Library

Scientific paper • 2019

Who promotes sustainability? Five theses on the relationships between the degrowth and the environmental justice movements

By: Bengi Akbulut, Federico Demaria, Julien-François Gerber, Joan Martínez-Alier

Environmental destructions, overconsumption and overdevelopment are felt by an increasing number of people. Voices for ‘prosperity without growth’ have strengthened and environmental conflicts are on the rise worldwide. This introduction to the special issue explores the possibility of an alliance between post-growth and ecological distribution conflicts (EDCs). It argues that among the...

Scientific paper • 2019

Climate justice, commons, and degrowth

By: Patricia E. Perkins

Abstract: Economic inequality reduces the political space for addressing climate change, by producing fear-based populism. Only when the safety, social status, and livelihoods of all members of society are assured will voluntary, democratic decisions be possible to reverse climate change and fairly mitigate its effects. Socio-environmental and climate justice, commoning, and decolonization are...

Scientific paper • 2019

A socio-metabolic perspective on environmental justice and degrowth movements

By: Anke Schaffartzik, Arnim Scheidel

Degrowth and environmental justice movements share overarching aims of sustainability and justice and pursue them through radical social change and resistances. Both movements are diverse and comprised of groups that originate and operate in different contexts. The ever-growing metabolism of the world economy presents an obstacle to both movements' aims, while a socio-metabolic perspective...

Scientific paper • 2019

Not So Natural an Alliance? Degrowth and Environmental Justice Movements in the Global South

By: Beatriz Rodríguez-Labajos, Patrick Bond, Ivonne Yánez, Lucie Greyl, Serah Munguti, Godwin Uyi Ojo, Winfridus Overbeek

Both environmental justice (EJ) and degrowth movements warn against increasing the physical size of the economy. They both oppose extractivism and debt-fuelled economies, as well as the untrammelled profit motive which fails to incorporate full environmental and social costs. They both rely upon social movements that have led scholarship in its activities and achievements, in part through...

Scientific paper • 2019

Promoting Waste Degrowth and Environmental Justice at a Local Level: The Case of Unit-Pricing Schemes in Spain

By: Giacomo D'Alisa, Gabriel Weber, Ignazio Cabras, Maria Calaf-Forn, Ignasi Puig-Ventosa

This paper investigates the introduction of unit-pricing (UP) schemes in waste management with regard to grassroots initiatives promoting bottom-up participatory processes in local communities, addressing several issues concerning environmental justice and degrowth. As waste service charges and fees increase in proportion of waste generated in presence of UP schemes, the paper explores and...

Scientific paper • 2019

The New Rural Reconstruction Movement: A Chinese degrowth style movement?

By: Rowan Alcock

This paper investigates a grassroots Chinese movement called the New Rural Reconstruction Movement (NRRM). Drawing on field visits, surveys, interviews and social media posts regarding a NRRM project and relevant literature I link the NRRM to the degrowth movement. This is likely the first research analysing a Chinese grass-roots movement from a degrowth theoretical perspective. This link is...

Scientific paper • 2019

Alternative and Resistance Movements: The Two Faces of Sustainability Transformations?

By: Léa Sébastien, Jérôme Pelenc, Nicolas Merveille, Grégoire Wallenborn, Julien Milanesi, Julien Vastenaekels, Fany Lajarthe, Jérôme Ballet, Manuel Cervera-Marzal, Aurélie Carimentrand, Bruno Frère

This article addresses the issue of sustainability transformations in Ecological Economics through the lens of social movements, by linking environmental resistance movements and alternative movements. We advocate for a more politicized, social-movement oriented and place-based approach to sustainability transformations, and contribute to the development of a more political and emancipatory...

Scientific paper • 2019

Mapping and Analyzing Ecological Distribution Conflicts in Andean Countries

By: Joan Martinez-Alier, Mario Pérez-Rincón, Julieth Vargas-Morales

The extractive sector is increasingly important in the GDP and export basket of the four Andean countries under study (ACs) (Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia). The analysis of an updated inventory of 296 environmental conflicts in the EJAtlas for these four countries reaches the following conclusions: extractivism causes environmental conflicts related to mining, fossil fuels, hydropower and...

Scientific paper • 2019

A critically modern ecological economics for the Anthropocene

By: Jon D. Erickson, Michael B. Wironen

Ecological economics recognizes economic activity as a biophysical process mediated by social systems and ultimately subject to the constraints of a finite earth system. The Anthropocene discourse appears as validation of the central concerns of ecological economics yet throws into relief its limits as a normative transdiscipline oriented toward social transformation. We review ecological...

