Thread by @jasonhickel

I'm excited to share this new short article, on the anti-colonial politics of degrowth and its synergies with social movements in the global South. sciencedirect.com/science/articl…

"In terms of both emissions and resource use, the global ecological crisis is playing out along colonial lines. This is often framed as a problem of ecological debt, but this language – while useful – hardly captures the violence at stake."

"Just as Northern growth is colonial in character, so too green growth visions tend to presuppose the perpetuation of colonial arrangements... This is not an acceptable future, and is incompatible with socialist values."

"Degrowth calls explicitly for an end to the colonial patterns of appropriation that underpin Northern growth, to release the South from the grip of extractivism and a future of catastrophic climate breakdown. Degrowth is, in other words, a demand for decolonization."

"These demands have a long history in anti-colonial thought... and they align strongly with those of social movements in the global South. The Cochabamba statement articulated degrowth demands from the South well before the concept gained traction in the North."

"Degrowth is part of the broader ecosocialist movement. What it adds is that growth in high-income nations is not required to achieve a flourishing society. What is required is justice. Recognizing this is part of building class consciousness against the ideology of capital."

"What is the point of a progressive politics in the North that is not aligned with the struggle for decolonization in the South? Ecosocialism without anti-imperialism is not an ecosocialism worth having."