Degrowth, green growth, and climate justice for Africa

Summary

The article examines the debate between degrowth and green growth in the context of climate justice for Africa. It argues that while degrowth focuses on reducing economic activities to achieve sustainability, this approach may not suit African nations, where economic growth is essential for poverty reduction and building climate resilience. The article highlights that while degrowth is popular in certain academic circles, it may overlook the realities of impoverished regions that need growth to address inequality and vulnerability to climate change. Instead, sustainable and equitable growth is proposed as a more viable path for Africa’s development and climate justice.

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Introduction

International climate justice entails ensuring that countries least accountable for climate change but most susceptible to its effects do not endure a disproportionate amount of its consequences. It is also about ensuring that the countries and other entities (like companies) most responsible for the emissions that cause climate change are held accountable for their actions. As a continent that contributes little to climate change but suffers a great deal from its impact, Africa has led the call for climate justice in international climate change agreements. However, despite numerous proclamations and initiatives, a substantial equity gap remains, and climate justice continues to be a major issue of controversy in international climate diplomacy.

Both green growth and degrowth seek reductions in the use of natural resources and a shift away from the reliance on fossil fuels, and both seek to promote equity, justice, and alternative forms of production and consumption. However, there are also important differences. While the concept of green growth is based on the idea that economic growth can be decoupled from environmental degradation, degrowth expressly seeks to shrink the size of the global economy by reducing consumption and production.

The author is concerned with whether the moral imperative for international climate justice for poor countries around the world (and especially in Africa) is better served by a global economic paradigm of degrowth or green growth. His position is that while certain degrowth ideals and policy recommendations accord with those of international climate justice, there exist notable tensions, not least the need for large-scale economic growth that is required to lift millions in Africa out of poverty. Thus, he contends that ‘strong green growth’ with its emphasis on greening innovation and investment, and ‘improved human well-being and social equity’, in the context of international cooperation provides a more promising and feasible foundation for the pursuit of climate justice in Africa and the Global South.

Background – Climate justice for Africa

Sub-Saharan Africa currently contributes less than 5 per cent of global emissions, but its people have long been on the front lines of climate impacts. 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.

Yet the need to achieve global climate goals implies that Africa would have to address its energy poverty challenges in a climate-constrained space. 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. 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.

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. It is based on the idea that the current economic system is unsustainable and that radical reduction in production and consumption is urgently required. 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. However with a few notable exceptions, international climate justice has not been of central concern to degrowth scholars. The assumption seems to be that inequality will be addressed, and the cause of justice somehow automatically served by the reduction of metabolic flows and by transitioning to smaller economies that emphasise local production and consumption.

There are fundamental challenges in using degrowth as a basis to seek climate justice for Africa and other poor countries of the world. First, African countries need more and not less growth to be able to improve well-being and increase their adaptive capacities to climate change. Most rich countries have achieved their current high levels of resilience and adaptive capacities to climate change through large-scale growth. For example, while the Netherlands and Bangladesh have very similar geography, the Netherlands has managed to achieve resilience to flooding through extensive and expensive irrigation and flood defence systems, while poorer Bangladesh remains one of the hotspots of climate vulnerability in the world.

The literature clearly shows that economic growth is a necessary although not sufficient condition for poverty alleviation. In general, degrowth scholars have tended to under-appreciate the role that economic growth has played in providing rich countries with the infrastructure and quality of life that they tend to take for granted. Degrowth movements sometimes seem to assume that equity and justice within and between countries will be met if the economy is smaller and if local production and consumption is widely embraced. My contention is simply that such approaches alone will not be sufficient to deliver the large-scale innovation and growth needed to lift millions in Africa out of poverty. While reducing the size of the global economy might be necessary to combat climate change, achieving climate justice for Africa requires more growth in Africa and positive affirmative measures from the international community.

Additionally it is possible to imagine that injustice and poverty in poor countries may increase if rich countries embrace degrowth as the main focus of policy to address climate change, as such an approach will likely shift attention to the global management of recession and not to redistribution of resources. Recent events during the Covid-19 pandemic provide an indication of what might happen to Africa under a degrowth scenario. During the pandemic, rich countries hoarded Covid-19 vaccines, introduced discriminatory travel bans on Africa, and doled out trillions to cushion their citizens from the economic impact of lockdown measures. Meanwhile, in Africa, unemployment surged, with some projections indicating up to 30 million jobs could have been lost and between 28 to 49 million people pushed into extreme poverty. Climate vulnerabilities also increased as available resources for fighting climate change decreased. This suggests global degrowth would likely lead rich countries to turn inwards, protecting their own citizens and leaving poor countries to suffer from the resulting economic stagnation. Degrowth scholarship currently lacks a detailed account of how quality of life will be maintained alongside policies to facilitate international climate justice in a degrowth world.

Green growth and climate justice for Africa

The concept of green growth is based on the idea that economic growth can be maintained in an environmentally sustainable way. The central idea is that economic growth can be decoupled from environmental degradation using technological innovation, green investment, the correction of market failures, green polices, and different ways of organising social production and exchange. Green growth was explicitly advanced as a basis for climate justice for poor countries as far back as 2008 in the wake of the global economic crisis. Scholars have identified various versions of the green economy and how these relate to international environmental justice.

