Global Ecological Justice

Discussion

Jostein Hauge and Jason Hickel:

"High-income countries – and specifically their investors and firms – are mainly the ones causing ecological breakdown. They are responsible for 74 per cent of global excess resource use and around 90 per cent of global excess carbon emissions (Hickel 2020b, Hickel et al. 2022, Fanning and Hickel 2023). ‘Excess’ is here defined as emissions and resource use that overshoot safe planetary boundaries. By contrast, lower-income countries (lower-middle-income countries and low-income countries) are responsible for less than 1 per cent of global excess resource use and emissions. This latter group of countries make up more than half of the world’s population, meaning that more than 50 per cent of the world’s population is responsible for less than 1 per cent of global excess resource use and emissions.

Clearly, countries in the global North are the ones that need to rapidly reduce their energy and resource use. As such, degrowth does not and should not apply in all parts of the world. In fact, lower-income countries produce and consume too little and need to increase their energy and resource use to meet human needs and achieve economic development objectives. The literature on economic development is unambiguous on this matter: in order to improve living standards and well-being, lower-income countries need to develop their industrial, technological and productive capabilities (Amsden 1992, Chang 1994, Szirmai 2012, Nayyar 2013, Hauge 2023). Although one can debate the degree to which the process of economic development needs to entail growing energy and resource use, the process is currently impossible without increasing energy and resource intensity (Semieniuk 2025). In this sense, global South countries need to have greater ‘ecological policy space’ in their formulation of industrial policy. In other words, countries that bear no responsibility for global ecological breakdown, either historically or at present, should not face the same ecological constraints in their formulation of industrial policy. Put differently, high-income countries need to address their own ecological overshoot before preaching sustainability to lower-income countries.

This does not mean lower-income countries should pursue ‘dirty’ industrial policy rather than green industrial policy in all sectors. As mentioned above, countries are currently competing to develop capabilities in green industries/technologies, including electric vehicles, photovoltaics, and batteries. It would be unwise for countries in the global South to ignore the economic opportunities that the green transition offers. Many countries in the global South are in control of large deposits of minerals and metals required for the renewable energy transition. These countries should look to add value in the manufacturing process rather than only exporting the minerals and metals in raw form (UNCTAD 2023), or at minimum cooperate to ensure that any raw material exports achieve good prices on international markets. There are also many dangers of ignoring or delaying a transition into green technologies. This includes the danger of technological lock-in into carbon intensive sectors, missing out on first-mover advantage into strategic industries, and having to resort to high-cost restructuring measures in the future (Perez 2016, Pegels and Altenburg 2020, Lebdioui 2024).

So, the case for greater ecological policy space for countries in the global South simply means that they should have more leverage and choice in terms of how they formulate their industrial policy. If industrial policy in the global South (both green and non-green) entails an increase in energy and resource use in order to meet human needs, this is acceptable and needn’t pose an ecological problem so long as it is within or near their fair-shares of ecological boundaries. In the global North, by contrast, industrial policy needs to include a degrowth element, as we have described above. On top of this, it is essential that Northern industrial policy incorporates principles of global ecological justice. The green transition will require sourcing critical minerals that are currently located largely in the South. These must be procured on fair terms, in a way that ends unequal exchange, and ensures good labour standards, wages and prices for Southern workers and producers, in line with the ‘Common Framework for Extraction’ as outlined by the Havana Conference of the Progressive International (Progressive International 2024).

Whether countries in the global South pursue ‘traditional’ or ‘green’ industrial policy, many global challenges remain. Most importantly, given that the global North has essentially appropriated the planet’s ecological commons, countries in the global South are not only facing constraints with respect to formulating industrial policy, but they are also disproportionately bearing the costs of climate change. Many researchers are now calling for high-income countries to compensate or to provide reparations to lower-income countries for climate-related damages and appropriation of our ecological commons (Burkett 2009, Perry 2020, Taiwo 2022). With respect to carbon emissions, a recent study calculates that countries in the global North will need to compensate countries in the global South with a total of $192 trillion by 2050 for appropriating their atmospheric fair shares of the Paris-compliant carbon budget and therefore compelling them to decarbonise faster than would otherwise be required (Fanning and Hickel 2023). This is using standard abatement costs as published by the IPCC, assuming an optimistic scenario whereby all countries decarbonise to ‘netzero’ by 2050. The exact numbers can of course be debated, but clearly large transfers are owed for atmospheric appropriation and climate-related damages in the global South.

