Library

Scientific paper • 2016

Impacts of Land Transformation from Crop Farms to Shrimp Ponds in the Southwest Coastal Region of Bangladesh: Application of Chow Test Method

Shrimp farming plays an important but controversial role in the economic development of many countries in Asia because of high economic returns and often catastrophic environmental impacts of production in coastal region. Bangladesh is one of the leading shrimp producing countries in the world. Bangladesh enjoys advantages of natural setting for shrimp culture. 90% of crop land has been...

Scientific paper • 2016

Incarnating degrowth.

By: Marco Deriu

I would like to explore the connection between the degrowth perspective and contemporary feminism. The main finding that comes from feminist critics, is that unpaid care work carried out by women, still remains invisible on the official economy; and this invisible work supports, not only the reproduction of salaried workers, but more in general, the same process of capitalistic accumulation...

Scientific paper • 2016

Industrial Ecology and Degrowth

By: Ralf Aschemann

It is worthwhile to investigate the relation between Degrowth on the one hand and Industrial Ecology on the other hand in order to identify, whether and how these two concepts might support each other or whether there are potential discrepancies or conflicts. Degrowth means a kind of society and economy that want to reach both the well-being of human mankind and to sustain life's natural basis,...

Scientific paper • 2016

Infrastructure and organisational patterns for socio-technical commons

By: Adrien Labaeye, Jon Richter, Gualter Baptista

As commoning practices become part of mainstream conversations on forms of social organisation, cultivating the right conditions for a thriving commons still presents unresolved challenges and underdocumented territory. Participatory infrastructure is not neutral, and minimal infrastructure - digital, legal and financial - is often required to support the co-production process of a shared...

Scientific paper • 2016

Innovative business models – true alternatives or business as usual?

By: Dr. Gyula Zilahy

Innovative, new ways of doing business (such as the sharing economy, product-service systems, etc.) are becoming pervasive in all areas of life, but research has been slow in taking stock of emerging practices and their impact. Amit and Zott (2012) defines a business model as an activity system aiming at the satisfaction of the perceived needs of the market along with the specification of which...

Scientific paper • 2016

In search for sustainable local food systems: Sociometabolic perspectives

By: Willi Haas, Eva Fraňková, Ines Marco Lafuente, Juan Cadillo Benalcazar, Eneko Garmendia

During the last century, we have witnessed an unprecedented growth in both global food production and associated environmental, social, and economic problems connected to the increasingly industrialized and globalised food production system; projections for the future foresee a continuation of the rising food demand. While sustainable food production is a global challenge, it has an inevitable...

Scientific paper • 2016

Integrating practices along the food chain to cut greenhouse gas emissions and non-renewable energy use in Spanish food production. An agro-ecological approach.

By: Eduardo Aguilera

Anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG) have to be radically cut if global temperatures are to be held within safe limits. Food production is probably the main source of global GHG emissions and it is very dependent of non-renewable energy. We assessed environmental impacts of Spanish agriculture and food system from a life cycle perspective. Direct GHG emissions were assessed...

Scientific paper • 2016

Intervening at the regional level

By: Mark H Burton

I am part of a small collective that is promoting an alternative socio-economic approach to the society-economy-environment nexus in "post-industrial" Greater Manchester, England. I will describe the approach we have taken which is to promote alternative thinking via publication, networking, and working in alliances with actors from a variety of sectors. I will reflect on what we have learned...

Scientific paper • 2016

Is climate justice possible without degrowth?

By: Matthias Schmelzer, Mladen Domazet, Jagoda Munić

The Paris Agreement is a very specific document, that was substantially revised between the proposal at the start of the conference and the final text, reflecting a very specific response to a set of globally crucial issues concerning rapid climate change in this century. Our closing point is a question of whether orientation on growth of the type suffused through the Agreement text and most...

Scientific paper • 2016

Is High Speed Rail a sustainable mobility option?

By: David Hoyos

This paper aims at assessing the environmental contribution of high speed rail (HSR) focusing on the GHG emission and energy consumption balance and, ultimately, evaluating the conditions under which HSR investments can be considered the right track to sustainable mobility. For this purpose, we apply the transport hierarchy approach as a general framework for the assessment of HSR from a...

Scientific paper • 2016

Is the new 'Different' really different?

