Joan Martinez-Alier Summer School Env Justice ICTA UAB 2012 The alliance between the Environmental Justice movements of the South, and the small Degrowth movement in the North

1. Joan Martinez-Alier
Summer School Env Justice ICTA UAB 2012
The alliance between the
Environmental Justice
movements of the South,
and the small Degrowth
movement in the North

2. Social Metabolism
• Energy cannot be recycled, therefore even an
economy that would not grow but that would
use large amounts of fossil fuels, would need
“fresh” supplies coming from the commodity
frontiers.
• The same applies to materials, which in
practice are recycled only to some extent
(like copper, aluminium, steel or paper).
• When the economy grows, the search for
materials and energy sources is of course
even greater.

3. Social Metabolism
There is “accumulation by dispossession” (Harvey,
2003) or Raubwirtschaft (as geographers called it
100 years ago, e.g. Jean Brunhes),
and there is “accumulation through contamination”,
meaning that profits increase by the ability to
dispose of the “effluents of affluence” and other
waste (such as CO2) at zero or low cost.
This does not indicate so much a market failure as a
(provisional) cost-shifting success

4. The potential alliance of southern EJOs with
the Degrowth movement in the North
Common perspective against the hegemony
of economic accounting in favour of
pluralism of values,
defence of human rights, indigenous
territorial rights, and the Rights of Nature,
feminist Neo-Malthusianism,
recognition of environmental liabilities and
the climate debt, the critique of ecologically
unequal exchange because the export trade
in commodities goes together with socio-
environmental damage.

5. TRENDS: loss of biodiversity
• 20 years after the 1992 UN Rio de Janeiro
conference 1992, the EU and UN objective of
halting the loss of biodiversity by the year
2010 has not been achieved and it has been
ditched in practice.
• The HANPP (human appropriation of net
primary production) puts increasing pressure
on biodiversity. (Tree plantations, agro-fuels,
feedstuffs for cattle and pigs, land
grabbing…).

6. UN rhetoric
• In Rio 1992, “sustainable development”
• In Rio + 20, in 2012, “green economy”
improved human well-being and social equity,
while reducing environmental risks and scarcities
• In Rio + 40 in 2032, “sustainable economy”?
• In Rio + 60 in 2052, “green development”?
• Meanwhile …

7. Growing
Metabolismo
Metabolism
creciente
and
Flujo de
appropriation
materiales
of biomass

8. TRENDS
• Biodiversity loss is sometimes seen as a market
failure to be corrected by suitable pricing. At
other times bad governance, unsuitable
institutions, and neoliberal policies are blamed.
• However, the main underlying cause of the loss
of biodiversity is the increased social
metabolism of the human economy.
• This would be similar under Keynesian social-
democratic policies, or indeed under communist
economic systems, if the technologies and levels
of population and per capita consumption were
as those of today.

9. TRENDS: increased concentration of
carbon dioxide in the atmosphere
• Until 2007 emissions of CO2 were increasing
by 3% per year. After a halt in 2008-09, they
are now bound to increase again unless
there is economic degrowth. They should
decrease as soon as possible by 50%
according to the IPCC.
• To the failure of the Kyoto agreement of 1997
(not ratified by the USA) was added the lack
of agreement on emission reductions in
Copenhagen in December 2009, in Cancun in
2010, in Durban in 2011 at the COP
(conference of polluters).

10. TRENDS
• CO2 concentration was about 300 ppm when
Arrhenius (1895) wrote about the enhanced
greenhouse effect; it is now reaching 400 ppm.
The yearly increase is 2 ppm. Little is done in
practice to reverse this trend.
• Most CO2 emissions by the economy are from
burning fossil fuels. Peak oil in the Hubbert curve
is now near. Natural (and shale?) gas peak
extraction perhaps in thirty-forty years.
• This means more burning of coal although the
production of CO2 per unit of energy from coal is
larger than for oil and gas.

11. TRENDS: towards degrowth in rich
economics leading to a steady state?
Taking into account other trends like the drop in
the availability of many edible species of fish, the
spread of nuclear energy and its military
proliferation, and the approaching “peak
phosphorous”,
it is time to go back to the debates of the
1970s on the desirability of a steady-state
economy in rich countries, and indeed of a
period of degrowth (décroissance,
decrescita) in terms of the use of energy and
materials in the economy.

