Where: Nelijärve holiday center in Aegviidu, Estonia
When: October 2–3, 2025
The Beyond Growth Estonia conference is the first major degrowth event to be organized in Estonia, as part of the international series of Beyond Growth conferences. The event takes place at the Nelijärve holiday center in Aegviidu on October 2–3, 2025. The conference is organised by Degrowth Estonia NGO and Biotoopia, in collaboration with partners from TalTech and Tallinn University.
Beyond Growth Estonia brings together policymakers, economists, scientists, journalists, members of the civil society, practitioners and other interested parties who care about sustainability and the well-being of people and nature. The conference explores systemic solutions for our society to ensure good quality of life for as many people as possible during the inevitably upcoming post-growth era.
Our perpetual venture for economic growth has exceeded the boundaries of natural ecosystems as well as widened the gap of social inequality, which results in increasing polarisation in the society. Degrowth questions the capability of economic growth to ensure a good life for all citizens and calls for alternatives to improve and measure well-being. Our approach sets ecological sustainability, social justice, democracy, and well-being as central values in society.
The aim of the conference, mostly held in estonian, is to initiate public discussion about ways to improve Estonia’s adaptive capacity in a changing ecological and political reality. We also aim to raise awareness of alternative practices and policies that contribute to adaptation.
When hitch-hiking, a certain irony is common: Time and time again, the authors' of this post have been picked up by drivers who immediately instruct them that hitch-hiking used to work, but now is impossible. That these conversations were taking place at all would appear to contradict this supposed fact. This is not to say that it is always easy. Roads bar access to their sides for pedestrians ...
Leben im Bauwagen [Life in a Bauwagen (construction trailer)] from Marc Menningmann on Vimeo. During the Degrowth Conference in Leipzig in 2014 the photographer Niko Baumgarten opened his Bauwagen for passers-by. Anyone interested was invited to get some impressions and to look at his picture series "Welcome Home", which deals with alternative ways of housing.
Deschooling as a Path to Social-Ecological Transformation By Fabian Scheidler and Andrea Vetter "Deschooling is at the root of any movement for human liberation", wrote Ivan Illich, today almost forgotten but once a world-renowned critical thinker, in 1971. With books like "Deschooling Society" and "Energy and Equity” he inspired in the 1970s both the emerging environmental movement and the r...