By: Judith Kleibs

This presentation deals with the question how to distinguish measures and approaches which fundamentally change the current social logic that is based on an instrumentalistic attitude towards the world from those which maintain this logic and only seem to contribute to a social and ecological just society. For this intent, at first the main characteristics of the instrumentalistic social logic...

Scientific paper • 2016

'Laudato si' - Is the Vatican Calling for Degrowth?

By: Mateja Penava

Pope Francis’ ‘Laudato si’ is considered one of the three most important international, environmental documents of 2015. By using content analysis of the encyclical I explore if it can also be called a first major international degrowth policy recommendation for Catholics around the world. Despite using the mainstream concept of sustainable development, my paper investigates if Pope Francis is...

Scientific paper • 2016

Law and institutions as central foci in the degrowth debate

By: Volker Mauerhofer, Nicholas Ashford, Nicholas Ashford, Joachim Spangenberg

While degrowth debates have been centered (1) on ways to abandon GDP and productivity as drivers of a throughput economy, (2 ) on acknowledging that some very important attributes of a just society are not captured in markets, and (3) on ways to address wealth and income inequality, changing and challenging the economic paradigm has dominated the debate. This session argues that law and legal...

Scientific paper • 2016

Learning from degrowth ideas of work and income

By: Tuuli Hirvilammi, Ingo Stamm, Aila - Leena Matthies, Kati Närhi

Work sharing, work time reduction, basic income and job guarantee are often referred ideas in degrowth-literature as alternatives to present models of work and income. Also various grassroots innovations, such as local organic food networks or community currencies are examples in which people are already developing production and consumption structures based on community empowerment and...

Scientific paper • 2016

Leave it in the ground! Degrowth, resource struggles and direct actions against coal

By: Matthias Schmelzer, Matthias Schmelzer, Matthias Schmelzer, Tilman Santarius, Monika

In this degrowth-in-action special session we will discuss both theoretically and practically the relations between degrowth, climate justice, resource extraction and resource struggles. At the same time we will look at and try to link the ongoing efforts in the anti-coal fights in different regions of the world. This session thus aims at deepening our understanding of the relationships between...

Scientific paper • 2016

Liberation from Motorization

By: Escher City

The near-global hegemony of motorized transport has dramatically disrupted traditional use of public space, and in turn has impacted the opportunity for social and economic co-evolution and self-determination. The violent history of this radical change of life illustrates how unnatural and disruptive motorization has been. One arm of the institutionalization of a humanity contained within the...

Scientific paper • 2016

linking Europe on two wheels

By: carmine arvonio

Linking Europe on two wheels “The bicycle is a chance for a way of life in which respect for others and joy of living are priorities. This offers us a great hope: Cycling as a new Humanism!” This quote from M. Augé synthesizes our approach. We started CicloPoetica in Firenze, Italy, connecting different fields: pedagogy, sport, ecology, sustainability. Our focus is Bike culture, which for...

Scientific paper • 2016

Local and Global food supply chains. Is their comparison meaninful? Lessons learned from an organic tomato case study

By: Gonzalo Gamboa

Last decades have witnessed a quality turn in food production and consumption, which entails an increasing trend of acquiring food from local supply chains. Advocates of local supply chains highlight the higher sustainability of these chains when compared with their global counterparts: local food supply chains offer products of higher quality than global supply chains and are based on...

Scientific paper • 2016

Local struggles for socio-environmental justice and democracy: the role of enlightened resistance

By: Jérôme Pelenc

This paper analyses a particularly strong social mobilization against a mega-jail project that is planned to be built in Haren (Brussels’ region, Belgium) on a 20-ha natural site that provides a large array of ecosystem services to local inhabitants but also to the city of Brussels. The actors involved in the resistance are diverse (local inhabitants, local NGOs, ZADistes who occupied the site,...

Scientific paper • 2016

Looking for sustainability on local level: Social metabolism of three small-scale organic farms in the Czech Republic

By: Eva Fraňková, Claudio Cattaneo

During the last century, we have witnessed unprecedented growth in both global food production and associated environmental, social, and economic problems connected to the increasingly industrialized, globalised and commodified food production. In reaction, the issues of food security, food sovereignty and, more generally, sustainable food production have gained momentum within the academic...