Climate Change, Economics, and the Global South: A Case of a Triplet Crisis

Ying Chen () and Yannis Bougiatiotis ()
Additional contact information
Ying Chen: The New School for Social Research, Department of Economics
Yannis Bougiatiotis: The New School for Social Research, Department of Economics

A chapter in Decarbonising and Decolonising Economics, 2026, pp 33-55 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract The acute climate crisis, the failure of the Economics’ discipline to analyze and respond to the climate emergency, and the complex environmental and developmental challenges of the Global South constitute an interconnected triplet crisis. This chapter critically explores a wide set of contending discourses such as neoclassical Environmental Economics, Ecological Economics, Post-Growth, De-Growth Approaches as well as Marxist and Post-Colonial/Post-Development frameworks. This exploration underscores the methodological flaws as well as the North-Centric approach of the dominant neoclassical approach which has led to the exacerbation of the climate crisis and the under-recognition of the crisis of the Global South. While critical perspectives, such as Ecological Economics, Post-growth and De-growth, constitute responses to the analytical crisis of mainstream economics, they often offer a vague analysis of capitalism’s role in driving the climate crisis and overlook the complex challenges of the Global South under the hierarchical global divisions of economic and political power. By recognizing these limitations, the chapter contends that the interconnectedness of the triplet crisis is best understood by the frameworks of ecological colonialism and ecological imperialism. Despite their analytical differences, both frameworks provide crucial insights neglected by both mainstream economics and many of its critics and constitute a solid initial step for the decarbonization and decolonization of the economics discipline.

Keywords: Ecological colonialism; Ecological imperialism; Climate change; Economic theoretical frameworks (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-3-032-11972-8_3

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/9783032119728

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-032-11972-8_3

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Springer Books from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().