12. Debates of the 1970s on GDP,
stationary state, degrowth
• People refer to Stiglitz/Sen in 2009 as
intellectual forces behind the critique of
GDP. Travesty of facts.
• From the 1970s, Georgescu-Roegen,
Roefie Hueting, Herman Daly… already
did this (and battled Stiglitz and Solow).
And Sicco Mansholt.
• And André Gorz, Ivan Ilich… or feminist
ecological economists like Marilyn
Waring’s Counting for nothing (1988).

13. Peak population: love one another
more, and do not multiply so much
• One welcome trend is the rapid decrease in
the rate of growth of the human population.
• Peak population, probably at 8.5 billion in
2045. Then, some degrowth.
• The debates between Malthusians and
Marxists, and between Malthusians and
economists who favour population growth,
are still relevant today as also the doctrines
of feminist Neo-Malthusians of 1880-1920.

14. Feminist Neo-Malthusianism of 1900

15. One favourable trend
• Time for acknowledging Neo-
Malthusianism of the radical, feminist
type of 1880-1920 (Emma Goldmann,
Madeleine Pelletier, Maria Lacerda de
Moura).
• Depopulation studies, as a growing
academic subject.

16. Malthusianism of T.R. Malthus (1798)
Population undergoes exponential growth
unless checked by war and pestilence, or by
chastity and late marriages. Food grows less
than proportionately to the labour input,
because of decreasing returns. Hence,
subsistence crises.
To improve the situation of the poor was
useless because they immediately have more
children.

17. Varieties of Neo-Malthusianism
• NEO-MALTHUSIANISM OF 1900.- Human populations
could regulate their own growth through contraception.
Women’s freedom was required for this, and desirable
for its own sake. Poverty was explained by social
inequality but “conscious procreation” was needed to
prevent low wages and pressure on natural resources.
This was a successful bottom-up movement in Europe
and America against States and Churches. (In S. India,
E K Ramaswamy, “Periyar”: anti-caste, anti-religious Neo
Malthusian).
• NEO-MALTHUSIANISM AFTER 1970.- A doctrine and
practice sponsored by international organizations and
some governments. Population growth is seen as a main
cause of poverty and environmental degradation.
Therefore States must introduce contraceptive methods,
even without women’s prior consent.

18. THE ENVIRONMENTALISM OF
THE POOR, and the EJOs
• Another welcome trend is the growth of the
environmentalism of the poor and of
indigenous people.
• Activists and communities at the commodity
frontiers are sometimes able together with
EJOs and their netowrks to stop extraction of
minerals and destruction of habitats and
human livelihoods.

19. The environmentalism of the poor
• They exercise the right to previous consent
under Convention 169 of ILO applied to
indigenous communities, or they introduce
institutions such as local referendums on
mining (as in Esquel and Tambogrande)
• or develop new plans for leaving fossil fuels
in the ground as in the Yasuní oilfields in
Ecuador.
• Successful attempts have been made to
bring to court Shell for what it does in the
Niger Delta or Chevron-Texaco for what it did
in Ecuador.
• Women are often in the lead in such
movements.

20. Kalinganagar, Orissa, monument to those killed on
2 Jan.06 defeding their land against TATA
photo 2 Jan 2007: Leah Temper, UAB

21. Texaco – in the northern Amazonia of Ecuador
Texaco (Chevron) extracted 1.500 Milllion barrels of oil
La selva es nuestro hospital …
from 1965 to 1990. To save costs, the company threw the
“extraction water” to ponds that frequently overflow, and which
were not lined to prevent seepage.
Judge Zambrano’s decision of 14 Febr. 2011 quotes Chevron-
Texaco’s sources recognizing over 15 000 million galons.
la selva es nuestro mercado … Gas has been flared, but (different to the Delta of the Niger) this
has not been a matter of controversy in the court case.
Many indigenous groups living in the forest suffered very much:
Cofanes, Secoyas... Two groups (Tetetes i Sansahuari) went
extint.
Settlers were attracted by the roads openened by the oil
la selva es nuestra universidad …
company, they also suffered from pollution. The court case has
been supported by both indigenous and settler populations. One
main leader of the Frente is Luis Yanza, and the local lawyer is
Pablo Fajardo, both from settlers (colonos) families.
Fotos: KS, LS a Oil in Ecuador. A human energy story (H.Quante), www.texacotoxico.org

22. The Chevron-Texaco case in Ecuador,
the Shell case in Nigeria…
• What were the real costs of oil extracted in
Ecuador by Texaco (now Chevron) between
1965 and 1990? What are the real costs of oil
extracted by Shell in the Niger Delta since the
1970s?
• Both companies have offered a few million
dollars from time to time for remediation, but
both are now involved in court cases where the
costs are assessed (by the plaintiffs and/or the
judges) in billions of dollars.

