Library

By: Konstantin Stadler, Edgar Hertwich, Richard Wood, Stefan Pauliuk

Abstract: A resource efficient society should provide high well-being at a low cost to the environment while preserving the natural system/natural resources for future generations. Traditionally, well-being has always been assessed on the national level. In contrast, the economic system consists of specific sector with specific functions for the society ranging from providing food to education ...

By: Ida Andrea Braathen Sognnaes

Abstract: Global climate change brings up fundamental questions related to intragenerational and intergenerational equity. Economists have traditionally drawn a sharp distinction between efficiency and equity, but more recent studies in ecological economics have argued that the two are intimately linked (Corbera, Brown, & Adger, 2007; Howarth & Norgaard, 1992; Muradian, Corbera, Pascual...

By: Birke Dorothea Otto

Abstract: This case study explores how decentralised sewage infrastructures (also referred to as Ecological Sanitation) change the city. These low and high-tech eco-innovations in several urban building communities in Germany save water by recycling and reusing waste water and were installed as a critique of resource depletion and the wastefulness of urban life. This presentation focuses on two...

By: Tarja Salmela

Sleep, stillness, ethical and moral agency, critical re-reading, growth-necessity

By: Dieter Rink, Annegret Haase, Sigrun Kabisch, Katrin Großmann

Abstract: Shrinking cities have spread out on all continents since the end of the last century and have become a normal type of urban development. For the post-growth perspective the question is being asked, and if yes, what can be learned from nowadays shrinking cities for the urban development in the future? One can observe that the biggest number of shrinking cities try to pursue growth stra...

By: Facundo Martín

Development, Territorial sovereignty, Radical democracy, Reappropriation, Argentina, Brazil

By: Federico Demaria, Schattenblick

Interview mit Federico Demaria im Rahmen der Degrowth Konferenz 2014 in Leipzig. Aus dem Interview: . . . Diese Konferenz sollte nicht eine rein akademische sein, sondern eine akademische mit zivilgesellschaftlicher Beteiligung. Warum? Weil wir diese Fragen politisch diskutieren müssen. Die Gesellschaft kann von uns keine Antworten erwarten, da es andernfalls eine Technokratie wäre, in der Exp...

By: Mònica Serlavós

Abstract: In the current context of multidimensional crises, this paper aims to evaluate the potential of Social and Solidarity Economy (SSE) as a transitional path towards a degrowth society. This research is motivated by the urgent need to find alternative ways to build a fairer and more responsible society in harmony with Nature. While recognizing the limitations of the Geneva case developed...

By: Julian Müller

Abstract: This 2013 paper – an updated version of which I would like to present at the conference – examines the ambivalence of capitalist growth and accumulation, that is, the simultaneous combination of dynamic and restrictive tendencies. At the most abstract level, this ambivalence is related to the existence of three different forms or circuits of capital. At a more concrete level, the accu...

By: Andrea Immendoerfer, Markus Winkelmann, Oliver Parodi, Collette Waitz

energy technologies, renewable energy, energy efficiency, sufficiency, neighbourhoods, rebound

By: Jeremy Heighway

This media entry is a stirring paper of the Group Assembly Process (GAP) at the Degrowth Conference in Leipzig in 2014. This paper belongs the group Urban Transformation.

By: Heide Imai, Noriko Minkus

Abstract: As a result of the “shrinking” societies in Germany and Japan, cities and regions are facing different challenges. While metropolitan areas like Berlin and Tokyo are growing quickly, intermediate cities like Leipzig and Kitakyushu can only keep their population or grow slowly. After a process of deindustrialisation, these cities still carry dozens of empty buildings and vacant spaces....

By: Stefanie Huertgen

Abstract: I argue that a coincidence of growing profits and growing consumption / wages cannot be presumed any longer. Even if many participants of the Degrowth-Debate do so, the equation of economic Growth of enterprises and consumptive Growth of the population (at least in the Global North) is in itself bound to imaginations coming from the postwar (“fordist”) period and the class-compromise ...

By: Friederike Habermann

care, commons, externalisations, extractivism, commonsbased peerproduction

By: Matt Ji

Abstract: Renewable energy has some challenges due to its variability and incompatibility with the modern electricity grid. However, novel methods of extracting valuable fractal behavior of wind speeds show very powerful spatially and temporally correlated features. Further investigation shows that energy can be quite readily quantified given this approach and its implications are deep reaching...

By: Federico Demaria, Alberto Acosta, Sylvia Lorek, Silke Helfrich, Nicola Bullard

Recorded opening plenary of the 4th International Degrowth Conference for Ecological Sustainability and Social Equity in Leipzig in 2014. Speakers are Federico Demaria, Silke Helfrich, Alberto Acosta and Nicola Bullard. Moderation: Sylvia Lorek. The speakers give statements of support for degrowth.

By: Christian Hoiß

Abstract: Based on Immanuel Kant’s call for Enlightenment the paper on hand relates his theses to the current behavior of mankind and demands from today’s educational representatives to act against “laziness and cowardice” among students and society as a whole. This goes along with a new focus on values which cannot primarily be built through argumentation and reasoning but according to sociolo...

By: Audley Genus

Abstract: There is considerable debate regarding the contribution to be made by higher education institutions and the researchers they employ in realising environmentally sustainable urban spaces, and the relationship between academic research and lay knowledge. Drawing on previous work, the paper identifies roles that may be played by academic researchers in building sustainable urban location...

By: Willi Haas, Marina Fischer-Kowalski

energy transitions, human labour, degrowth

By: Wayne Ellwood

Abstract: The world’s addiction to economic growth continues with barely any recognition that this is a problem. Indeed, in a Western world currently dominated by austerity measures and ducking in and out of recession, growth is seen even by progressives as the only possible solution for our economic and social woes. This No-Nonsense Guide looks deeper into the idea of economic growth – to tra...