Dr Katharina Richter

A green mirage: how the hydrogen industry fuels environmental injustice in Antofagasta, northern Chile Decarbonisation plans in Europe are causing social and environmental disasters in Chile. In this article, Gabriela Cabaña explores resistance to green hydrogen projects in Antofagasta.

Great piece on the perils of green hydrogen mega-projects in Chile by @gcabana.bsky.social:

"there is no such thing as “empty land” that can innocuously be made into a “battery” for sustaining people half a world away."

degrowth.info/en/blog/a-gr...

#EnergyTransitions #GreenExtractivism

Title: Reasons to be Cheerful? Prospects for Climate Change Policy after the Year of Elections. Part I. Abstract: In February 2025, the Political Studies Association (PSA) Environment Group and the PSA Elections, Public Opinion and Parties Group (EPOP) co-organised a one-day academic workshop on elections and climate change. The final panel was titled ‘Reasons to be Cheerful’. In this first of a series of guest posts, panellist Dr Katharina Richter shares her reflections on the theme.

New guest post from Katharina Richter / @drkatrichter.bsky.social, responding to the prompt: Reasons to be Cheerful?

"The wider point about hope, however, is that it is not something we ‘have’ or ‘don’t have’...

environmentalpoliticsjournal.net/events/reaso...

This flyer gives the title of our workshop at the Bristol Festival of Commoning: Organising for degrowth - how to improve wellbeing whilst reducing production and consumption, and time and place of the talk: Saturday, 22nd March, 12.45pm in Bristol at the Trinity Centre

Come join us tomorrow at the Trinity Centre in #Bristol for a workshop on Organising for #degrowth: How to improve wellbeing whilst reducing consumption and production

With @j-ainsworth.bsky.social from Degrowth London and part of the Bristol Festival of Commoning

@cabot-institute.bsky.social

Billions risked on 'unproven' green tech, MPs warn The Public Accounts Committee warns the government of gambling public money on carbon capture.

As @doctorvive.bsky.social points out in her book, the CCS industry is a remarkable shape shifter.

It is simultaneously both:

An incipient invention in need of major state support & subsidies; &

A tried & tested technology that can be relied on to deliver net-zero

Billions risked on 'unproven' green tech, MPs warn The Public Accounts Committee warns the government of gambling public money on carbon capture.

'The govt is committing billions of pounds to an "unproven" green [?] technology for reducing planet-warming gases without considering the impact on consumers' bills... #CarbonCapture, Utilisation and Storage...facilities...nearly £22bn...'
Btw it doesn't reduce gases.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Home - Flotilla4Change Flotilla 4 Change A sailing flotilla from Europe to Brazil in autumn 2025 to take part in COP30 Whether you are an elected member of government, an NGO delegate, or a front-line activist, you are very...

Interested in sailing? Want to help the environment? Want to attend COP30 without flying (@flightfreeuk.bsky.social)? Consider joining or supporting www.flotilla4change.org, who are organising a sailing flotilla from Europe to Brazil in October 2025
Webinars: www.eventbrite.com/cc/f4c-webin...?

Thanks Annie 🙌 we need it all, don't we - policy change, institutional change, systemic change but also cultural change to underpin and sustain these.

Thanks so much @annieleymarie.bsky.social for engaging with my work - I've written about these ideas more accessibly here :)

enough.scot/why-we-need-...

#geosky

Cosmological limits to growth, affective abundance, and Rights of Nature: Insights from Buen Vivir/sumak kawsay for the cultural politics of degrowth This article creates an inter-epistemic dialogue between degrowth and Buen Vivir/sumak kawsay based on qualitative research conducted in Ecuador. It b…

The article is free to read and available here: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Rojava: Women Restoring the Environment After the Devastation of War — FiLiA Agricultural engineer Berivan Omar writes about how women in Rojava, NE Syria are developing ecological initiatives to tackle climate change and restore life to a place devastated by war.

We need to theorise and envision cultural change at scale and pace - and perhaps look to #Rojava for inspiration #DAANES

#DefendRojava

@defendrojava.bsky.social

filia.org.uk/latest-news/...

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In legal frameworks dominated by Cartesian nature/culture divides, #RightsofNature may impute relational ontologies

RoN can thereby create cultural change towards recognising nature as a living being, legal person and political agent. As such, they should be part of #degrowth policy proposals.

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Screenshots of the following papers: Muraca, B. (2013). Décroissance: A Project for a Radical Transformation of Society. Environmental Values, 22(2), 147-169. https://doi.org/10.3197/096327113X13581561725112 Panos Petridis: Strategies for purposive degrowth transformations, contribution to the special session „Strategies for purposive degrowth transformations “ at the 5th International Degrowth Conference in Budapest in 2016. Available at https://degrowth.info/es/library/strategies-for-purposive-degrowth-transformations

#RightsofNature can impute relational worldviews, while of course they're embedded within liberal rights discourses & colonial categories of property and separation.

I argue that RoN are ‘non-reformist reforms’ drawing on work by Andre Gorz, Barbara Muraca & Panos Petridis.

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Image of a hummingbird

I suggest that in practice, cosmological limits can be enshrined through granting legal personhood to nature.

#RightsofNature can open up new ways of perceiving nature in places in which it is normally considered a resource, or source of leisure and respite.

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Wassailing │ Twelfth Night traditions Find out about the Twelfth Night tradition of wassailing, a pagan Christmas tradition that involves singing, dancing and drinking cider from a wassail cup.

These constraints arise out of reciprocal relationships between humans & nature. Re-articulating cosmological limits to growth would re-cast humans as part of the living world. It could mean practicing context-dependent, locally relevant human-nature solidarity + reciprocity
tinyurl.com/ykkv93j2
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An screenshot excerpt from my open-access paper, which can be found here https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800924003392?via%3Dihub

I analyse the reciprocal practices, behaviours & rituals I observed and participated in during my doctoral research, and argue that a political ontology of relationality sets cosmological limits to growth, that is, normative constraints to the destruction of the living world

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These arguments emerge from an inter-epistemic dialogue between degrowth and Buen Vivir/sumak kawsay, an Andean-Amazonian conceptualisation of Good Living – an introduction to which can be found here:

journals.warwick.ac.uk/index.php/al...

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In it, I argue that cultural change is an integral part of sustainability transformations.

I suggest specific cultural and political tools towards non-anthropocentric & de-individualised sustainability visions.

This is building on lots of previous good work on cultural politics / degrowth.

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A screenshot of the journal article, published in Ecological Economics and titled Cosmological limits to growth, affective abundance, and Rights of Nature: Insights from Buen Vivir/sumak kawsay for the cultural politics of degrowth

New open-access, peer-reviewed paper! This has been in the making for many years, coming out of my PhD. I’m very pleased it’s found a home in Ecological Economics.

‼️If you’re reading this, I also want you to find out more about and #DefendRojava 🌱

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

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Cosmological limits to growth, affective abundance, and Rights of Nature: Insights from Buen Vivir/sumak kawsay for the cultural politics of degrowth This article creates an inter-epistemic dialogue between degrowth and Buen Vivir/sumak kawsay based on qualitative research conducted in Ecuador. It b…

Excellent article by @drkatrichter.bsky.social, going beyond the anthropocentrism of much #degrowth research & defining 'cosmological limits to growth'
@ecodenker.bsky.social @jasonhickel.bsky.social @kateraworth.bsky.social
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Thanks Willy!