23. The items in the compensation
in the Texaco Chevron case
• USD 600 million for cleaning up groundwaters
• USD 5.396 million to clean up the soils in and around the
wastewater ponds (based on the area in question).
• USD 200 million (10 million per year for 20 years) to
recuperate flora and fauna
• USD 150 million to bring drinkable water into the area.
• USD 1.400 millones for damages which cannot be
repaired such as lost health
• USD 100 million for cultural damages to indigenous
groups and for “ethnic restoration”
• USD 800 million to improve public health in the area.
• Then, 10% on top of the above sums was granted to the
Frente de Defensa de la Amazonia for management
expenditures.

24. A reasonable sentence
• It goes beyond “strict” liability (objective
damage), there is culpability, without any
admittance of guilt by Chevron-Texaco
• There was great environmental and social
damage, incuding irreparable damage. A
relatively small expenditure could have been
done easily to avoid risks.
• A fine of USD 9.5 billion (or double, if the
company did not apologize) is large, it will
make some impact on the company, but it
does not bankrupt the company.

25. Will environmental justice be done?
• I would like environmental justice to be done against
transnational companies in overseas territories, and also
against rich states in the climate justice issue.
• Instead, Lawrence Summers´ principle is applied as a
matter of course to resource extraction or waste
disposal.
• Nevertheless, for the analyst, if justice is not done, this is
also interesting. It supports the idea that the economy
regularly achieves cost-shifting succeses.
• So-called “externalities” should be the main topic of
study for students of economics. What is not counted in
money terms is possibly more important than what is
counted in money terms.

26. Why the increasing number of
ecological distribution conflicts?
• The increased social metabolism causes
resource extraction conficts (fossil fuels,
other minerals, biomass) and also
transport conflict and waste disposal
conflicts.
• The main waste disposal conflict is related
to the excessive amounts of greenhouse
gases. Who is the owner of the
atmosphere and the oceans as dumping
places for carbon dioxide? How to achieve
Climate Justice?

27. Conflicts on resource extraction, on
transport, on waste disposal
• Resource extraction: mining conflicts,
fossil fuels,biomass (paper, biomass for
agrofuels, fisheries…)
• Transport – new roads, etc (e.g. IIRSA in
Latin America and the Brazilian public
works “empreiteiras”)
• Waste disposal, greenhouse gases, also
shipbreaking, e-waste exports… (Basel
treaty)

28. Methods for the study of Social
Metabolism
• Increased Material Flows (in tons)
• Increased energy flows (and decreasing
EROI)
• Increased flows on “virtual water” in
exports of soybeans, ethanol, cellulose…
• Increased HANPP, including the
“embodied HANPP”

29. Political Ecology
• From case-studies we should move to
producing inventories and maps of
ecological distribution conflicts (as J F
Gerber on tree plantation conflicts, in
GEC, 2011), drawing on the activist
knowledge of the EJOs.
• This is what the EJOLT project, 2011-15,
will do, www.ejolt.org

30. Minería de oro: Yanacocha, Perú (foto: BRL, julio 09)

31. REACTIONS & PROPOSALS
• In Peru, e.g., new environmental justice
organizations (CONACAMI), new
movements like Tierra y Libertad (Land
and Freedom) with Marco Arana.
• In Ecuador, a new post-extractivist
proposal (Alberto Acosta), the Yasuni ITT.
• In Latin America, Africa, claims for the
repayment of the Ecological Debt (as in
Copenhagen Dec. 2009).

32. YASUNIZANDO:
The Yasuni ITT proposal
• Ecuador proposed in 2007 to leave oil in the ground
(850 million barrels) in the Yasuni ITT field – to
respect indigenous rights, keep biodiversity, avoid
carbon emissions.
• They ask for partial outside compensation, 3.600 M
US$ – about one half of lost revenues.
• The Trust Fund under UNDP administration was set
up in August 2010. Investments would go for energy
transition and social investments.
• This is an initiative to be imitated. We cannot burn all
the oil, gas and coal in the ground at the presentr
speed because of climate change. How to select the
places where it is best to keep oil, gas or coal in the
ground? Are all values commensurable?

34. The GDP of the Poor
• In the TEEB project (The Economics of
Ecosystems and Biodiversity) 2008-11,
sponsored by UNEP, the idea of the GDP of
the poor was introduced (based on
experience in India).
• People who are poor cannot buy clean water
(when the water is polluted by mining
companies), cannot acquire a new place to
live when they are displaced by a dam. Their
losses are unaccounted for.
• Therefore they complain. This is the
Environmentalism of the poor and the
Indigenous.