Misc • 2019

Towards a Political Economy of Degrowth

By: Ekaterina Chertkovskaya, Alexander Paulsson, Stefania Barca

Since the 1970s, the degrowth idea has been proposed by scholars, public intellectuals and activists as a powerful call to reject the obsession of neoliberal capitalism with economic growth, an obsession which continues apace despite the global ecological crisis and rising inequalities. In the past decade, degrowth has gained momentum and become an umbrella term for various social movements...

Misc • 2018

Politisch aktiv sein und bleiben - Handbuch nachhaltiger Aktivismus

By: Timo Luthmann

Die politischen und persönlichen Herausforderungen nehmen für engagierte Menschen stetig zu. Wie können wir – ohne auszubrennen – mit diesen Umständen klug umgehen? Was macht Aktivist*innen wie auch soziale Bewegungen widerstandsfähiger, kreativer und erfolgreicher? Wie sieht es mit der feinen Balance zwischen individueller Selbstverwirklichung und kollektiver Befreiung aus? Erstmals wird das...

Misc • 2018

The rise - and future - of the degrowth movement

By: Federico Demaria

A decade after the first international 'degrowth' conference, FEDERICO DEMARIA charts the evolution of the term from a provocative activist slogan to what he says is now an academic concept taking hold with policymakers

Report • 2018

Sufficiency: Moving beyond the gospel of eco-efficiency

By: Riccardo Mastini, Friends of the Earth Europe

“Sufficiency: moving beyond the gospel of eco-efficiency” suggests introducing hard limitations to unsustainable trends—in particular to overconsumption—and putting emphasis on distributional justice. Seven chapters written by sustainability and economics experts plus a foreword by Janez Potočnik (Co-chair of the International Resource Panel and former European Commissioner for the Environment)...

Scientific paper • 2018

Structured Diversity: A Practice Theory Approach to Post-Growth Organisations

By: Benedikt Schmid

Innovative forms of organising are a crucial pillar of post-growth transitions. Situated within a growth-based institutional context, actually existing forms of post-growth organising are ambiguous. Divisions across legal structure, market participation and sectoral focus do not suffice to single out post-growth organisations. Instead, this paper develops a more fluid notion which is based on...

Presentation • 2018

First North-South Conference on Degrowth-Descrecimiento, México City 2018 - La vía campesina y la soberanía alimentaria

By: Alberto Gómez

Conferencia de la Plenaria del Miércoles por Alberto Gómez: "La vía campesina y la Soberanía alimentaria"

Scientific paper • 2017

The degrowth spectrum: Convergence and divergence within a diverse and conflictual alliance

By: Dennis Eversberg, Matthias Schmelzer

Keywords: Degrowth; social and environmental movements; transformation; economic growth; activism

Misc • 2017

Let’s Degrow Up and Grow Down!

By: François Schneider

Francois Schneider defends the use of the term "degrowth". From the text: . . . If degrowth was the name of a multinational of toothpaste, Drews and Antal would be right: degrowth is not the right word to gain (market) competition. However degrowth is not just about raising attention, being interesting, provocative, easy to remember. It actually has a meaning! When I was doing a tour of...

Misc • 2017

No degrowth without climate justice

By: Matthias Schmelzer

Teaser: Changing structures, opposing hierarchies, and embracing the struggle as lessons for the degrowth community From the blog post: Since the 2014 Leipzig Degrowth Conference, the argument that climate justice cannot exist without degrowth has repeatedly been made. In a keynote at the Degrowth conference in Budapest, in September 2016, I developed this line of thinking further and argued...

Misc • 2017

Podiumsdiskussion zu Bedingungslosem Grundeinkommen und Degrowth

By: Elena Hofferberth, Ulrich Brand, Edward Skidelsky

Teil 1 Teil 2 Diskussion nach der Einführung von Dagmar Paternoga und den Vorträgen von Edward Skidelsky und Ulrich Brand bei der Auftaktveranstaltung der Konferenz "Bedingungsloses Grundeinkommen und Degrowth" am 19. Mai 2016 in der Katholischen Akademie Hamburg.

Report • 2017

Budapest Degrowth Conference Report

By: Degrowth Conference Budapest 2016 Team

Report from the Degrowth Conference 2016 in Budapest, written by members of the organising team. Contents I. Introduction Why Budapest? Specific aims of the Budapest local organisation committee (LOC) Principles of organization II. The conference Key themes Program and formats The partnership Re-localization III. Degrowth week Program and elements The participants The partnership IV. Main...