Katharina Richter: Degrowth - A strategy to decolonise decarbonisation

Time: 6-8pm, Thursday, 27 November 2025​

Venue: Watson LT, Medawar, UCL

Low-carbon energy transitions are driving a global race for clean energy. Wind turbines, battery factories, EVs, solar panels and other green energy technologies require a wider range of minerals and critical raw materials compared to fossil fuels (IEA, 2021). These so-called critical raw materials (CRM) are strategically important given low substitutability and high geopolitical supply-chain vulnerabilities (Breton, 2022). However, CRM demand is creating new forms of extractivism: high volumes of resource extraction for international export with minimal processing and high environmental impact, mainly in Latin America and Africa (Gudynas, 2015, pp. 11–14). Extractivism also re-orders non-Anthropocentric, relational worldviews and renders Indigenous and other peripheral territories and bodies expendable for the sake of economic growth (Dunlap et al., 2024). In a context of green extractivism-driven decarbonisation, calls from the Global South for the Global North to reduce resource consumption are becoming more prominent (Cabaña and Richter, 2026). Degrowth advocates for a democratic reduction of socio-ecologically harmful consumption and production to increase human wellbeing, redistribute resources and ease ecological pressures to meet human needs in developing countries (Richter; 2025; Hickel, 2021; Schneider et al., 2010). This talk will bring together findings from two research projects in Ecuador and Colombia to consider the role of degrowth as a viable strategy for decolonising decarbonisation, and highlight ways in which communities build alternatives to (green) growth and corporate-led energy transitions.

Dr Katharina Richter

Dr Katharina Richter is Lecturer in Climate Change Politics at the University of Bristol researching sustainability transformations. Her work explores sufficiency-based, postgrowth approaches to climate change mitigation, Indigenous alternatives to development with regional expertise in Latin America, and the environmental justice aspects of the Global North’s decarbonisation strategies. Katharina has chaired the Development Geographies Research Group at the Royal Geographical Society (with Institute of British Geographers) (2022-25) and currently co-leads the Environmental Change Research Theme at the Cabot Institute for the Environment. In her work she regularly engages with policy-makers, including at the UNFCCC and the UK House of Commons ​

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