35. The Niyamgiri hill in Orissa is
sacred to the Dongria Kondh.
It was threatened by bauxite
mining by the Vedanta
company from London.
We could ask the Dongria
Kondh: How much for your
God? How much for the
services provided by your
God?

36. Niyamgiri sal forest
Photo by Leah Temper, UAB
January 2007

37. Valuation Languages
• Who has the right (or the power) to simplify
complexity and impose one language of
valuation?
• Incommensurability of values against
imposed commensuration, are at the root of
ecological economics (JMA, Ecological
Economics, 1987).
• Going back to the Socialist Calculation
Debate of the 1920s-30: Otto Neurath vs. Von
Mises and Hayek.

38. From activism to public policy and to science: the
Ecological Debt

39. The Climate Debt
• Not only the Climate Justice activists, also
many governments of relatively poor
countries now claim the repayment of the
ecological debt, a slogan first raised in Latin
America among the EJOs in 1991.
• The United States, the European Union and
Japan do not acknowledge this debt.
However, in Copenhagen in December 2009
at least 20 heads of government or ministers
explicitly mentioned the ecological debt (or
climate debt) in their speeches, some using
also the loaded word “reparations”.

40. The Climate Debt
• Pablo Solon, Bolivia’s ambassador to the UN, said
that "admitting responsibility for the climate crisis
without taking necessary actions to address it is like
someone burning your house and then refusing to
pay for it… It is entirely unjustifiable that countries
like Bolivia are now forced to pay for the crisis
• … Our glaciers dwindle, droughts become ever more
common, and water supplies are drying up. Who
should address this? To us it seems only right that
the polluter should pay, and not the poor. We are not
assigning guilt, merely responsibility. As they say in
the US, if you break it, you buy it."

41. The Climate Debt
The background to Solon’s speech was
Todd Stern’s statement (as US negotiator)
at a press conference in Copenhagen on
10th Dec. 2009: "We absolutely recognize
our historic role in putting emissions in the
atmosphere up there… But the sense of
guilt or culpability or reparations - I just
categorically reject that."

42. The Climate Debt: Bhagwati’s
rejoinder
• A rejoinder to this controversy came from an
unexpected author, economist Jagdish Bhagwati
(Financial Times, 22 Febr. 2010).
• Apparently unaware of the activist and academic
debate on the ecological debt since 1991, he wrote
that the U.S. in addressing domestic pollution
created the Superfund legislation in 1980 after the
Love Canal accident that requires hazardous waste
to be eliminated by the offending company.
• “This tort liability is also "strict", such that it exists
even if the material discharged was not known at the
time to be hazardous (as carbon emissions were
until recently). In addition, the people hurt can make
their own tort claims”.

43. The Climate Debt: Bhagwati’s
rejoinder (cont.)
• Rejecting this legal tradition in U.S. domestic
pollution, Todd Stern, the principal U.S. negotiator,
refused to concede any liability for past emissions
(…) Evidently, the U.S. needs to reverse this stand.
Each of the rich countries needs to accept a tort
liability which can be pro rata to the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change-
estimated share of historic world carbon emissions.
• Since the payment would be on the tort principle, the
idea that the funds would substitute for normal aid
would be outrageous: you do not take away the
pension of a person who has won a tort settlement.”

44. Environmental Liabilities
• Ecological Debts = Environmental Liabilities.
• Sometimes liabilities can be translated into a
money payment (compensatory and punitive)
for damages. This is appropriate in a forensic
context (Chevron, Shell).
• Sometimes, it is difficult to put a money
value – present value of damage to future
generations?, to disappearing unknown
species?
• Oil spill by BP in Gulf of Mexico, red mud
spill in Hungary, TEPCOS’s liabilities after
Fukushima nuclear disaster…

45. From science to activism: new proposals.
Sustainable peasant agriculture cools down the earth

46. The EROI of agriculture and the Via
Campesina
In the1970s, taking up H. T. Odum’s view of modern
agriculture as “farming with petroleum”, researchers did
accounts of the energetics of agricultural systems.
Pimentel (1973) in Science showed that the energy
output-input ratio of corn production in Iowa or Illinois
was lower than that for the old milpa corn production
system of rural Mexico.
From an economic point of view, modern agriculture
increased productivity per unit of labour and to
some extent per hectare but from a physical point of
view, it lowered the energy efficiency.

