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
If making the degrowth case was like baking a cake, disproving the plausibility of green growth would be the equivalent of turning the oven on. Decoupling is only “a myth” or “a fantasy,” some would say, a notorious fallacy that requires as much attention as the confabulations of Flat Earthers. And yet, faith in decoupling is strengthening in environmental agendas all around the world, includin...
Impressions from the degrowth summer school and the Rhineland climate camp It's now for the second time that the Degrowth Summer School took place at the climate camp in the coal-mining region of the German Rhineland with around 800-900 participants. Last year it had mainly focused on the topic of climate justice and on bringing the two movements – degrowth and climate justice – together. This...
Küche für Alle [Kitchen for all] from Marc Menningmann on Vimeo. Next to discussing and presenting, people also ate and cooked on the Degrowth Conference which took place in Leipzig last year. The "Kitchen for all" is a group of People's kitchens which cooked for and with the conference participants to provide food every lunch and dinner.