







































Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal 5 (2): 5-13, July 2022 

COMMENTARY 

Between Growth-fetishism and Green Recovery  

Nilanjan Ghosh 

Abstract: This paper posits that the choices that global economies are faced with 
for post-pandemic development range between the extremes of growth-fetishism 
and green recovery. The paper highlights that green recovery and the green 
transition have different connotations in different parts of the world, leading to a 
huge divergence in their delineations across the Global North and South. The 
paper further argues that models of degrowth, which emphasize contraction of 
economic activities for the cause of nature, cannot be applied in large parts of the 
developing world. The challenge for a developing nation like India is to understand 
how and where it can position itself in this gamut of developmental paradigms that 
range between growth-fetishism and green recovery. The paper proposes that 
Indian green recovery must be based on the Sustainable Development Goals, 
hinging on two key elements: a) simultaneous augmentation of health- and 
education-induced human and physical capital without compromising the 
sustainability of natural capital; and b) reduced wealth, income, and social 
inequalities, thereby serving the cause of distributive justice.  

Keyword: Growth-Fetishism, Green Recovery, Sustainable Development Goals, 
Natural Capital, Human Capital, Degrowth, Global North, Global South, India.  

1. INTRODUCTION 

The insatiable human desire for economic growth in the developing world 
has led to lopsided development. Such blind pursuit of growth, while 
treating it as an omnipotent ideal, has prompted inequality on the one hand 
and the destruction of the natural ecosystem on the other (Hickel 2020). As 
such, the very idea that growth will automatically lead to an enhancement in 
various development parameters is myopic. The reduction of a 
multidimensional phenomenon like development to a numerical measure 

 
 Director, Centre for New Economic Diplomacy, & ORF Kolkata Centre, Observer 
Research Foundation. & President, Indian Society for Ecological Economics (2022-24). 

nilanjanghosh@orfonline.org  

Copyright © Ghosh 2022. Released under Creative Commons Attribution © 

NonCommercial 4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC 4.0) by the author.  

Published by Indian Society for Ecological Economics (INSEE), c/o Institute of  Economic 
Growth, University Enclave, North Campus, Delhi 110007.  

ISSN: 2581–6152 (print); 2581–6101 (web).  

DOI: TBA 

mailto:nilanjanghosh@orfonline.org


Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal [6] 

conceals more than what it reveals: it successfully hides the cost of pursuing 
growth, with scant or almost no acknowledgement of equity and 
sustainability concerns (Meadows et al. 1972; Peet et al. 2011; Dong et al. 
2017). This phenomenon of pursuing a reductionist vision of economic 
growth without acknowledging or recognizing the costs of growth has been 
delineated as growth-fetishism in this essay. 

The larger cost of pursuing this vision of myopic growth is observed with 
global warming and climate change. Conservation NGOs, activists, and 
large components of civil society subscribe to the popular notion that 
climate change is an environmental problem (Rahman 2013). On the 
contrary, the truth remains that climate change is a developmental problem 
emerging from the human penchant for unbridled development, which 
eventually affects various human development parameters through a 
feedback loop emerging from the environment–development interface 
(Munasinghe 2010; Parry 2011). Unfortunately, such costs of growth remain 
unacknowledged in large parts of the developing world, which continue to 
be driven by the reductionist neoclassical economic ‘trickle-down impact’ 
hypothesis. This theory proposes that the trickle-down impacts of growth 
will further equity and distributive justice on one hand (see Fan et al. 2000; 
Ravallion and Datt 2002), and environmental and conservation goals on the 
other, as proposed by the Environmental Kuznets Curve hypothesis 
(Nuroglu and Kunst 2018). 

However, post-pandemic development priorities in the developing world 
have centred on promoting economic growth through large-scale capital 
expenditures on physical infrastructure. Such a phenomenon was prevalent 
even before the pandemic and is now being adopted with greater vigour in 
South Asia, the BRICS (Brazil–Russia–India–China–South Africa) region, 
and Africa (Laurence et al. 2017; Ghosh 2022). For example, the outlay for 
capital expenditure in India’s union budget was increased by 35.4% in 
2022–23. The sharp increases in capex between 2019–20 and 2022–23 is 
reflected in the fact that the present outlay of capex in India (2.9% of the 
GDP) is more than 2.2 times the expenditure in 2019–20 (Government of 
India 2022).  

