We are starting 2020 full of enthusiasm for all that is to come! If you want to be involved in the degrowth movement you just need to roll up your sleeves because in this new year, there will be plenty to do.
Here is a list of the activities that planned for 2020 so you can already mark them in your calendar.
During the first months of the year, we will be going through the final stretch of our crowdfunding campaign. This is when we ask for your help! We need all the voices, all the channels and everyone who is sympathetic to the movement to chip in. Find out more on our blog or follow the links to the campaign in English or in German.
Two conferences are on the agenda this year. One in the UK and one in Austria. The event in Vienna is a thematic conference, meaning its focus is more narrow and it aims to complement the main conference which will take place in Manchester.
The subject of this thematic conference is Strategies for Social-Ecological Transformation. The conference is hosted by the association Degrowth Vienna as well as several university institutes from the Austrian capital. It will take place at the University of Vienna and Semper Depot.
The conference will have a participatory design, including a thorough documentation process to generate tangible outcomes for the degrowth movement and research community.
This is the first ever joint conference between the International Degrowth Research Network and the International Society for Ecological Economics. This collaboration will focus on the conference subtitle, "Building Alternative Livelihoods in times of political and ecological crisis."
To stimulate dialogues between and within different perspectives, disciplines and social movements, this conference will bring together academics from the Degrowth and Ecological Economics communities, voices from the Global North and Global South, civil society actors, activists, artists and policy-makers.
This day is a wonderful opportunity for everyone to participate! No matter where you are, what you do for a living or how much you have read about degrowth, this is a day to come together to discuss, share and discover the great alternatives to a growth based society. Many different public events all over the world will be organized providing opportunities to engage in the degrowth movement. We want to show that a good life for all is possible!
Check this link to find out more.
This is not an actual event but rather the possibility of many events. This year, the activist group is taking shape and opening up the opportunity to consolidate and mobilize in a decidedly more visible way. If you want to get active in the degrowth movement, there are many concrete tasks and areas where you can contribute. For example:
- Outreach and communication, specially for the Global Degrowth Day (GDD)
- Translating the event info into as many languages as possible
- Social media
If you want to take up any of these tasks, get in contact with the activism group. Fill the form or write to activism-degrowth@riseup.net.
Last, an invitation to keep coming back to our blog. Every week we upload interesting articles, update our upcoming events, and share past degrowth content in our library. If anything new comes up in the degrowth-sphere you can come read all about it right here in degrowth.info!
Have a wonderful 2020 and see you around!
The picture above shows some of the statues decorating the northern entrance of the Corvinus University in Budapest where the recent Degrowth Conference took place. The building has not always been a university. It once was a place of trade, and the statues over the entrance depict virtues which, back then, were considered central to trade. Virtues like courage, faith, love and honesty. When di...
As Vincent Ligey, coordinator of the Budapest Conference organizing team mentioned in the closing plenary, it was an experiment to hold an international degrowth conference in a former socialist country where the soil for degrowth ideas is not particularly fertile. The more it came as a surprise that the conference had received a widespread coverage in Hungarian media. Szandra Koves, press out...
By Matthias Schmelzer The following article is a translation from the forthcoming “Atlas der Globalisierung”, that will be edited by Le Monde diplomatique and the Kolleg Postwachstumsgesellschaften (Universität Jena) under the title “Less is More. The Postgrowth-Atlas” (“Weniger wird mehr. Der Postwachstums-Atlas”. Postwachstum. Degrowth. Décroissance. These are buzzwords of a newly emergin...