Should arguments for degrowth be anthropocentric or ecocentric? And what does this mean in practice? There is an interesting discussion going on, starting with two recent court rulings in New Zealand and India about rivers being granted personal rights. We present an article by Ashish Kothari, Mari Margil and Shrishtee Bajpai, first published for The Guardian. Several geographically-distant but related events signalled a dramatic mind shift in humanity’s troubled relationship with nature last month. First, the New Zealand parliament passed the Te Awa Tupua Act, giving the Whanganui River and ecosystem a legal standing in its own right, guaranteeing its “health and well-being”. Shortly after, a court in India ruled that the Ganges and Yamuna rivers and their related ecosystems have “the status of a legal person, with all corresponding rights, duties and liabilities ... in order to preserve and conserve them”. The history of the rivers makes these proclamations remarkable. The Ganges has long been considered sacred and millions of people depend on it for sustenance, yet it has been polluted, mined, diverted and degraded to a shocking extent. The Whanganui has witnessed a century-old struggle between the indigenous Iwi people and the New Zealand government over its treatment. Notably, the Iwi consider themselves and the Whanganui as an indivisible whole, expressed in the common saying: “I am the river, and the river is me.” Rivers are the arteries of the earth, and lifelines for humanity and millions of other animals and plants. It’s no wonder they have been venerated, considered as ancestors or mothers, and held up as sacred symbols. But we have also desecrated them in every conceivable way. Can giving them the legal rights of a human help resolve this awful contradiction? Perhaps, if we are able to think beyond the material limits of how we relate to nature, we can encourage political and economic measures to create a deeper and more ethical relationship. New Zealand and India have recognised the intrinsic rights of rivers, beyond their use for humans. Both recognise rivers as having spiritual, physical and metaphysical characteristics. These crucial extensions of law are based on ethical principles rarely recognised since the industrial age, but this is how indigenous peoples have long treated nature.
Since the 2014 Leipzig Degrowth Conference, the argument that climate justice cannot exist without degrowth has repeatedly been made. In a keynote at the Degrowth conference in Budapest, in September 2016, I developed this line of thinking further and argued that the opposite is equally important: There is not degrowth without climate justice. My argument, which I presented as someone involved ...
The Journal of Cleaner Production will be issuing a special volume on the topic of technology and degrowth and is looking for interesting scientific contributions. Abstracts of 400 to 500 words can be submitted until 31 August 2015. The special volume aims to both provide 1) a state of the art selection of current discussions of the role of technology within Degrowth in academia and practice an...
Interview mit dem Leipziger Verein Ökolöwe Der Ökolöwe – Umweltbund Leipzig e.V. ging vor mehr als 25 Jahren aus der Naturschutzbewegung in Leipzig hervor und will auf mehreren Ebenen und in zahlreichen Projekten Ressourcen schonendere Strukturen voranbringen. Beispielsweise in den Bereichen Verkehr, Schutz der Artenvielfalt, Konsum, sowie Stärkung bürgerschaftlichen Engagements. Der Verein ist ein Unterstützer der [...]