From sustainability to degrowth: confronting neoliberal logic in the ecological-digital twin transition

Abstract

This article revisits Bruno Latour’s call for a ‘new climate regime’ to critique the dominant frameworks that have shaped responses to climate change since the 1970s. Sustainable development has been largely co-opted to sustain economic growth; environmental justice has raised crucial questions of equity but remains constrained by neoliberal paradigms; and digitalization, often promoted as a green solution, deepens extractivist and energy-intensive dynamics rather than transforming them. Together, these approaches obscure the ontological and political shifts required to face what Latour describes as the “new instability of nature”. Drawing on decolonial and post-development perspectives, the article argues for a paradigm that moves from systems of production toward systems of generation, foregrounding relational, locally embedded, and pluriversal practices. Only by embracing such an earthbound praxis – attentive to interdependence and shared responsibility among humans and more-than-human agent – can climate governance escape the illusions of green growth and address the roots of ecological breakdown.