From the text: In the discourse on degrowth – the deliberate and planned downscaling of production and consumption that increases human well-being and enhances ecological conditions and equity on the planet – the notion of »sustainable development« has sort of a bad rap. In fact, sustainable degrowth is intended to replace sustainable development as the central concept under which ecological and social minded activists and researchers might rally. Serge Latouche, the one who first fired the »missile word« of décroissance into the pubic realm, once held a talk titled »Down with sustainable development! Long live convivial degrowth!« at a conference in Paris in 2002. What are the reasons for such disregard of sustainable development? And could this be a somewhat foolish mistake?
Last month a group of academics working in the fields of development and environmental sciences in the Netherlands wrote a manifesto for post-corona recovery based on degrowth principles. This initiative gained widespread attention, pushing the degrowth agenda into (Dutch) mainstream consciousness and the traditional corridors of power. The initiative was born in conversations that various a...
By Christiane Kliemann "Facing the current crises: critique and resistance": The motto of the second day´s conference programme takes into account that degrowth is mainly a concept from the global North which naturally has a different perspective on the mulitfaceted global crisis than social or ecological movements from other parts of the World. While degrowth can be described as "a downscali...
By Frigga Haug At the closing event of the attac-congress on capitalism in 2009, the German politician Heiner Geissler pleaded for an eco-dictatorship. After all, even as a prominent member of the Christian Democratic Party he had joined attac out of concern over problems of capitalist society, among them the ecological one - and was now calling on the 2000 or so participants to take action to...
