POLITICAL ECOLOGY FORUM
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An account of the PhD course Political Ecology of Scarcity, Limits and Degrowth

By Noé Mendoza, PhD candidate at Noragric, NMBU

On the morning of 7 June 2022, Thor Larsen’s Loft slowly reached full capacity after a long pandemic period of empty rooms. About 25 PhD candidates from multiple nationalities and diverse academic backgrounds took seat around the long rectangular table in the 3rd floor of Tivoli building. They were about to embark in three days of lectures, group work and a final day of seminar as part of the PhD course Political Ecology of Scarcity, Limits and Degrowth. The seed of the course was planted back in 2018 at the Political Ecology Network conference in Oslo. Back then, Paul Robbins delivered a keynote where he called upon a dialogue between Degrowth and Socialist Ecomodernism. Robbins argued that Political Ecology should remain ambivalent about both positions. He pointed that the increasing scarcity of labor and a growing availability of energy are more important trends to focus on than an outdated discussion about tipping points and global limits. His remarks were countered by discussant Erik Gómez-Baggethun and also stirred up comments from attendees of the conference.

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POLLEN conference in Oslo. 2018

A couple of years later, throughout 2020 and 2021, a virtual debate coordinated by Tor A. Benjaminsen took place in the journal Political Geography. Multiple academics problematized the concepts of limits and scarcity framed under broader discussions of power, coloniality and feminisms. Such intellectual context charged the expectations and aims of the attendees that met in Tivoli building on 7 June. The PhD course invited lecturers that work with different perspectives on technology, energy, and the environment. They pushed forward the original debate between Robbins and Gómez-Baggethun amidst an increasingly urgent climate and environmental crisis.

Erik Gómez-Baggethun (Professor, NMBU) opened the course problematizing how limits have been gradually reframed, from their foundational conception as physical barriers to growth to an increasingly vague and abstract idea devoid of material content. He made the case that critical environmental politics should acknowledge the political dimensions of limits, while also recognizing material constraints as a rationale for economic and political transformations.

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Erik Gómez-Baggethun imparting his lecture "The eternal return of limits: From limits to growth to degrowth"

Thereafter, Giacomo D’Alisa (Post-doc, University of Coimbra) deconstructed the common senses of capitalist liberal economies without limits. He presented William Kapp’s work on cost-shifting success as an alternative to strengthen a different ecological economist narrative.

Paul Robbins (Dean, Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison) ended the first day with an online lecture arguing that to reiterate global physical limits as the core of politics is unproductive for an academic debate. He pointed out that Degrowth and technology (or anti-technology) are linked but in ways that haven't been picked apart especially well. He vowed to incorporate a discussion of uneven development under the frameworks of anti-imperialism and antipatriarchy to achieve a productive debate.

The second day of the course opened with Connor Cavanagh (Associate Professor, UiB) revisiting the ‘land rush’ dynamics that occurred in the first two decades of the twenty-first century. He stressed that this phenomenon is emerging again in the context of a manifold crisis constituted by the COVID-19 pandemic, Russia’s war in Ukraine, incipient deglobalization, and environmental change. Cavanagh focused on how complex interrelations between these crises are increasing food prices to historically high levels in the context of mounting socio-ecological pressures to remain within planetary boundaries.

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Cavanagh imparting his lecture “Grabbing within limits? Lessons from the global land rush for emergent landscape sustainability transformations”

The next lecture by Chris Sandbrook (Senior Lecturer, University of Cambridge) explored the links between current attempts to increase the proportion of conserved areas on a global scale and wider dimensions of debates on scarcity, limits and growth. He critically approached the question of whether there are spatial limits to the impact people can have on biodiversity, perspectives on the role of local and indigenous peoples in area-based conservation, and the values held by conservationists themselves.

The last lecture of 8 June was delivered by Nitin Rai (independent researcher, India). He argued that current economic growth trajectories need to pay greater attention to the uneven development in the Global South resulting from colonial and capitalist appropriation. He presented the case of India as a dual economy partitioned by a colonial inheritance between modern and traditional sectors. He showed how the Indian case questions Robbins assumption of a global scarcity of labor and some of Degrowth’s guidelines as India’s aspirations of increasing incomes and freedoms seem to demand greater per capita carbonization.

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Nitin Rai imparting his lecture "Spatializing the political ecologies of the future: a southern perspective"

The last day kicked-off with COVID-19 and related symptoms present among some of the lecturers of the course. Therefore, the course shifted to hybrid mode with an online lecture by Tor A. Benjaminsen (Professor, NMBU) who argued that scale, combined with differences in production logic are underexplored dimensions in the debate about environmental limits. Using examples of pastoralism in Tanzania and Norway, he pointed out the importance of distinguishing between the capitalistic and 'peasant' logics of production.

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Tor A. Benjaminsen imparting his lecture "Towards a political ecology of limits, scale and logic of production"

The day continued with Lyla Mehta (Professor, University of Sussex and NMBU) examining how scarcity has emerged as an all-pervasive discourse in scientific and policy circles. With a critical eye, she pointed out how scarcity has emerged as a political strategy for powerful groups, who continuously reproduce problematic ideas of nature and society. She invited the students to dig deeper into culture, history, coloniality and intersectionality as dimensions that are fundamental to challenge dominant framings of scarcity and limits.

Finally, Mariel Aguilar-Støen (Professor, UiO) critically analyzed the not so evident entanglements between finance capital, meat production, viruses, and domestic and wild animals. Her critical approach revealed the dynamics and histories of various meat-virus supply chains as they pose limits to aspirations of endless growth and techno-optimism.

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Mariel Aguilar-Støen imparting her lecture "Producing meat, producing diseases: the limits of the hyper-industrialized animal factory"

During the three days of lectures the students had the opportunity to share and discuss course essays that they prepared beforehand. The topics were as varied as the academic and cultural diversity of the course. It was a unique opportunity for them to receive constructive feedback from fellow PhD candidates and senior researchers.

The course ended on Friday 10 June in Oslo’s Litteraturhuset with the seminar Limits to Growth +50: Can Economies Keep Growing Indefinitely in a Finite Planet? The keynote speech by one of the original authors of the Limits to Growth report, Professor Jørgen Randers, and a rich panel of discussants offered an opportunity for the students to engage more closely with the heated and enduring debates that the idea of limits has generated among academics and policy makers.

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Some of the PhD students that attended the course on the stage of Litteraturhuset after the seminar

The PhD course may have closed the initial debate between Paul Robbins and Erik Gómez-Baggethun, but it opened new questions and topics to explore. Moreover, it planted new seeds of potential collaborations between researchers and students who intensely interacted throughout the course in the search of new academic and policy paradigms.