47. L’agricultura contadina rinfresca la
terra
• Via Campesina, a peasant and small farmer
international coalition is now very much
present in the climate change debate,
• its thesis: “sustainable peasant agriculture
cools down the earth”
• an argument partly based on the fact that
modern industrial agriculture is “no longer a
producer of energy but a consumer of
energy”. Studies on the EROI of agriculture
(the energy return on energy input) since the
1970s back up this position.

48. Some final comments on the
Alliance between the EJOs
(enviromental justice
organizations) and the small
Degrowth movement in the
North

49. 1st International Conference on Degrowth,
Paris, April 2008
(http://www.degrowth.net/)

50. Publication from Paris April 2008 conference
Special Issue, Journal of Cleaner Production (a journal of
industrial ecology) 2010
Crisis or Opportunity? Economic Degrowth for Social Equity and
Ecological Sustainability
Edited by F. Schneider, G. Kallis, J. Martinez-Alier
• Editorial - Serge Latouche
• Why environmental sustainability can most probably not be attained
with growing production, Roefie Hueting
• Energy transition towards economic and environmental
sustainability: feasible paths and policy implications, Simone
D’Alessandro Tommaso Luzzati Mario Morroni
• Relax about GDP growth: implications for climate and crisis, Jeroen
van den Bergh
• Impact caps: why population, affluence and technology strategies
should be abandoned, Blake Alcott…
• 12 articles and book reviews (incl. Tim Jackson, Peter Victor…)

51. Finances and (De)-Growth
• The economy has three levels (F. Soddy,
1926), the financial, the “productive”, and the
ecological.
• Debts increase exponentially, they can be
paid only by economic growth (or by
inflation, and by squeezing the debtors).
• However, economic growth of the productive
economy depends largely on the available
energy and materials. “The entropy law and
the economic process”, Georgescu-Roegen
(1971).

52. www.degrowth.eu
• Degrowth conference in Barcelona 26-29 March
2010 (500 activists and academics).
• From activism to a research programme on
the environmental, technological,
demographic, social, socio-psychological
aspects of “socially sustainable economic
degrowth leading to a steady-state
economy”. This largely overlaps with
research on “socio-ecological transitions”
• Special issues in Ecological Economics, Futures,
Journal of Cleaner Production…

53. Not all debts will be paid
• As we move into degrowth and then a
steady state, not all debts will be paid.
• Stupid excessive alarm about the end of
the EU (which is needed to stop
nationalisms is Europe). What is the
problem with a re-structuring of the debt in
Greece, Portugal…(I wrote two years
ago)? No problem.

54. The Southern EJOs’ potential alliance with
the small Degrowth movement in the North
• Economic growth cannot be stopped in the South.
• The alliance shares a common perspective
against the hegemony of economic
accounting in favour of pluralism of values,
support for bottom up feminist neo-
Malthusianism, defence of human rights,
indigenous territorial rights, and the Rights
of Nature, the recognition of environmental
liabilities and the climate debt,
• and the critique of ecologically unequal
exchange because the export trade in
commodities goes together with socio-
environmental damage.

55. Final thought: Degrowth in
London
• In Jan. 2010 there was a small conference in
on Degrowth (Décroissance) organized by
Hali Healy and the NEF in The Hub, London.
• A man from Oxfam blogged that Degrowth
was continental nonsense. We need to open
borders to exports from the South, he said.
He didn’t grasp the concepts of ecologically
unequal trade and ecological debt.
• Oxfam is an admirable organization. But we
call this attitude (Alf Hornborg’s term) “The
White Consumers’ Burden”.

56. Appendix
A comment on Tim Jackson’s
Prosperity without Growth
and its similarities and differences with
Degrowth

57. Coincidences and differences
with Tim Jackson’s Prosperity
without Growth
• Stop growth in rich countries. Degrowth in energy
and materials (and CO2 emissions) as a step
towards Daly’s “steady state”.
• Because of trend to increase labour productivity,
non-growth means increase in unemployment. For
TJ this is very important.
• For TJ – promote “Cinderella” (or News from
Nowhere) sector with low productivity but
satisfactory and useful work. Make ecological
investments of low profitability but labour intensive.
• For Degrowth, main policy: Basic Citizens’ Income.
• For both, Work Sharing is recommended.

