{"id":32918,"date":"2023-06-28T09:04:48","date_gmt":"2023-06-28T08:04:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/themint.kinsta.cloud\/?p=32918"},"modified":"2026-01-28T10:26:13","modified_gmt":"2026-01-28T10:26:13","slug":"beyond-the-pale","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.themintmagazine.com\/beyond-the-pale\/","title":{"rendered":"Beyond the pale?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lebohang Liepollo Pheko talks to The Mint about the Brussels\u2019 beyond-growth moment, the politics it sidestepped, and why \u201cdecolonise the climate\u201d says what it means.<\/em><\/p>\n

When Lebohang Liepollo Pheko walked into a flagship \u201cbeyond growth\u201d gathering in the heart of European governance, she didn\u2019t arrive starry-eyed. She arrived wary.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought it was going to be one of these quite academic, inward-looking\u2026 post-growth, de-growth sorts of festivals,\u201d she says, and she expected it to be \u201cEurocentric, Euro-centred\u201d with little space for outward-looking debate. Her expectations, she adds, were \u201cmodest, very modest\u201d\u2014and the event met them.<\/p>\n

That line\u2014it met my low expectations<\/em>\u2014isn\u2019t a throwaway complaint. It\u2019s a diagnosis of a political problem that goes beyond one conference agenda. For Pheko, the danger is not simply that European institutions are late to the party. It\u2019s that they can host an apparently radical conversation while scrubbing out the uncomfortable parts: history, culpability, and power.<\/p>\n

A \u201cfamily meeting\u201d that won\u2019t look outside<\/strong><\/p>\n

Pheko describes the atmosphere as alienating in a specific way: like being invited to a \u201cEuropean family meeting\u201d while the neighbourhood burns. At the end, she says she framed it like this: \u201cIt\u2019s a family meeting of people who don\u2019t seem to understand that the neighbourhood is in crisis\u2014and that that neighbourhood is in crisis because of them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her critique lands on two linked failures.<\/p>\n

First, tokenism. The programme offered limited space for perspectives from the majority world, and she notes the optics of flying in a small number of \u201cglobal south\u201d voices for a single panel. Even if no one explicitly calls you a token, she argues, the structure can still be<\/em> tokenising: the appearance of inclusion without the redistribution of agenda-setting power.<\/p>\n

Second, insularity. The \u201cBrussels bubble,\u201d as she calls it, can become self-congratulatory: Europe sorting itself out, applauding itself for being brave, while treating the rest of the world as a backdrop rather than a co-author. But Brussels decisions don\u2019t stay in Brussels. Trade rules, debt negotiations, carbon accounting, and development finance don\u2019t function like domestic policy seminars\u2014they function as levers of global power.<\/p>\n

Her point is blunt: if you claim to be rethinking the economy but refuse to recognise Europe as one community among many<\/em>, you are not rethinking enough.<\/p>\n

The missing centre: coloniality and the climate \u201corigin story\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

The sharpest part of Pheko\u2019s argument is about what today\u2019s beyond-growth discourse often leaves out: the origin story.<\/p>\n

She worries that parts of the de-growth movement have \u201cde-politicised and de-centred\u201d the fact that today\u2019s global economy and climate crisis emerged from a specific history\u2014centuries of extraction tied to \u201cthe colonial imperial complex.\u201d The planet, she says, didn\u2019t just \u201cwarm up spontaneously.\u201d<\/p>\n

This matters because naming the origin story changes what solutions are even thinkable. If climate breakdown is treated as an accidental overshoot\u2014an unfortunate technical glitch\u2014then the \u201cfix\u201d can be framed as efficiency, innovation, and a better dashboard. But if climate breakdown is understood as the continuation of extraction, dispossession, and uneven power, then the remedy starts to look like reparations, restitution, and structural change\u2014economic and political, not just technological.<\/p>\n

She credits a handful of speakers\u2014Vandana Shiva, Jason Hickel, Raj Patel\u2014for making those connections more explicitly. But she refuses the idea that a few radical voices \u201ccleanse\u201d an institution of its responsibility. A conference cannot outsource its conscience to the keynote slot.<\/p>\n

\u201cPost-growth\u201d and \u201cde-growth\u201d: useful, but also fluff<\/strong><\/p>\n

Ask Pheko whether the labels themselves help\u2014post-growth, de-growth\u2014and you don\u2019t get a branding exercise. You get impatience.<\/p>\n

She is not a proponent of either. They can have \u201clevels of utility,\u201d she says, and also \u201clevels of fluffiness.\u201d The risk is that they become polite umbrellas under which power remains comfortably unnamed.<\/p>\n

Her alternative is instructive because it\u2019s not an abstract noun. It\u2019s a demand.<\/p>\n

\u201cDecolonize the climate,\u201d she suggests. \u201cHow\u2019s that for a banner to get behind?\u201d<\/p>\n

Why that phrase? Because it forces three truths into the open at once:<\/p>\n