How do we achieve this kind of global ecological justice? How do we achieve degrowth in the global North, more leverage for industrial policy in the global South, and compensation for atmospheric appropriation? First, the green transition needs to be democratically determined, both within countries and between countries. Given the growing calls for a rapid green transition, states are increasingly out of step with public opinion. A recent survey of more than 80,000 people across forty countries found that 70 per cent of people think that climate change is a very serious problem. Fewer than 3 per cent said that climate change is not serious at all (Newman et al. 2020). Another study by the World Inequality Lab found that strong majorities in Europe and the United States support high-income countries compensating low-income countries for climaterelated damages (Douenne et al. 2023).

The path towards a democratically determined transition is ambitious, but not unrealistic. Greater democratic control over, and public ownership of, capital needs to be achieved (as described above), and corporate money in politics must be curtailed. A first step towards curtailing corporate money in politics is stronger anti-trust legislation, banning political donations from the for-profit private sector, and supporting worker-based ownership structures. On a global scale, global governance structures must be democratised. Currently, countries in the global South have minimal power in shaping the agenda of powerful international organisations like the IMF, the World Bank and the WTO (Gallagher and Kozul-Wright 2022). In addition to giving more power to developing countries within these organisations, we need to support global governance initiatives coming from the global South (more on this below), and create an international order based on the principles of global justice and shared prosperity. Such an order should be founded on the principles of full respect for sovereign equality among states, an equitable multilateral trading system responsive to the demands of the poorest nations, and an international monetary system that does not bestow exorbitant privilege upon a select few members (Progressive International 2024).

Countries in the global South can also do a lot to put pressure on countries in the global North, and are already doing so. For example, 13 nation states in the Pacific, led by Vanuatu and Tuvalu, have signed a fossil-fuel non-proliferation treaty (Fossilfueltreaty 2024). Their motivation for signing this treaty is that the world needs a binding plan to transition away from fossil fuels, especially seeing that the Paris Agreement doesn’t even mention fossil fuels. Countries in the South also have more power to leverage industrial policy when they come together to form trade alliances, rather than being beholden to unfair trade agreements with the North. By now, it has been well-documented that the rules-based system of global governance and international trade established by the global North vastly favours wealthy states and corporations headquartered in those states, at the expense of industrialisation and economic development in the global South (Wade 2003, Shadlen 2005, Gallagher and Kozul Wright 2022, Lebdioui 2024, Stiglitz 2024). It is therefore welcome to see progress in South-South cooperation. The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), signed by Asia-Pacific Nations in 2020, is now the largest trade bloc in history.

The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) is another example, created in 2018 by fifty-four of the fifty-five African Union nations. We are also seeing traditional North–South lending institutions being challenged by new South-South initiatives. The most prominent examples are the New Development Bank, established by the BRICS states, and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, initially linked to China’s Belt and Road Initiative.

The distinction between the global North and the global South is important. But we must also pay attention to national class dynamics. The working classes in the global North have no control over finance and the means of production, no control over energy policy, no control over national legislation, and minimum responsibility for ecological breakdown. Meanwhile there are certain elite class factions in the global South who are aligned with the interests of multinational capital and who hold substantial responsibility for pollution. Mounting evidence suggests that in order to reduce energy and resource use, we need to deal with the global elite, not only by reducing their consumption but also by reducing their power over our collective productive capacities (Barros and Wilk 2021, Cozzi et al. 2023, Khalfan et al. 2023).

Overwhelmingly, it is the world’s wealthiest that are overshooting carbon budgets and surpassing sustainable thresholds of resource use. Recent research shows that millionaires alone are on track to burn 72 per cent of the remaining carbon budget for 1.5 degrees (Gössling and Humpe 2023). In 2019, the total carbon emissions from the richest 1 per cent in the world were the same as the total carbon emissions of the poorest 66 per cent in the world, the latter being more than 5 billion people (Khalfan et al. 2023). In 2022, the average private jet emissions from the most jetsetting celebrities exceeded 3,000 metric tons (Yard 2022). This is about 500 times higher than the average person’s total emissions in a year. This is before accounting for the energy and resource use that goes into producing private jets. Industrial policy has an important role to play here, especially in terms of directing production away from producing items that only or primarily cater to the rich."

(https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/13563467.2025.2506655)