Presentation short abstract

Putting degrowth into conversation with delinking and ecofeminism, we articulate a framework for examining how North–South relations can be transformed from destructive dependencies towards care-based interdependencies. This framework is then drawn on to analyse specific cases of plastics and gold.

Presentation long abstract

Research on degrowth has burgeoned in the last fifteen years but one of the greatest challenges is

its relevance for and potential to build fruitful alliances with the Global South. Articulations of

degrowth as an alternative are often associated with nourishing autonomous grassroots initiatives,

relocalising economies, as well as transforming institutions and policies in the Global North.

However, this would not in itself bring the much-needed fundamental change of North–South

power relations and risks reproducing destructive dependencies in the global economy. Engaging

with this tension, this article addresses the following question: how to foster a transformation of

relations between the Global North and the Global South from destructive dependencies towards

care-based interdependencies? Bringing degrowth into conversation with delinking and

ecofeminism, we conceptualise the notion of caring interdependencies. This informs our analytical

framework for thinking about how to delink destructive dependencies and build caring

interdependencies for particular sectors or commodities. This framework is drawn on to analyse

concrete cases of plastics and gold, identifying directions for fostering caring interdependencies.

Overall, the article contributes to thinking about North-South relations in degrowth research, one

that can go beyond symbolic alliances and point out spaces for meaningful action for North-based

actors.

Presentation short abstract

We analyse how unequal exchange shapes geopolitical barriers to securing decent living standards for all within ecological limits, and identify leverage points for just post-growth transitions.

Presentation long abstract

Many people around the world still lack the resources needed for a dignified life, while affluent societies consume far more than their fair share, pushing the planet beyond safe ecological limits. This contribution examines the geopolitical dimensions of post-growth eco-social transitions by bringing together three perspectives: decent living standards, planetary boundaries, and ecological unequal exchange.

Our starting point is that global patterns of trade and resource extraction, which sustain capitalist economic systems, systematically channel environmental pressures and material benefits in opposite directions. These dynamics allow high consumption in wealthy regions while limiting access to essential services elsewhere, making it impossible to secure decent living standards for all within ecological limits.

We draw on ongoing modelling work on gaps in decent living standards, safe and just Earth system boundaries, and unequal exchange to show that post-growth transitions must confront the geopolitical structures that reproduce these inequalities.

The paper outlines an emerging framework that links decent living standards, planetary boundaries, and unequal exchange to identify leverage points for action, and to explore how socio-ecological transitions could be shaped to ensure wellbeing for all within the planet’s limits.

Presentation short abstract

This presentation analyses the recent evolution of the conditions that sustain core-periphery relations been evolving to interrogate under which conditions do they offer potential openings for a planetary post-growth transition.

Presentation long abstract

Degrowth is typically framed as a precondition of a fairer geopolitical order. Given the enormous quantity of resources and atmospheric space necessary to maintain perpetual economic growth and the 'imperial mode of living' in the core, abolishing these is necessary to allow countries in the Global South to fulfil their many unmet social needs without driving the planet irreversibly to ecological collapse. Much of the post-growth literature has worked with the implicit assumption, thus, that a more just world would be triggered by degrowth transitions in the rich economies. Nonetheless, given that capitalist growth has historically depended on a geopolitical structure polarised between core and periphery and structured around relations of unequal exchange, it can also be that the dismantling of this architecture in favour of a more egalitarian world order creates further openings for post-growth transitions. And we are indeed seeing significant changes that could point to a multipolar geopolitical order, especially the rise of China and industrialisation more broadly in the South. This essay thus addresses the question: how have the conditions that sustain core-periphery relations been evolving in the unfolding 2020s, and to what extent do these changes offer potential openings for a planetary post-growth transition? To do so, we analyse how this conjuncture differently affects the core, the semi-peripheries, and the periphery, and under which conditions could developments in each of these realms favour broader transitions towards post-growth.

Presentation short abstract

Novel post-growth scenarios are presented based on a matrix and narratives inspired by transformative seeds. Diverse pathways (eco-local, cooperative, tech-leaning, and delinking) are defined within a "post-growth compatible space" to foster the integration of PG futures in modelling studies.

Presentation long abstract

Dominant scenario frameworks for societal futures, such as the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs), remain rooted in a growth-oriented economic paradigm and blind to alternative post-growth (PG) futures. To address this gap, the Post-growth Modelling Community (PGMC) was created to develop PG scenarios that can be used in global assessment reports (e.g. IPCC, IPBES) and inspire scientific research. The PGMC gathers researchers from +25 universities and has developed a conceptual matrix with key PG dimensions and populated by narratives. These are organized along axes including technological change, provisioning systems, international cooperation and (de)militarization. In parallel, “Seeds of transformative change for a post-growth future” were gathered through a form widely shared beyond the academic community. Defined as existing bottom-up transformative initiatives that prefigure just and sufficient futures, the collected seeds (88) are mapped onto the PG narratives to enrich their qualitative features.

The presentation will present the PG scenarios produced by the PGMC, including the conceptual matrix, the four PG narratives and a synthesis of the collected seeds. At the time of writing, a two-axis matrix is used to map four narratives: Eco-localism; One World Sufficiency; PG Green Deal; Sovereign Delinking. The narratives cover different pathways towards successful PG futures, with varying strategies accounting for possible geopolitical developments. Ensuring the feasibility and realism of these narratives is critical to improve the representation of post-growth futures in institutional spheres and scientific processes. By sharing our framework with the political ecology community, we hope to gather feedback to further refine the PG narratives.

Presentation short abstract

Sovereignty keeps reemerging in relation to the socioecological crisis, mobilized differently by actors from the left and the right under a crisis of neoliberal globalization. What are the potential and limitations of sovereignty as a framing concept for socioecological transformations?

