Blog
Welcome to our blog which aims to shed light on different aspects of the degrowth discourses and movement. In our older articles, there are also impressions and news from events such as the 2015 summer school on climate justice and the 2014 Degrowth conference. If you would like to comment on or contribute to the blog, please contact us at blog@degrowth.de.
Every day we are bombarded with frightening news. But how do we personally feel about them and how can we deal with them as society as a whole? Which future do I actually want for myself, for the world and for my children? And how are my personal feelings and motivations connected to the larger picture? What frightens me, what makes me angry and how can I transform these feelings into a source of power and energy for change? read more
Anthropological thoughts on degrowth
Degrowth energizes and interconnects remarkably heterodox thinking and surprisingly heterogeneous action. To advance dialogue among diverse pathways, a recent Journal of Political Ecology issue on “Degrowth, Culture and Power” joins studies of 15 initiatives to forge worlds that prioritize well-being, equity and sustainability rather than expansion.read more
Dragon Dreaming offers simple, objective and playful tools for visionary processes, planning, implementation, evaluation and celebration to make our dreams come true. Thus it helps building a degrowth society.read more
Should arguments for degrowth be anthropocentric or ecocentric? And what does this mean in practice? There is an interesting discussion going on, starting with two recent court rulings in New Zealand and India about rivers being granted personal rights. We present an article by Ashish Kothari, Mari Margil and Shrishtee Bajpai, first published for The Guardian.
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There is a wide range of emancipatory alternatives working towards a social-ecological transformation. It is more important than ever to underline this. From Brexit, to the AfD (Alternative für Deutschland) in Germany, to Trump —the current political turmoil is a clear sign of the discontent that exists with the prevailing system, and that expresses itself through a societal shift towards the right and a strengthening or increased visibility of racist, misogynist, homophobic and transphobic worldviews and violence. These shifts are often interpreted as a desire or search for an alternative to the dominating political and economic system, as a regressive answer to unfettered globalisation, economisation and impoverishment. But there are also thousands of other alternatives; emancipatory and solidarity-based alternatives which respect the dignity of all human beings.
Call for participation
On 7 and 8 July 2017, the Leaders of the Group of 20 (G20) will meet in Hamburg. This self-styled club of 19 of the most powerful economies in the world and the EU claims to fight global crises. However, reality reveals a different picture:
If you’ve ever dreamt of the good life for all based on everybody’s individual skills and needs, free from domination and in mutual appreciation and cooperation, you’ve got the chance now to help make this dream come true: from 21 to 25 June around 1000 people will be getting together in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, North-East Germany, to “design the future, de-grow growth and live utopia” in a spirit of openness, trust and emancipation.
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Historical roots of current debates on sustainable degrowth
The future of economic growth is one of the decisive challenges of the twenty-first century. Though beginning at different times in different places, during the last two centuries, overall global economic growth has profoundly transformed life of humans and of the rest of nature. Today, societies, economies, and cultures are essentially built on the expectation of continuing future growth. read more
…and join us to add other languages!
Ever wanted to listen to the book “Vocabulary of Degrowth” because you prefer having an audio book over a physical one? Well, we hear you and share your feeling. That’s why we started the “Vocabulary of Degrowth Audiobook Podcast“. read more
Making sense of inputs from the Budapest Degrowth Conference
The degrowth community in Budapest and other forums formulated a number of concrete policies and identified alliances with other movements. Acknowledging the diversity of perspectives and a more concise set of proposals by Research and Degrowth, this article puts together a number of policies and proposals consistent with degrowth. read more
While agreeing with many points of van den Bergh’s excellent review of the growth versus climate debate, I would like to point to a fundamental misrepresentation of the quoted research on degrowth: degrowth is not a strategy “aimed at reducing the size of the GDP”. read more
In a recently published article in Nature Climate Change, Jeroen van den Bergh argues that neither degrowth nor green-growth strategies might lead to sufficient climate action and hence makes the case for a third option which he calls “agrowth”. While the understanding of degrowth reflected in the article can certainly be disputed – it comes across as mainly targeting a shrinking GDP – his conclusion is built on the analysis of a large body of research on both degrowth and green growth strategies. read more
A collection of Giorgos Kallis´ articles now available as e-book
The first time I heard Giorgos Kallis speak was in Lisbon about ten years ago at a meeting of the European Society for Ecological Economics (ESEE). He has remained faithful to this field, contributing to the exciting debates on an ecological macroeconomics without growth or “prosperity without growth”. In Lisbon he did not yet talk about degrowth though, but about the social construction of droughts, with great knowledge based not only on research but on personal experiences in Greece and California where he was for some years at Berkeley. Listening to him, I immediately thought that we would like him to join our group (ICTA) at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. And so it came to pass that he applied and got a tenured research professorship here.read more
From our project “Degrowth in Movement(s)“
Commons are products and resources that are created, cared for and used in a shared way in a great variety of forms. The term has increasingly come into use again over the past decades – “again“ because commons as concept and praxis are ancient and exist worldwide. Today, the research on the shared use of natural resources is mainly connected to the name Elinor Ostrom who received the Nobel Prize for economics for her research in 2009. read more
We are happy to announce a follow up to our roundtable about feminism(s) and degrowth at the Degrowth Conference in Budapest 2016. Sharing many common points, feminisms and degrowth have the potential to build an alliance which promotes mutual enrichment. One intersection is the criticism of the dominant socio-economic mode. By criticising the centrality of productive performance and by further shifting attention to the conditions of reproduction and regeneration of the community, the hidden dimensions of the economy are challenged. read more
