In this paper I argue that focusing on work time reduction as a shared interest between global North and global South socio-environmental movements would contribute to increase sympathy for degrowth in the global South. In order to achieve that, the first challenge is to coherently incorporate work time reduction in the South into the degrowth framework. Currently in academic literature, most of the calls for work time reduction in a degrowth context focus on the global North and disregard the global South. As an attempt to contribute to this matter, I explore some of the limits and premises of different positions found in the academic literature about work time reduction from a degrowth perspective, point to some contradictions and sketch some recommendations on how to overcome them.

The transition from fossil-based to decarbonized energy systems lies in the core of most of the climate change mitigation strategies and narratives. Recent research on green extractivism, the material requirements of the energy transition and the political ecology of climate change mitigation show that the transition planned under green capitalism has little to do with closing global inequality gaps. The necessary renewable energy infrastructure requires non-renewable materials to be mined mostly in peripheral countries, which will bear the social-environmental costs of extractivism for the “green” transition, and transfer to core countries strategical resources labelled as “critical”. A transition under these terms reproduces colonial patterns of unequal exchange and furthers dependency in peripheral nations. Therefore, social-environmental movements (e.g.: degrowth) face the challenge of conciliating calls for climate change mitigation and global justice. This working paper explores how progressive organizations engaged with climate politics articulate criticism to colonialism and imperialism in their claims, tactics, and coalitions choices. We present a preliminary analysis of documental material and interviews conducted with members of a range of organizations based in Sao Paulo (Brazil) and Vienna (Austria). The comparative analysis allows us examine propositions about differences between movements based in urban capitals in core and peripheral countries.

This chapter aims to introduce and contextualize the current debate on degrowth, its main concepts and influences. The notion of degrowth, debated by social movements and academics in Europe since the mid-1970s, has gained new strength since the 2000s, driven by the economic crisis and the dissemination of the English term "degrowth" in academic literature. Degrowth points out the problems arising from the growth-development binomial as a global socioeconomic imperative and breaks with the dominant conciliatory environmental discourse of ‘‘green growth’’. In order to meet the proposed objectives, a scope review on degrowth is presented, aiming to obtain indications about the potential and limits of the literature available in English. We chose to organize the results in two main lines of thought that make up the argument for degrowth: the biophysical critique on the scale of the economy and the cultural critique to (sustainable) development and the utilitarian imaginary. In the end, a research agenda is suggested to include peripheral countries in this debate.

This paper proposes a conceptual framework to analyze the political economy of energy transitions in the context of Green New Deals (GND) and global justice. In the core of GND proposals lies the transition from fossil-based to decarbonized energy systems in core countries as a solution to climate change. However, a transition in these terms aggravates perverse trends of globalization: the reproduction of global patterns of unequal exchange and further dependency and violation of sovereignty of peripheral nations. Renewable energy infrastructure requires non-renewable raw materials to be mined mostly in peripheral countries, which will bear the social-environmental costs of extractivism for the “green” transition. This is not a dilemma for imperialist states and corporations; however, social movements and organizations face the contradiction of addressing climate change while remaining committed to their claims for global justice. Some propose a “GND without growth” for Europe, which does not fully solve the problem of “colonialism without growth”. Recent considerations put the colonial/imperial question on the table, but a blueprint for an energy transition without colonialism is still to be offered. Aiming to advance a conceptual framework for a GND that takes a radical approach to international solidarity, this work draws elements from three strands of research: the critique of imperialism, world-system approaches to ecologically unequal exchange and degrowth.