→ Contribute with your ideas by answering this questionnaire ←
Over the past two decades, organisations such as the Support Group for International Degrowth Conferences, the International Degrowth Network (IDN), Degrowth.info and Research & Degrowth have each played a significant role in building the international degrowth movement. Through research, political engagement, communication, networking, grassroots experimentation, international conferences and cooperation, together with all of you, we have collectively contributed to making degrowth a credible and increasingly influential social, political and intellectual project.
Today, we believe it is both timely and necessary to come together.
The world is entering an era of profound instability. Escalating wars, accelerating climate disruption, biodiversity collapse, widening inequalities both between regions shaped by colonial and neo-colonial dynamics and within societies themselves, democratic backsliding, the rise of the far right, and the spread of increasingly dystopian techno-solutionist narratives all point towards a systemic collapse. Beyond ecological and economic dimensions, we are also facing deep cultural, anthropological and existential crises.
At the same time, degrowth has never been more relevant.
Public awareness is growing. Recent opinion polls suggest increasing support for many policies associated with a degrowth agenda. Our movement has developed a rich body of research, concrete policy proposals, democratic organisational practices, and numerous practical experiences in territories, municipalities, cooperatives, communities and institutions around the world.
The international dialogue has also deepened. Exchanges between the Global North and the Global South, and between Western, Central and Eastern European perspectives, are enriching degrowth while highlighting the importance of justice, reparations, debt, peace and plural pathways of transformation. Connections with municipalities, political parties, civil society organisations, trade unions, think tanks, practitioners and international institutions—including promising dialogues within the UN system—open new possibilities for collaboration and impact.
Yet despite this momentum, our collective resources remain extremely limited. Our organisations often work in parallel, sometimes duplicating efforts, while facing similar financial and organisational challenges. Strengthening cooperation, solidarity and strategic coordination could considerably increase our collective capacity without compromising the diversity, autonomy and strategic pluralism that are among the movement’s greatest strengths.
The mentioned organisations are therefore meeting for a retreat end of November 2026, conceived as a space for strategic reflection, mutual learning and collective imagination.
Rather than arriving with fixed answers, we invite everyone, through an open questionnaire, to contribute ideas, questions and proposals on how we can reinforce the international degrowth movement in the years ahead.
Possible themes include:
Our ambition is modest but important: to leave this gathering with stronger relationships, clearer priorities, practical commitments and renewed energy for advancing degrowth as a diverse, democratic and transformative international movement.
Support Group for International Degrowth Conferences, the International Degrowth Network (IDN), Degrowth.info and Research & Degrowth
On July 5, 2015, at the height of the eurozone debt crisis, the Greek demos voted by a wide margin to turn down the bailout offered to them by their Troika of creditors – the International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank, and the European Commission. At the time, the Greek Finance Minister was Yanis Varoufakis, who had the opportunity to confront the Troika, and to put an end to the endless cycles of rising Greek debt.
The degrowth community has spent much time and effort making the case for why we need a degrowth transformation. Now it’s time to come together and pool the community’s knowledge on how to make such a social-ecological transformation happen. As an off-shoot of the Degrowth Vienna 2020 Conference, our book Degrowth & Strategy: how to bring about social-ecological transformation lays the groundwork for precisely this discussion. However, to bring this project to full fruition, we need your help.
As we look back on 2020 we see how Covid-19 has made it starkly clear to all of us that globally something is deeply, systemically wrong. As Arundhati Roy stated a portal has opened that demands we change our lives. Those of us cocooned at home working on zoomland, or those of us struggling with economic uncertainty and compromised health, have become even more aware of how important relations ...
