By Chris Ward Despite attending the conference, not everyone will fully understand what ‘Degrowth’ is, or the multitude of related terms that will be mentioned during the conference. Thankfully the first session on the schedule, offered by Federico Demaria and Giacomo D´Alisa was ideally suited for getting your knowledge up to scratch. Judging by audience responses to the question “What is Degrowth?” there isn’t a concrete definition yet, but one is needed to make the term more understandable to the wider world. Currently ‘Degrowth’ is more of an intersection of several concepts, we need to be clearer with our vocabulary to emphasise ‘different’, not ‘less’. ‘Degrowth’ was first mentioned as a term by Gorz and later by Roegen and Grinevald in the 1970s Degrowth lost some interest in 80s and 90s due to the prevailing neo-liberal thoughts of the era. It re-entered the public’s interest in the 00s especially around Europe and Latin America in some of the more traditionally activist countries and those worst hit by the Global Financial crisis. Leipzig is 4th international conference on Degrowth, and now the term is being mentioned in mainstream media, academic courses and articles. Let’s break apart the vocabulary apart a little… The Limits of Growth
Reflections on organising next year's degrowth conference, which will explore strategies for social and ecological transformation. I headed to Barcelona last year with a friend to attend the two week degrowth summer school, a rite of passage in the degrowth community. It takes place at the intellectual center of degrowth, the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) and at a degrowt...
Saturday 1st June 2019 marked a significant occasion for the degrowth movement: the inaugural ‘Global Degrowth Day’. Groups of people gathered together in places all around the world to engage with ideas of degrowth and alternatives to our growth-based society, guided by the event’s theme of ‘a good life for all’. The Global Degrowth Day was coordinated by the Activists and Practitioners int...
If current crises like environmental degradation and social inequality can be seen as result of our economic and social systems, the concept of a degrowth economy has been advanced as a possible solution. Degrowth is in direct contrast to economic systems such as capitalism or sustainable growth, and in fact has much more in common [...]