Developmentalism and Climate Movements

Social movements make a normative claim on society. They seek to define future possibilities, and do so with or against the prevailing development trajectory. Their projects pose development futures, whether neo-, anti-, alter- or post-, and can be especially powerful where existing development models implode or become exhausted. In the face of deepened climate contradictions, social antagonisms increasingly centre on contests over development. Under the current climate crisis, developmental hierarchies can be up-ended, creating new co-related struggles in both high- and low-income contexts. The challenge of decarbonsation can politicise social relations in new ways, opening-up new political agendas centred on previously-normalised developmental projects. The paper analyses climate movements in terms of these developmentalist claims, addressing their existential depth, spatial scope and temporal urgency, and in terms of the trajectories they pose. It focuses especially on examples from India, Germany and Australia, across development divides and types of fossil-fuel dependence.