Incidentally, the net-zero climate commitments of many developing 
economies are contingent upon the energy transition from fossil fuels to 
renewable energy sources. However, the energy transition alone will not 
resolve the problems of climate change. In the course of the unbridled 
penchant for economic growth and urbanization, land-use change from 
forests, grasslands, and coastal ecosystems continue unabated, especially to 
create space for physical infrastructure (Winkler et al. 2021). While doing so, 
there is hardly any recognition that such ecosystems are carbon sinks and 



[7] Nilanjan Ghosh 

have historically played an important role in annual carbon sequestration. 
When ecosystems are destroyed for the sake of economic growth, 
urbanization, and physical infrastructure, the stored carbon gets released 
and critical ecosystem services—such as regulation of carbon 
sequestration—are severely hampered. While such losses cannot be 
substituted merely through an energy transition, unrestrained land-use 
change for infrastructure projects could counteract the positive impacts that 
would otherwise have accrued from the energy transition.  

 
2. PROBLEMS WITH THE DELINEATION OF GREEN 

RECOVERY 

The green recovery model hinges upon environmental, regulatory, and fiscal 
interventions to recover prosperity. Therefore, the idea suggests that pre-
pandemic levels of prosperity should be attained through interventions in 
global and national macro-economies that combat climate change through a 
green transition and sustainable corporate and financial practices. The green 
transition, in many parts of the developing world, has a reductionist 
definition: the transition from fossil fuel sources to renewable sources (see 
WEF 2021; Mutikani 2021). As such, unchecked land-use changes for 
infrastructure and connectivity projects will not only counteract the positive 
impacts of the energy transition but also disrupt the flow of ecosystem 
services that provide livelihoods for the poor in large parts of the Global 
South (Sukhdev 2009).  

This brings forth the contention that this reductionist delineation of the 
green transition or green recovery—or green growth, for that matter—is an 
oxymoron. The very proposition of green growth decouples natural 
resource destruction from growth and hypothesizes that greenness can be 
achieved through other means without any consideration of the ecosystem 
and ambient environment. Is this possible at all? Human progress is 
inextricably linked with the use of one of the most fundamental forms of 
capital—natural capital. Green recovery is also largely contingent upon the 
energy transition without any concern for land-use change. 

Ward et al. (2016), based on an analytical macro-model, infer that 

growth in GDP ultimately cannot plausibly be decoupled from 
growth in material and energy use, demonstrating categorically that 
GDP growth cannot be sustained indefinitely. It is therefore 
misleading to develop growth-oriented policy around the 
expectation that decoupling is possible. However, we also note that 
GDP has been shown to be a poor proxy for societal wellbeing, 



Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal [8] 

something it was never designed to measure, and GDP growth is 
therefore a questionable long-term societal goal in any case. The 
mounting costs of “uneconomic growth” suggest that the pursuit 
of decoupling–if it were possible–in order to sustain GDP growth 
would be a misguided effort. (Ward 2016).  

 
3. DEGROWTH: A PANACEA OR PLACEBO? 

Given the implausibility of green growth in the Global South through a 
mere energy transition when land-use change continues unabated, the 
question posed to humanity is this: is degrowth the solution? The degrowth 
thesis encourages deceleration rather than growth to sustain nature, the 
fundamental basis of life. In that sense, degrowth entails a retraction from 
present ways of living through the contraction of economic activities in the 
Global North and emancipation from the dominant reductionist occidental 
paradigm of development (seen through the economic growth lens). 
Interestingly, degrowth—while discussing the extensive damage that growth 
has and will cause to the ecosystem—restates the decoupling of human 
well-being and GDP per capita. For example, richer economies like the 
United States have worse distribution systems than nations that have lower 
incomes per capita like Spain, while the latter have better healthcare 
systems. Prevailing levels of well-being can be maintained in Finland even 
with 10% of their current GDP, with only better equity principles and 
practices entailing redistribution (Hickel 2020). At this layer of reading, it 
seems as if degrowth—in its attempt to challenge ‘brown growth’ (or the 
outcome of growth-fetishism)—is not only akin to the Convivialist 
Manifesto (see Adloff 2014), but a restatement of socialism.  

In other words, this can be construed as an attempt to re-establish 
socialism, at least in a new discourse-based avatar if not in practice! There is 
no harm in re-delineating and reestablishing socialism. In an article written 
around the outbreak of the pandemic and the lockdowns, Sen (2020) 
contended: “A better society can emerge from the lockdowns.” Sen 
emphasized the need for equity and better distribution in development by 
quoting the example of how life expectancy at birth in England and Wales 
increased during the war decades. “The positive lessons from pursuing 
equity and paying greater attention to the disadvantaged helped in the 
emergence of what came to be known as the welfare state” (Sen 2020). 
Quite evidently, the need for an emphasis on equity and distribution in the 
development paradigm becomes prominent, especially during crises—
economic or otherwise. In large parts of the Global South, where social 
security is largely lacking, it is organic market forces that have provided a 



[9] Nilanjan Ghosh 

much-needed cushion for the survival of large populaces, thereby creating a 
large informal sector (Ghosh 2020). However, an economic lockdown (like 
the ones during the initial phases of the pandemic) completely locks market 
forces as well. Therefore, a system that is geared towards markets to take 
care of the concerns of the underprivileged through an organic process has 
to conduct a course correction: it now becomes the onus of the 
government to take care of the various distributional needs of society. 

