote 15
Climate-induced migration is already a major factor contributing to violent conflict in various parts of Africa, where herders regularly clash with farmers over access to water and pasture. About 70 per cent of the African population is not connected to the electricity grid, and nearly 90 per cent of rural dwellers have to cook with firewood and animal dung.Footnote 16 Yet the need to achieve global climate goals implies that Africa would have to address its energy poverty challenges in a climate-constrained space. In Sub Saharan Africa (SSA), 4 out of every 10 people live on less than 1.9 United States dollars a day, and the number of people living in extreme poverty has increased between 2010 and 2020, with climate change arguably contributing.The climate change situation mirrors other dimensions of environmental and economic inequality. People in rich countries consume up to 10 times more natural resources than those in the poorest countries.Footnote 18 On average, an inhabitant of North America consumes around 90 kg of resources each day, while in Africa each person consumes only around 10 kg per day.Footnote 19 Despite over three decades of fighting hunger, about 200 million African children are suffering malnutrition (a number projected to rise to 433 million by 2030).Footnote 20 Yet the United Kingdom throws away 9.5 million tonnes of food waste in a single year.Footnote 21 As this issue’s editors point out in the introduction, the crucial question for international politics in the last two decades has been less about resource scarcity and more about how to ensure fair distribution of and equitable access to goods and services. This is the context for considering which of degrowth and green growth provides a more promising basis for advancing climate justice goals for Africa and, indeed, other poor developing countries.
Degrowth and international climate justice
Degrowth is an economic and social movement that seeks to reduce the size of the global economy and promote a more sustainable way of life.Footnote 22 It is based on the idea of strong biophysical limits, that the current economic system is unsustainable and that radical reduction in production and consumption is urgently required (see Lorenzo Fioramonti, ‘Post-growth theories in a global world: A comparative analysis’, this issue). While their critique of the prevailing capitalist economic system is centred on its promotion of widescale environment destruction, many degrowth scholars also highlight the impact of neoliberal economic doctrine in promoting global inequalities and stress the need for environmental justice within and between countries.Footnote 23 It has therefore been suggested that degrowth is consistent with, and even necessary to, achieving international environmental and climate justice.Footnote 24
Akbulut et al.Footnote 25 have advanced several theses on the relationship between degrowth and environmental justice which are applicable to climate justice. First, they note that both movements are concerned with reducing of the size of the global economy by downscaling production and consumption to reach a smaller social metabolism, but also with non-materialist concerns such as human rights, cultural aesthetics, democracy, autonomy, and equity, all of which they argue have been severely compromised under the current dominant paradigm of neoliberal global economic growth. They note that both the degrowth and environmental justice movements are concerned not only with the size of the global economy but also with the specific political economy and power configurations that produce and govern it. It is suggested that a smaller ‘socio-metabolic configuration’ – a term used to cover both the biophysical and politico-institutional dimensions of the economic structure – is vital for achieving sustainability and justice. Identifying the current scale of environmental destruction as a product of global capitalist economy and associated institutions, degrowth scholars are dismissive of the promise of green technological innovation to improve the livelihood and well-being of local people in poor countries, insisting that the focus should rather be on highlighting the scale of dispossession, the web of exploitation, and the supply-chain violence associated with the social modernism of low carbon infrastructure.Footnote 26 See also Miriam Lang, ‘Degrowth, global asymmetries and ecosocial justice: Decolonial perspectives from Latin America’ in this issue. As Singh puts it, both environmental justice and degrowth ‘promote “other-than-capitalist” ways of being and strive to redefine life.The climate change situation mirrors other dimensions of environmental and economic inequality. People in rich countries consume up to 10 times more natural resources than those in the poorest countries.Footnote 18 On average, an inhabitant of North America consumes around 90 kg of resources each day, while in Africa each person consumes only around 10 kg per day.Footnote 19 Despite over three decades of fighting hunger, about 200 million African children are suffering malnutrition (a number projected to rise to 433 million by 2030).Footnote 20 Yet the United Kingdom throws away 9.5 million tonnes of food waste in a single year.Footnote 21 As this issue’s editors point out in the introduction, the crucial question for international politics in the last two decades has been less about resource scarcity and more about how to ensure fair distribution of and equitable access to goods and services. This is the context for considering which of degrowth and green growth provides a more promising basis for advancing climate justice goals for Africa and, indeed, other poor developing countries.
Degrowth and international climate justice
Degrowth is an economic and social movement that seeks to reduce the size of the global economy and promote a more sustainable way of life.Footnote 22 It is based on the idea of strong biophysical limits, that the current economic system is unsustainable and that radical reduction in production and consumption is urgently required (see Lorenzo Fioramonti, ‘Post-growth theories in a global world: A comparative analysis’, this issue). While their critique of the prevailing capitalist economic system is centred on its promotion of widescale environment destruction, many degrowth scholars also highlight the impact of neoliberal economic doctrine in promoting global inequalities and stress the need for environmental justice within and between countries .
It has therefore been suggested that degrowth is consistent with, and even necessary to, achieving international environmental and climate justice.Footnote 24
Akbulut et al.Footnote 25 have advanced several theses on the relationship between degrowth and environmental justice which are applicable to climate justice. First, they note that both movements are concerned with reducing of the size of the global economy by downscaling production and consumption to reach a smaller social metabolism, but also with non-materialist concerns such as human rights, cultural aesthetics, democracy, autonomy, and equity, all of which they argue have been severely compromised under the current dominant paradigm of neoliberal global economic growth. They note that both the degrowth and environmental justice movements are concerned not only with the size of the global economy but also with the specific political economy and power configurations that produce and govern it. It is suggested that a smaller ‘socio-metabolic configuration’ – a term used to cover both the biophysical and politico-institutional dimensions of the economic structure – is vital for achieving sustainability and justice. Identifying the current scale of environmental destruction as a product of global capitalist economy and associated institutions, degrowth scholars are dismissive of the promise of green technological innovation to improve the livelihood and well-being of local people in poor countries, insisting that the focus should rather be on highlighting the scale of dispossession, the web of exploitation, and the supply-chain violence associated with the social modernism of low carbon infrastructure.Footnote 26 See also Miriam Lang, ‘Degrowth, global asymmetries and ecosocial justice: Decolonial perspectives from Latin America’ in this issue. As Singh puts it, both environmental justice and degrowth ‘promote “other-than-capitalist” ways of being and strive to redefine life’.
