Rethinking resource scarcity: towards ecofeminist decolonial degrowth

This article critically examines the concept of resource scarcity within the context of capitalist accumulation and colonial legacies. Employing an ecofeminist approach, it challenges dominant narratives of scarcity that obscure systemic processes of resource deprivation in the global South and care economies. The analysis reveals how the rhetoric of scarcity serves capitalist interests and perpetuates colonial exploitation, leading to unequal resource allocation between productive and reproductive economies, and between the global North and South. Drawing on ecofeminist theory, enriched by decolonial and Marxist critiques, this article argues that resource scarcity is not merely relative within planetary boundaries, but fundamentally a consequence of capitalist modes of production and colonial exploitation of women, racialised populations, and the more-than-human world. Scarcity is artificially manufactured through processes of overaccumulation, overdevelopment, and corporate violence. The article advocates for an ecofeminist decolonial degrowth political economy as a form of climate reparation. This approach explicitly aims to expand the care economy, challenging the growth paradigm and redistributing resources between production and reproduction, and between North and South. It envisions the development of plural, interdependent economies that resist capitalist domination and pave the way for post-capitalist modes of living that prioritise human flourishing and ecological sustainability.