Therefore, the popular thinking that degrowth is an ideal that emanates 
from nations that have already grown or from activists of the Global North, 
in reality, is a notion originating from a more equitable world. In all these 
nations, social security and distributive justice are highly prevalent and 
established, resulting in a much lower reliance on market forces. However, 
such occidental principles might be difficult to adopt in the context of 
developing nations and might even prove to be counter-productive. A 
prime example is Sri Lanka, which is undergoing a food crisis as a result of 
its revolutionary transformation to organic farming, which halved food 
production without creating adequate preparatory conditions for such a 
large-scale structural change in its food sector (Verma 2022; Bhowmick 
2022). This decrease in food production was not accompanied by a 
counter-balancing change in consumption patterns. The situation was 
further aggravated by a decline in the country’s forex reserves, which 
slipped below US$ 50 million in May 2022, thereby inhibiting food imports 
(Basak 2022; Wignaraja 2022). As such, the initial conditions that need to be 
met for the adoption of degrowth principles are missing in large parts of the 
developing world.   

 
4. CONCLUDING REMARKS: INDIAN PRIORITIES 

There is no doubt that India needs to grow, though not in the business-as-
usual way that ignores the costs of growth discussed in this essay. India 
does not fall in the category of the Global North in terms of its 
development indicators and nor has its equity concerns been met to date. 
Decoupling growth and resource use under these circumstances will inhibit 
the causes of equity and distributive justice. With a per capita GDP as low 
as US$ 1,901 and an HDI rank of 131 (out of 189 nations), such an 
absolute decoupling will lead to stiff competition with limited fiscal 

resources between increasing the rate of technological efficiency1 and the 

 
1 Technical or technological efficiency entails a condition when the output cannot be 

increased without any increase in the factors of production. This also entails the speed at 
which the natural resources are transformed into services and goods with minimum wastage 



Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal [10] 

economic growth rate. The climate and green transition questions cannot 
be addressed with the degrowth model here.  

Further, the concerns of India, and the underdeveloped components of 
developing nations, should not be considered only through the reductionist 
lens of net zero that has emerged mostly as an occidental construct for and 
from the Global North. The impacts of human interventions on ecosystem 
services—through land-use change and climate change—do not figure in 
any form in global negotiations. Climate negotiations remain largely 
temperature-centric, without taking into consideration this critical element 
that should have been the foremost concern of the Global South.  

The challenge, therefore, for a developing nation like India is to understand 
how and where it can position itself in this gamut of developmental 
paradigms that range between growth-fetishism and green recovery. There 
is no doubt that India needs to create its own developmental paradigm. 
One way to do this is to holistically embrace the four forces of capital—
namely, physical, social, human, and natural—which are embedded in the 
SDGs. The SDGs entail not only a holistic approach to development 
governance, but as shown by Ghosh et al. (2019), they also help promote 
business competitiveness in an economy. Incidentally, UNEP (2018) argues 
in its Inclusive Wealth 2018 report that between 1990 and 2014, India’s 
physical capital has grown but at the cost of its natural capital. This raises 
questions about the sustainability of the growth process not only for India 
but also for large parts of the Global South.  

Therefore, Indian green recovery must be based on two key elements: a) the 
simultaneous augmentation of health- and education-induced human and 
physical capital without compromising the sustainability of natural capital; 
and b) reduced wealth, income, and social inequalities that can hinder 
India’s long-term growth prospects, serving the cause of distributive justice 
(as argued by Ghosh 2021). While better-targeted or universal transfer 
mechanisms and large-scale employment generation—especially in green 
sectors—can enable the second vision, the first requires a well-thought-out 
strategy beyond the energy transition. Large-scale infrastructure projects 
need to consider losses to ecosystem services, including losses in regulating 
services like carbon sinks and sequestration, additional carbon emissions, 
and other social costs (e.g., rehabilitation costs, human-day losses, 
livelihoods losses, etc.) in the holistic benefit–cost matrix and the integrated 
impact assessment mechanisms associated with them. Acknowledging these 

 
and cost. 
 



[11] Nilanjan Ghosh 

costs can either result in efforts to mitigate such costs or can make the 
planners realize the injustice of such projects. In other words, green 
recovery requires an overhaul in the development paradigm from the 
business-as-usual myopic and reductionist economic growth archetype to a 
more holistic and integrated paradigm that talks of reconciliation between 
contending goals. Pitted against one another are economic efficiency, equity 
through distributive justice, and environmental sustainability through legal 
statutes, norms, and institutional reforms and practices. This reconciliation, 
acknowledged in the framework of the SDGs, has emerged as the biggest 
challenge in development governance for the Global South. 

 
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