The first is the ‘Thin Green Economy’ version, which accepts that greening the economy is a useful corrective so that government and businesses can address the negative environmental impacts of industrial activity but rejects the suggestion that this warrants the fundamental restructuring of the global economic system. The second is the ‘Moderate Green’ version, which acknowledges that a purely market-based capitalist economy will not deliver sustainability but retains faith in the ability of reformed liberal economic philosophy and international institutions to deliver on global sustainability. The third is the ‘Thick Green’ version, which acknowledges hard biophysical limits to growth, rejects economic growth as a policy imperative, and insists on wholesale transformation of the global economic system as imperative to the attainment of sustainability. My conception of ‘strong’ green growth overlaps with the moderate and thick versions. It takes seriously the notion of planetary boundaries, incorporates green innovation and participatory democracy, and centres international justice and fairness as vital for achieving global sustainability.

Many who criticise green growth as ecological modernisation or a veneer for ‘greenwash’ often do so by conveniently aiming their attack on the ‘Thin’ version of green growth. However, several COP decisions reaffirm that green growth is indispensable to sustainable development and that incentives are required to support the development of such strategies in developing countries. In effect, green growth has been accepted as offering a new hope for continued growth in the South while also serving as a soft alternative to hard-quantified greenhouse gas emission reduction targets for developing countries. Under a shared responsibility concept, developed countries are expected to provide financial and technical incentives to developing countries to motivate them to pursue low-carbon development pathways (e.g. the Green Climate Fund and the Adaptation Fund).

Green growth has therefore emerged as key to reconciling aspirations for economic development, technological diffusion, and the imperative for carbon reduction necessary to meet global climate goals. However, while several North–South climate justices initiatives have been advanced under the green growth banner, it must be admitted that they have yet to deliver real justice for Africa. For example, of the USD 177 billion required by African governments to implement the climate action contained in their Nationally Determined Contribution, they receive only 31 billion annually. Similarly, the international climate regime has not delivered capacity-building or technology transfer to anywhere near the extent expected by Africa and other developing countries. Figures released by the International Energy Agency (IEA) indicate that of the USD 2.7 trillion investment towards renewable energy generation globally, only 2 per cent has gone to Africa. This is despite the fact that the continent has big advantages when it comes to renewable energy generation – ranging from solar and hydroelectricity through wind and geothermal energy.

There is the question about whether it is indeed technically feasible to decouple economic growth from environmental degradation. These challenges partly explain why some say that green growth is a ruse for ‘greenwashing’ and the continuation of liberal capitalist economic policies that produce environmental degradation and inequality. However, I am not sure such arguments provide enough basis to abandon green growth and embrace degrowth. First, ‘greenwashing’ is not so much a problem inherently tied to green growth as a normative concept. It is about countries and organisations lacking integrity and not keeping their promises, and this is not a problem that will disappear if nations switch to degrowth. Second, it cannot yet be scientifically concluded that green growth cannot deliver decoupling. Although current research has shown that the rate and scale of decoupling needed to make growth green is huge and daunting, there is no guarantee that it can never be achieved with future leaps in technological advancement. Third, given the urgency of climate change and the need for poverty alleviation, it seems more practicable to work with existing international institutions and structures already committed to green growth than to devote effort to promote degrowth which may lead to economic stagnation and poverty without any guarantee of securing justice for poor countries. However, none of this should be interpreted as an unqualified argument that green growth will deliver justice for poor countries. What can be said is that the prospect of achieving some form of international climate justice for Africa would seem more likely in the context of green growth than degrowth. 

Conclusion: Post-growth, climate justice, and the international order

Green growth and degrowth both have the potential to challenge the prevailing inequitable international system and contribute to international climate justice. I have argued, however, that there are serious tensions between degrowth and international climate justice such that degrowth actually threatens North–South climate justice.

Degrowth does not specify how quality of life in impoverished African nations in dire need of economic development will be maintained in a degrowth world. While many acknowledge that degrowth strategies are primarily aimed at the Global North and support the need to create ecological and conceptual space for the Global South to chart Its own course, they also generally downplay the potential negative impact of degrowth in rich countries on poor countries. There is also an under-appreciation of the role of economic growth in providing the infrastructure required to increase well-being and achieve large-scale poverty alleviation, and negative cognitive associations for degrowth for many, including academics and policymakers in the South.

But it must be emphasised that, to the extent that they are focused on decoupling and metabolic flows, neither degrowth nor green growth will deliver justice for the poor countries of the world. Dominant green growth and degrowth discourses are focused on environmental sustainability and do not sufficiently emphasise North–South social justice. Without attention to justice, both risk ‘green colonialism’ and more climate injustice against Africa.

To address the multiple dimensions of inequality between wealthy and poor countries, fundamental reforms of the asymmetrical global economic structures and the active pursuit of policies to promote redistribution and restitution are essential. While the difficulties in reforming an international system largely driven by power and national economic interests are obvious, one should also reject the more extreme notion that moral norms of equity and justice have no place in global politics. Global collaboration for climate action and green growth has already resulted in several far-reaching international climate justice declarations, norms, and actions, even if they fall short of genuine climate justice for Africa. Degrowth contributes to conversation about global climate justice. However, the interconnectedness of the global economy, the negative imagery associated with degrowth, the need for large-scale growth in Africa to address widespread poverty, and the Herculean challenges of navigating degrowth polices and politics in the current international system all make ‘strong’ green growth a more viable basis on which to advocate for more climate justice for Africa.

Suggested Citation

Okereke, C. (2024). Degrowth, green growth, and climate justice for Africa. Review of International Studies, [online] pp.1–11. doi:https://doi.org/10.1017/s026021052400024x (Open Access)

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