Presentation long abstract

The position of the state as the agent most capable of enacting socioecological transformations has been challenged by many in light of failed progress and backtracking on climate commitments. At the same time, many countries in the North and the South have adopted discourses that highlight the importance of state action on matters like energy and food, with a view to guarantying national security and/or sovereignty.

At other scales, a wealth of recent research has looked at socioecological transformation projects at town and regional level. In many cases these have been framed as initiatives for energy or food sovereignty: in different parts of the globe Indigenous communities enact nested sovereignties (Simpson 2014) through cooperative renewable energy projects, and urban communities tackle food poverty with community agroecology.

Whatever scale we look at, the question of sovereignty keeps reemerging in relation to the socioecological crisis, mobilized by actors from the left and the right in starkly different ways in a geopolitical context that sees neoliberal globalization in crisis. From this, two big questions emerge: What are the potential and limitations of sovereignty as a framing concept for socioecological transformations? And how does scale interact with the idea and enactment of sovereignty? This paper explores the potential and limitations of sovereignty as a liberatory concept, drawing on different case studies and offering a theoretical contribution to this increasingly relevant question in socioecological transformation debates.

Presentation short abstract

Militarisation is swamping the EU’s sustainability agenda. Analysing the shift from the REPower to the ReArm EU, this article shows how Europe is tying itself to the US fossil-fuel regime. Thus, amidst rearmament, low-carbon demilitarisation strategies are problematically sidelined.

Presentation long abstract

Is the thrust for a bold environmental sustainability agenda in the EU being swamped by geopolitical considerations? In the spring of 2025, almost exactly three years after the launch of the REPowerEU, the centrality of the newly paired environmental and energy policy is giving way to rearmament of EU member countries. This article explains the shift from the climate to the military agenda by analysing the turn to the ReArm Europe Plan: ‘a once-in-a-generation surge in European defence investment’. Drawing on global and critical political economy, I use the notion of ‘fossil-fuel regime’ to show how the geopolitics of rearmament are easing the EU’s dependencies on Russia only to tie the continent to another fossil-fuel regime, that of the United States. In the midst of a militarisation craze, alternatives geopolitics based on non-military national security strategies, coupled with a rapid transition to low-carbon energy, are being sidelined. The article therefore concludes with a discussion of the road not taken: multi-level state planning of post-growth demilitarisation.

Presentation short abstract

The contribution critically analyzes decarbonization discourses of three BRICS+ countries: Brazil, China, Saudi-Arabia. It applies the structural limitations of the decarbonization state to evaluate their approaches to social-ecological provisioning, economic planning and geopolitical relations.

Presentation long abstract

This contribution critically analyzes decarbonization discourses of three BRICS+-countries (Brazil, China, Saudi-Arabia) using the theoretical framework of “structural limitations of the decarbonization state” (Brand et al., 2025). The framework combines the avoid-shift-improve (ASI) model with traditional state functions – growth, legitimacy, security – questioning the ability of contemporary state structures to countervail planetary crises.

Saudi-Arabia’s ecomodernist strategy ('decarbonization without defossilization') fuels the global fossil backlash – both materially and discursively – and plans economic diversification through the Public Investment Fund. While practicing strategic “polyalignment” (Alami et al. 2025), especially with China, the strategy aims to delay the end of US fossil hegemony. Brazil is similarly hedging against US demise, e.g. by opening a BYD electric car factory in Bahía. Brazil’s postcolonial discourse refers to common but differentiated responsibilities both globally and domestically – to reduce geographically uneven development between federal states and between Global North and South. China’s discourse centers “ecological civilization”, an ambitious whole-of-society approach to sustainability. China uses its economic planning capacity for “better growth and seeking quality over quantity” (Xinhua, 2024).

While none of the countries can be classified as degrowth-prone transformation states, there are varying degrees of social-ecological provisioning (Dengler and Plank, 2024) within the BRICS+. They converge in their ecomodernist and state capitalist approach (Alami and Dixon 2024), which might spark more extractive and neocolonial violence at resource frontiers. The BRICS+ decarbonization pathways will contribute to geopolitical conflict and planetary overshoot if the Global North remains unwilling to release ecological space through degrowth (Hickel, 2021).

Presentation short abstract

U.S. security aid in Peru is a geopolitical obstacle to post-capitalist transition. This environmentality uses militarization to secure extractive capital, criminalizing Indigenous resistance (like Bagua 2009). The paper aims to show how this security architecture suppresses post-extractivism.

Presentation long abstract

The high rate of violence against environmental activists in the Amazon poses a critical geopolitical obstacle to advancing post-extractivism and other post-capitalist eco-social transitions.

This paper analyzes the crucial role of U.S. security assistance in Peru, arguing that it functions as a contemporary expression of environmentality (Marzec). This security architecture transforms environmental resistance into a policing action, ensuring the continuation of extractive capitalism by suppressing mass-based movements. The process is rooted in historical enclosure, re-manifested today through the securitization of the land, which targets the Indigenous environmental activist as the new "subject to be controlled."

Utilizing the case of Peru—a critical site due to its history of U.S. military aid and flashpoints like the 2009 Bagua massacre—this analysis explains how the U.S.-established security architecture secures the frontier of capital accumulation. The paper moves beyond mere description by systematically tracking the outcomes of this assistance (capital accumulation and repression) over the post-Cold War period using primary data, including ACLED data on conflict.

Ultimately, we demonstrate how this imperial security logic, maintained by the U.S. as the hemispheric hegemon, actively hinders the transition to a non-aligned, post-growth international sphere, thereby shedding light on the geopolitical conditions necessary to institute alternative socio-ecological relations.