As we look back on 2020 we see how Covid-19 has made it starkly clear to all of us that globally something is deeply, systemically wrong. As Arundhati Roy stated a portal has opened that demands we change our lives. Those of us cocooned at home working on zoomland, or those of us struggling with economic uncertainty and compromised health, have become even more aware of how important relations with others are, how fragile our environment is, and how well-being in place matters.
In this announcement, the Global Degrowth Day organising team talk through the selection of care as the theme for the 2021 edition of the event.
Democratic confederalism, the ideological framework organizing society in Rojava, outlines the features of a post-revolutionary justice system.read more
COVID-19 has had many effects. Among others, it created a pause, putting non-essential economic activity on halt. A pause that has exposed the numerous weaknesses of growth-centred, globalised economies.
Earlier this month, on June 6th, the 2020 Global Degrowth Day (GDD) was celebrated around the world. Around 40 events in more than 18 countries were registered and there were many social media posts using the hashtag #GlobalDegrowthDay, which was also celebrated by the Green European Journal and the European Environmental Bureau. Pictures were shared on our facebook event page.read more
No one really told us what organizing a degrowth conference would entail. We simply knew we wanted to do it. Two years of organizing, meeting, discussing and struggling have passed and now we’re less than seven weeks away from the first day of the conference.
Degrowth advocates for a general slowdown and large emissions reductions, minus the pandemic and social distress.
Local action is often the best remedy for the failings of the current system — a worldwide confederation of democratic communities can have the same impact at a global scale.read more
Dear Life,
I was not aware, when I was born, that I was born onto a battlefield. I was not aware, as I learned to walk, that I was stomping over the habitats of many creatures. I was not aware, as my mother drove me to school, that we were riding roughshod over the unmarked graves of our fellow humans. I was not aware, as we flew around the world, that I was attacking my child’s chances. I was not taught, when I went to school, that we all had been drafted, as unwilling and unwitting child soldiers, into an army of destruction. I didn’t read, in any of my university books, that my civilization of towering buildings, zooming machines and feasting on the meat of other creatures was waging a bitter war against the promise of a possible future.read more
In Rojava (Northern Syria), in the midst of a raging war, a society based on the values of women’s liberation, radical democracy, and ecology is being built. In early 2018, we, people from across the world, launched the campaign ‘Make Rojava Green Again’ in co-operation with the newly-established local autonomies to help find solutions to the vast destruction of nature that has resulted from decades of colonialism, capitalism, and war.
The Well Planet Manifesto is an invitation to undertake an agenda of research that is closer to the state of emergency in which we find ourselves. It encourages researchers, activists, policy-makers and member of civil society to act according to this emergency. Those are invited to connect to one another by signing up the manifesto, in order to establish a research network. See the manifesto here below:read more
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’.read more
“When you told your friends and family you were going to a degrowth gathering, they asked, ‘What is degrowth?’ How did you respond?”
The 2018 degrowUS gathering from September 28-30 2018 in Chicago began with this question. The first day’s thirty-odd attendees wrote their responses on sticky notes as they scraped the last bites of lunch off the dishes the event’s organizers had told them to bring from home.read more
