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
Degrowth advocates for a general slowdown and large emissions reductions, minus the pandemic and social distress. The coronavirus (covid-19) has caused upheaval across the world, deaths of the most vulnerable, closed borders, financial market crashes, curfews and controls on group gatherings, and many more devastating effects. Despite observations that pollution and emissions have red...
On the Need for Collaboration Between Social Movements and Activisms Not that long ago, I left North America and arrived fresh and starry-eyed in Lund, Sweden, ready to begin my master’s degree in a program entitled Culture, Power and Sustainability. In my second year, I decided to write my thesis about the Transition Town movement, a social movement out of Great Britain born of the need to ac...
For our Degrowth in Action - Climate Justice Summer School 2015 we are currently looking for contributors to our courses. The summer school will take place from 9 to 14 August 2015 in the lignite-mining region of the Rhineland in cooperation with the annual climate camp. The courses will be at the centre of the Summer School and run for 4 or 2 days, thus giving the opportunity to dive deeper in...