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Paper short abstract

Degrowth is often framed as a just sustainability strategy, yet it remains anthropocentric. Without posthuman and decolonial justice it risks reproducing socio-ecological exploitation. Integrating Indigenous knowledges and more-than-human perspectives is essential for resilient degrowth transitions.

Paper long abstract

Amid accelerating ecological breakdown and deepening socio-economic inequalities, degrowth has gained traction as a framework for rethinking well-being within planetary boundaries. Yet dominant degrowth debates remain largely anthropocentric, centering human welfare and, to some extent, obscuring the exploitation of more-than-human actors. We argue that this “weak” form of degrowth reproduces structural injustices embedded in contemporary green transition regimes and risks a cyclical “yo-yo effect” – returning to extractive relations.

This paper advances a justice-oriented reconceptualization of degrowth informed by posthuman and decolonial STS perspectives. We develop a framework of “strong degrowth” that foregrounds more-than-human agency, epistemic plurality, and power redistribution as constitutive – rather than supplementary – elements of socio-ecological transformations.

To operationalize this approach, we outline three interrelated strategies: (1) a stepwise expansion of more-than-human inclusion and emancipation within co-governance and inclusive organizational practices; (2) decolonial value-flows that enable reciprocal engagement between Indigenous and local epistemologies and Western posthumanist theory, resisting extractive forms of knowledge translation; and (3) the socialization of posthumanism, rendering its conceptual commitments actionable within participatory and deliberative arenas.

Drawing on examples of posthumanistic management and organizational experimentation, we show how posthuman values can be materially embedded in decision-making arrangements that move beyond stakeholder consultation toward co-production and co-governance. We conclude that neither degrowth nor posthumanism alone can deliver just transitions. Their integration is necessary to reframe resilience as a justice-based project attentive to historic inequalities, marginalized voices, and more-than-human futures.