That developing countries need growth is unquestionable, and the construction of housing, roads, manufacturing, hospitals, schools and many other types of public and private infrastructure will require more sand, cement, fuel, steel, and money.

The context for developing countries is very different from that of more advanced economies.

This is precisely the debate explored in Daniel Susskind’s book, Growth,and in Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson’s book, Abundance. Susskind argues against absolutist positions on degrowth as a one-size-fits-all approach to economics. Klein and Thompson, meanwhile, urge decision-makers to consider how easing environmental and other regulations could create enabling conditions for abundance.

Both works are certainly putting the cat among the pigeons. Susskind argues that strong ‘Degrowthers’ are essentially asking for a forced recession – although prominent Degrowthers would deny that this is their intent. Klein and Thompson, on the other hand, suggest that we can achieve abundance if we let go of our fears and relax certain regulations and norms.

These perspectives offer valuable insights and spark new debates on the trade-offs inherent in a world where poverty is rising, yet climate vulnerability can also exacerbate hardship. This debate over trade-offs is not new, with economists having long grappled with it.

The Environmental Kuznets Curve, named after Simon Kuznets, was conceptualised as a framework to address development and environmental issues in sequence. The idea is that as countries grow their GDPs, they increase their income and so have more resources to spend on environmental externalities and develop new technological solutions.

Here, we need a better understanding of what constitutes the basis of GDP – is it just commodity-led growth or rooted in economic diversification? The former is prone to boom-and-bust cycles, leaving GDP growth on weak pillars, while the latter draws on a broader range of income sources and exports, producing more resilient GDP growth paths.

Income growth should be measured not only in terms of national income or private firms’ earnings but also household wellbeing. Both the works of Susskind and Klein and Thompson limit their inquiry to how we deal with the supply of goods and services in the context of environmental and social challenges.

That said, the conversation they have opened is highly relevant to the climate and development debate on the African continent. The Kuznets Curve is instructive: as national and household incomes improve, it becomes reasonable for environmentalists and climate activists to push for deeper emissions policies – and even better, to introduce or invest in new technology that can reduce the need for costly clean-up of polluting industries later.

Highly industrialised countries are better positioned to make the shift, as they have greater fiscal space, constituencies that are more likely to support parties aligned with the green agenda and the industrial base to scale new clean technologies.

Even more importantly, their credit worthiness, savings levels, research and development capacity and access to global capital markets give them a distinct advantage in financing these programmes – largely in their own currency and under more favourable monetary policy conditions.

Such fiscal and policy privileges do not exist in developing countries, particularly in Africa. While climate investments can provide new sources of capital and growth, their scale is insufficient to meet broader development needs. Countries with a development gap will continue to rely on traditional sectors, investing in them to close the gap, which risks deepening the divide between clean and dirty industries.

If we follow the logic of the Kuznets Curve, exploiting the advantages of existing sectors to finance new ones is the only way countries can manage their transition to more decarbonised economies. The more trade and investment trajectories within the global economic system shift towards decarbonisation, the greater the pressure on these economies to adapt.

Given the backlog in development, the envisaged path is a coupling of traditional investments with new investments that gradually move towards reducing dependence on highly carbon-intensive sectors.

This dual-path framework is consistent with my previous suggestions that African economies need investment strategies that act as displacement equivalents for dependence on existing economic sectors if they are to achieve full decarbonisation.

No developed country is going to commit economic harakiri, so why should developing countries be expected to follow the same trajectory of decoupling as developed economies?