Library

Scientific paper • 2020

Performing ‘blue degrowth’: critiquing seabed mining in Papua New Guinea through creative practice

Scripted as a sustainable alternative to terrestrial mining, the licence for the world’s first commercial deep-sea mining (DSM) site was issued in Papua New Guinea in 2011 to extract copper and gold from a deposit situated 1600 m below the surface of the Bismarck Sea. Whilst DSM’s proponents locate it as emergent part of a blue economy narrative, its critics point to the ecological and...

Scientific paper • 2020

Environmental conflicts and defenders: a global overview

By: Brototi Roy, Federico Demaria, Leah Temper, Daniela Del Bene, Arnim Scheidel, Grettel Navas, Juan Liu, Joan Martínez-Alier, Sara Mingorría, Irmak Ertör, Sofía Avila

Recent research and policies recognize the importance of environmental defenders for global sustainability and emphasize their need for protection against violence and repression. However, effective support may benefit from a more systematic understanding of the underlying environmental conflicts, as well as from better knowledge on the factors that enable environmental defenders to mobilize...

Scientific paper • 2019

First Nations sovereignty, Environmental Justice, and Degrowth in Northwest BC, Canada

By: Karl Frost

Abstract: Environmental Injustice has been intrinsic to Canadian extractivism, with First Nations displaced from their traditional territories and their cultural identity suppressed through an explicit policy of cultural genocide to make way for colonial extractivist practices. Likewise, this extractivism has long been legitimized in Canada through a rhetoric of economic growth. This paper...

Scientific paper • 2019

Decolonizing degrowth in the post-development convergence: Questions, experiences, and proposals from two Indigenous territories

By: Padini Nirmal, Dianne Rocheleau

Abstract: A growing coalition of degrowth scholar-activist(s) seeks to transform degrowth into an interdisciplinary and international field bridging a rising network of social and environmental justice movements. We offer constructive decolonial and feminist critiques to foster their productive alliances with multiple feminisms, Indigenous, post-development and pluriversal thought and design...

Scientific paper • 2019

Geographies of degrowth: Nowtopias, resurgences and the decolonization of imaginaries and places

By: Giorgos Kallis, Federico Demaria, Karen Bakker

Abstract: The term ‘décroissance’ (degrowth) signifies a process of political and social transformation that reduces a society's material and energy use while improving the quality of life. Degrowth calls for decolonizing imaginaries and institutions from – in Ursula Le Guin's words – ‘a one-way future consisting only of growth’. Recent scholarship has focused on the ecological and social...

Scientific paper • 2019

The nowtopia of the riverbank: Elder environmental activism

By: Mary Gearey, Neil Ravenscroft

Abstract: Degrowth imaginaries offer alternative ways of envisioning future societies. Those, predominantly working age and working class people, seeking to purposefully enact degrowth in the here and now are termed ‘nowtopians’. Based on empirical work undertaken along the River Adur valley in West Sussex, UK, this paper argues that dynamic examples of nowtopian initiatives can develop from...

Scientific paper • 2019

Who can challenge the imperial mode of living? The terrain of struggles for social-ecological transformation in the German population

By: Dennis Eversberg

This contribution draws on empirical evidence from the 2016 wave of the survey “Environmental Consciousness in Germany” to identify the potential social bases of both support for and resistance to attempts to overcome the current socio-ecological crisis by way of a broad social-ecological transformation. Firstly, the results of factor and cluster analyses of the survey’s items on attitudes...

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

Shifting Education Towards Sustainability – How Degrowth Can Transform Education for Sustainable Development

By: Sofia Getzin

Key pedagogical approaches that work at fostering critical reflection and fostering transformative action become more effective when they are applied in a degrowth context.

Misc • 2018

This is not an atlas: a global collection of counter-cartographies

By: kollektiv orangotango+

"Maps articulate statements that are shaped by social relations, discourses and practices, but these statements also influence them in turn. Hence, maps (and atlases) are always political. "In this interplay between facts and perception, the cartographer is both witness and actor. [...] In order to create, or, more accurately: to invent, "his worlds", he finally arrives at a subtle mixture of...

Scientific paper • 2017

The unit of resilience: unbeckoned degrowth and the politics of (post)development in Peru and the Maldives

By: Eric Hirsch

Keywords: resilience, degrowth, climate change, Peru, Maldives

Scientific paper • 2017

Finding common ground: exploring synergies between degrowth and environmental justice in Chiapas, Mexico

By: Jonathan Otto

Key Words: Degrowth, environmental justice, contestation, Mexico

Misc • 2017

Against Doom: A Climate Insurgency Manual

By: Jeremy Brecher

From the publisher: Before the election of Donald Trump the world was already speeding toward climate catastrophe. Now President Trump has jammed his foot on the global warming accelerator. Is there any way for the rest of us to put on the brakes? Climate insurgency is a strategy for using people power to realize our common interest in protecting the climate. It uses mass, global, nonviolent...

Report • 2017

Pro-Tourism Consensus Crumbles in Barcelona

By: Kate Shea Baird

Introduction: Barcelona, a city of 1.6 million people, was visited by 8.2 million tourists last year. For decades, city governments of all political stripes operated under the assumption that ‘growth is good’. Each annual increase in visitor numbers was announced with glee, with assurances the sector would bring immense economic benefits to the city. But around three years ago, signs began to...

Art contribution • 2017

The Will of Life by Abu al-Qasim al-Shabi

By: Abu al-Qasim al-Shabi

Poem by Abu al-Qasim al-Shabi

Scientific paper • 2016

Is there a Global Environmental Justice Movement?

By: Leah Temper, Daniela Del Bene, Joan Martinez‐Alier, Arnim Scheidel

Keywords: Environmental justice, ecological distribution conflicts, collaborative research, activist knowledge, EJatlas, environmental racism, environmentalism of the poor, climate justice, statistical political ecology

Misc • 2016

Exit from the Megamachine - Why a social-ecological transformation is impossible without changing the deep structures of our economy

By: Fabian Scheidler

"Opening a newspaper or listening to the radio news exposes us to a flood of catastrophic messages: devastating droughts, failing states, terrorist attacks, and financial crashes. You can look at all those incidents as unconnected singular phenomena, which is exactly what the common presentation of news suggests. From another angle, however, they appear as symptoms of a systemic crisis, with...

Misc • 2016

Interview: „Wir brauchen Widerstand – sonst wird uns der Klimawandel die Perspektive für ein gutes Leben für alle nehmen.“

By: Christopher Laumanns

Vom 19. bis 23. August 2016 findet die 2. Degrowth-Sommerschule auf dem Klimacamp im Rheinland statt. Unter dem Motto „Skills for System Change“ wird es mit einem vielfältigen Programm um gelebte Alternativen zum aktuellen Wirtschaftssystem gehen. Nachdem die Sommerschule zu Ende gegangen ist, beginnt auf dem Klimacamp das „Aktionslabor“, das vom 24.-29. August geht. Was es damit auf sich hat...

Misc • 2016

“We need resistance – otherwise climate change will strip us of the perspective of a good life for everyone.“

By: Christopher Laumanns

The 2nd Degrowth Summerschool will take place on the Climate Camp in the Rhineland from the 19th to the 23rd of August 2016. “Skills for System Change“ will be the motto of a diverse programme dealing with alternatives to the current economic system. Right after the Summer School has ended, the Action Lab will take place from the 24th to the 29th of August. Melanie and Milan, who are involved...