Ecological economics and degrowth: Proposing a future research agenda from the margins

Research by ecological economists on degrowth is a flourishing field. Existing research has focused on limits to (green) growth and on economic alternatives for prospering without growth. Future research, we argue here, should pay more attention to, and be written, from the “margins” – that is from the point of view of those marginalized in the growth economy. We conduct a comprehensive systematic review of the prevalent themes in the existing literature on the ecological economics of degrowth, and its engagements with North-South relations and gender issues. The analysis identifies seven research areas where ecological economics can better integrate these matters, namely: the study of post-growth policies for the Global South; the unequal exchanges that sustain an imperial mode of living; the deconstruction of ecological economic concepts that reproduce problematic Western or gendered assumptions; the study of the clash of metabolisms in peripheries of the Global South; the metabolism of care-work in growth economies; the leading role of women in ecological distribution conflicts, and the reproduction of gender inequalities in alternative post-growth spaces. We propose that ecological economics should welcome more contributions from critical feminist scholarship and scholars from the Global South.