58. TJ vs Degrowth
• TJ: impossibility of growth by showing the
implausible increase in carbon efficiency that
would be required. He also mentions
rebound effect. He does no emphasize
biodiversity loss.
• TJ acknowledges H. Daly but not NGR’s
Démain la Décroissance (1979).
• TJ almost unaware of K. Polanyi, A.Gorz, I.
Illich, M.Mauss,M. Sahlins, S. Latouche… i.e.
cultural critique from economic anthropology
against the generalized market system.

59. T.J. unaware of critiques of
development
• From the 1970s, critiques by Arturo Escobar,
Shiv Visvanathan, Ashish Nandy, Gustavo
Esteva… Development means a uniform
path. Serge Latouche belongs to this current.
• Now, new voices in the South – Alberto
Acosta, Eduardo Gudynas, “Buen Vivir”.
• This parallels but it is different (and older)
that the discussion on Easterlin paradox, the
Kahneman critiques…

60. TJ vs Degrowth
• TJ does not discuss Democracy and the Steady
State. He writes for economists. GDP is silly and
wrong, better use other indicators. This is agreed.
• Then, for instance, we see that Cuba does better
than expected by its GDP per capita with regard to
infant mortality. USA does worse.
• But no statistics on Cuban “life satisfaction” or
“happiness”. Why? Is the Cuban economy
desirable?
• Instead, there is a lively discussion on Democracy /
Autonomy in the Degrowth movement. TJ does not
quote Castoriadis.

61. TJ vs Degrowth
• TJ writes that “Degrowth is unstable”. This has been
quoted with relish by the partisans of a “green
economy” (which is the UNEP Rio+20 reincarnation
of “sustainable development”).
• TJ means that Degrowth leads to unemployment,
therefore lack of effective demand, more
unemployment, state expenditures for the
unemployed, fiscal crisis of the state…
• We know all this. Nobody is preaching Degrowth for
ever. False debate between Degrowth and Steady
State (going back to NGR excessive strictures
against Hermand Daly).

62. TJ vs Degrowth: ecological macroeconomics
and defaulting (to some extent) the debt
• TJ is better than the Degrowth literature in his
discussion of debt and money (although he does not
quote F. Soddy). He is very innovative (with Peter
Victor) in his post-Keynesian ecological
macroeconomics without growth.
• The Degrowth literature does not really engage with
macroeconomics (beyond criticism of GDP).
• However, TJ is politically careful: a) TJ is afraid to
call for debt default or restructuring (cf. with
Latouche’s advice to his Greek friends), b) he does
not explain how an economy without a positive profit
rate, a positive interest rate, and discounting, would
work, and if it woud still be a capitalist economy.

63. TJ vs Degrowth: money
• TJ talks about the money system (incuding
Daly’s proposal of 100% reserve system
for banks) but he does not take a cklear
position himself. For instance, banking as
a regulated public service.
• The Degrowth literature is very keen on
alternative local money systems, on barter
systems, but they do not really discuss
money is a world of interconnected states.

64. TJ and Degrowth:migration
• NGR had a clear position on migration. It was a
human right to live wherever you wanted to live.
• TJ and the Degrowth movt. are not so outspoken. TJ
does not mention migration. The Degrowth literature
says nothing. And Herman Daly is against migration
from South to North (this is linked to the Democracy
and Degrowth / Steady State discussion, because
allowing people to die in large quantities by
preventing migration is not democratic).
• One way out is to assume that a steady state or
degrowing economy in the North would indeed leave
more room for economic growth in the South and
therefore would level our the enormous economic
differences that exist at present.

65. TJ and Degrowth: on international
trade and Ecological Debt
TJ looks at flows of materials and energy, showing
how the rich areas depends on cheap imports. Also,
carbon intensity of exports from EU is larger than
carbon intensity of imports.
• Neither TJ nor Degrowth emphasize the movements
of the South demanding environmental justice,
complaining against ecologically unequal trade.
• TJ mentions “ecological debt” but prefers not to
frighten his readers, and he does not explain the
activist and scholarly debates on the Ecological Debt
(since 1991). But Latouche is not very good on this,
either.

66. TJ vs Degrowth: on population
• On population, TJ is perhaps too pessimistic –
probably “peak population” reached in 2045 at 8.5
billion . This is good for the Steady State.
• The Degrowth literature is not comfortable when
discussion population. They do not want to be seen
as “Malthusian”.
• Instead, both TJ and Degrowth should build on F.
d’Eaubonne’s ecofeminism, and on the radical, Neo-
Malthusian feminism of 1900 (Emma Goldman,
Madeleine Pelletier, Maria Lacerda de Moura).(In
India, E.K. Ramaswamy, “Periyar”).