Secure Enough? Sufficiency and Security in the New Geological and Geopolitical Reality

ABSTRACT This article advances sufficiency theorizing by examining its relationship with security in the contemporary geopolitical context. It engages three contextually situated discourses: sustainable development, ecological civilization, and degrowth, to explore how concerns over ecological limits intersect with emerging geopolitical and security challenges in the Anthropocene. To illustrate how global security dynamics materialize in specific places, the study draws on two examples of critical mineral extraction. Conceptually, the article distinguishes sufficiency , understood as a process of reducing global matter‐energy throughput to ecological limits, from geopolitical strategies of self‐sufficiency aimed at securing resource supply. Building on this distinction, it analyzes tensions between security‐driven growth and enoughness. The study argues that contemporary responses to geopolitical insecurity often reinforce extractive and expansionary logics, particularly through the securitization of critical raw materials, while global sufficiency foregrounds ecological limits as a condition for long‐term security. It concludes by suggesting that sufficiency may offer a provisional normative language through which the discourses of sustainable development, ecological civilization, and degrowth can address their shared concerns on the continuity of life, while acknowledging the political tensions and practical constraints involved in its realization.