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?
We all use models in daily life to explain our environment. An example: I assume that a tree will grow provided it has sufficient water, nutrients and sun. I am using a simple model here, without understanding the nitty-gritty – what exactly happens in the roots, stem, leaves and cells. Thinking in models is not only useful to understand our world, but also to solve problems. Let’s assum...
Why a social-ecological transformation is impossible without changing the deep structures of our economy Opening a newspaper or listening to the radio news exposes us to a flood of catastrophic messages: devastating droughts, failing states, terrorist attacks, and financial crashes. You can look at all those incidents as unconnected singular phenomena, which is exactly what the common presenta...
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...
