ABSTRACT
This chapter in the Routledge Handbook of Degrowth (2025) seeks to bring together two important movements: the broad assemblage termed the degrowth movement and the mobilisation of the Global South in the decolonial and postcolonial era, via the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) and demands in the 1970s for a New International Economic Order (NIEO). The NAM and the NIEO have parallel geopolitical concerns with, and offer real lessons for, degrowth. A renewed commitment to multilateralism, non-alignment and a new global economic and social order connects to a degrowth agenda inspired by decolonisation and sceptical of achieving degrowth within a capitalocentric frame. The chapter analyses NAM’s origins and development in the 1960s and 1970s, especially its role in articulating a NIEO and the shift in focus this represented from questions of security and disarmament to questions of economic justice. The global articulation of environmental concerns in this period and (lack of) connection with the concerns of NAM, the NIEO and the Global South more generally are considered. Finally, the chapter assesses linkages that NAM subsequently made between decolonisation and sustainable development, and discusses the limits and possibilities of the articulation of a variegated non-aligned degrowth perspective today.
