We, organizers and participants at the Degrowth Vienna 2020 conference demand equity and justice. We stand in solidarity with the people in the United States challenging white supremacist culture and with related global struggles. As activists, academics, artists, and practitioners we aim together to put an end to systemic oppression and structural racism; as again has been recently revealed by the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor or Ahmad Auber. The conference expresses its global solidarity with all victims of police violence and systemic racism, and supports the antifascist movements facing criminalization. Racism and coercion are political issues that cannot be tackled on a moral basis only. This murder is the result of an oppressive and exploitative system where racism and coercion are key in maintaining domination and the exploitation of women, Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) and historically marginalized trans-/queer/non-binary people, people with disabilities, the working-class, and natures. Ending systemic racism is a liberatory means towards human emancipation. This requires the rejection of a policing system based on the devalorization of human beings as well as the destruction of nature, for the sake of capital accumulation through a white supremacist culture by political and economic elites. Overcoming systemic racism includes the rejection of the prison-industrial complex, reinforcing capitalist exploitation by criminalizing lives. It additionally calls for a transformation of the organisation of executive functions, away from oppression, and instead centred on the protection of human rights. We recognise that degrowth as a movement is still white dominated and euro-centered, and thus susceptible to the same structural discrimination that plagues our systems. We commit to work consciously as a community to address and improve in regards to racism internally. As a movement we fight for a world where every human and non-human being — of any colour, any gender, any sex and/or sexual orientation, any ableness, no matter of their geographic and social origins, beliefs or opinions — is entitled to dignity and to a meaningful and decent life. Thus, the degrowth movement fully embraces the claims of the protestors throughout the United States and beyond and expresses its support. With the awareness that our paths are still detached, we aim to advance our convergence and struggle forth in unity.
The concept of convivialism has attracted some attention in recent years. When giving it a closer look – even superficially – it soon reveals its proximity to the degrowth concept and movement. But what exactly constitutes this proximity and where are the differences? Below I will give a short summary of what we can understand by degrowth in practical and theoretical terms. Then I will continue...
While world leaders were still celebrating the Paris climate agreement adopted at the UN climate change conference in Paris as a "major leap for mankind", critical voices had already denounced the paper as "fraud", "epic fail" and "trade agreement". With this, they point to the discrepancy between the agreed commitment to hold the "increase in the global average temperature to well below 2C abo...
By Ashish Kothari As it becomes abundantly clear that humanity as a whole has crossed the ecological limits of the earth, and that countries like China and India are fast joining the already-industrialised nations in stressing the planet even more, the search for radical alternatives is humanity’s most urgent quest. There is no doubt that, as [...]
