Presentation Descriptions
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Grounding / Redéfinir / Fundamentar
G014 – What is Degrowth? From an activist slogan to a social movement
Presenter: Federico Demaria
Description: This is a presentation of a paper by Federico Demaria, François Schneider, Filka Sekulova, and Joan Martinez-Alier on the intellectual sources of degrowth and its manifestations to date in France, Italy and Spain.
G021 – : Réseau québécois des groupes écologistes: 30 ans de lutte pour une société verte et solidaire
Présentateurs: Jacinthe Leblanc et Bruno Massé
Description: Le Réseau québécois des groupes écologistes (RQGE) célèbre cette année son 30e anniversaire. Son histoire reflète celle du mouvement environnemental québécois: une histoire méconnue mais vitale à transformation du Québec à une société réellement verte et solidaire. L'atelier consiste en un survol rapide de l'histoire du RQGE et le mouvement environnemental québécois, suivi d'une discussion autour des pistes de réflexions qui s'en dégagent, avec des membres de l'équipe du Réseau et des personnes qui ont marqué son existence.
G024 – Growth Drivers and Solutions - Action Plan
Presenter: Gary Flomenhoft
Description: The purpose of this session is to expand and develop a framework for understanding the complex and wide variety of growth drivers, provide solutions to each one, and priorities and strategies for addressing them. Growth drivers are those aspects of biology, psychology, culture, philosophy, economics, banking and monetary policy, business, trade, natural resources, government, etc. that are driving human society to growth. There are several stages to this exercise, which should end with a comprehensive document, and action items for degrowth.
G045 – Grabbing the Dragon's Throat: How to Design the New Degrowth Paradigm
Presenter: Holly Dressel
Description: This session will be a normal lecture presentation, with a few charts and graphs displayed, but definitely not a Power Point. Professor Dressel is well-known for the vivacity of her lectures, and this one aims to take the participants through all of human history, to figure out whether we have the cultural skills, patience, wisdom and proven track-record for living sustainably on this finite planet. The answer is definitely yes, and the surprising fact is that millions of unsung, unrecognized people are still trying to live properly, and still able to teach us how, if we can only learn to listen to what they're saying.
G049 – The Other Road to Serfdom: How Infinite Planet Economics Threatens Democracy
Presenter: Eric Zencey
Description: Friedrich Hayek's 1948 "The Road to Serfdom" continues to be influential for its argument that unregulated free markets are the bulwark of democracy. But planning is planning, whether it's done for reasons of equity and justice (as in the Soviet model that Hayek loathed) or to manage the increasingly problematic ecological footprint of a perpetual growth economy. When combined with Infinite Planet premises, free markets are just The Other Road to Serfdom. The solution is free markets structured to operate under macro caps that are consistent with the finite ability of the planet to support economic activity.
G053 – The Two Row Wampum: Finding Our Way Back to Indigenous Values and Being Effective Allies to Indigenous Peoples
Presenter: Jack Manno
Description: A workshop for Allies to Native and First Nations Peoples involving personal exploration and peer listening. It will include information sharing about respectful and appropriate ways to promote Indigenous values as part of the degrowth movement. The Two-Row wampum refers to a 1613 treaty defining a relationship of respect, equity and empowerment in the context of ecological responsibility (Natural Law).
G055 – Travail et machine. Réflexion sur la domination contemporaine et sur les obstacles anthropologiques techniques et culturels à une « planète prospère ».
Présentateur: Louis Marion
Description: Quel sens donner au travail et à la machine dans un monde écologique? Il s'agira d'éclaircir les concepts de travail et de machine ainsi que leurs liens avec la domination comprise comme ce qui fait obstacle à l'émancipation écosociale et aux bonheurs des générations actuelles et futures.
G059 – El decrecimiento en Mexico
Ponente: Miguel Valencia
Descripción: Efectos del crecimiento en un país emergente, como México, con respecto a los dones de la Naturaleza y la integridad de los pueblos y comunidades; a su economía y a su politica interior y exterior; retos en la creación de un movimiento por el decrecimiento; soportes y obstáculos; potencia de los pobres y revalorización de la cultura y la Naturaleza.
G070 – Teaching Degrowth
Presenters: Lawrence (Lonnie) Gamble, John Ikerd, Peter Victor, Saamdu Chetri
Description: This special roundtable will feature short presentations from people who have been teaching and developing curriculum relating to degrowth. They will share philosophies, successes, and failures. The short presentations will be followed by discussion with the audience on issues in teaching degrowth. This session will allow those of us struggling with issues of teaching degrowth to gather and share experiences.
G125 – An ethics for Ecosystem services: the case of bullfighting
Presenter: Nicolas Kosoy
Description: This paper aims at analyzing bullfighting from an ecosystem services perspective. For such an endeavor, this paper will first de-construct bullfighting in terms of legitimacy, social identity and historical relationships. As this human-nature relationship is established, the concept of ecosystem services is deconstructed, leading to argument for an ethical imperative towards procedural transparency in the decision making process regarding human-nature relationship. Procedural transparency then conveys a co-evolutionary construction of values and also a re-assessment of our place in the Universe. Bullfighting as a cultural ecosystem service is, in sum another expression of homo economics whose supremacy (biological imperative) over other species legitimizes the appropriation, exploitation and pillage of all other forms of capital.
G143 – Enlightenment Philosophies of Humans and Nature and Implications for Degrowth
Presenter: Julie Anne Ames
Description: This presentation will illuminate various embodiments of human-nature relations through time in the context of animal agriculture, and reveal the ways in which different conceptions of it have shaped landscapes. It will explore alternative human-nature philosophies that are more conducive to a degrowth society.
G171 – Histoire du mouvement écologiste au Québec
Présentateur : Philippe Saint-Hilaire-Gravel
Description: Cet atelier vise à jeter un regard critique sur l'évolution des mouvements écologistes, environnementalistes, et sur l'apparition du discours du développement durable au Québec. Il s'axe autour du vécu de la plus ancienne fédération écologiste et environnementaliste au Québec, le RQGE, présente depuis 1982.
Knowing / Connaître / Conocer
K066 – Degrowth – Rapid Population Decline or Civilization Collapse
Presenter: Jack Alpert
Description: Too much growth threatens civilization collapse, die-off, and subsistence well-being for survivors. In this workshop, Jeff Alpert will describe the mechanisms driving civilization collapse, and show why only rapid population decline is powerful enough to address it.
K074 – Overpopulation and the Vicious Circle Principle
Presenter: Craig Dilworth
Description: This paper provides a comprehensive scientific-biological explanation of human overpopulation. This explanation is based on the vicious circle principle, which says that human evolution and development from our beginnings 7 million years ago have consisted in an accelerating movement from situations of scarcity, to technological innovation, to increased resource availability, to increased consumption, to population growth, to resource depletion, to scarcity once again, and so on.
K076 – Making the Case for Degrowth at the national level: how Degrowth-oriented fiscal policies can win the hearts and minds of politicians and restore national economies
Presenter: Curt Gervich
Description: This presentation discusses possible mechanisms for linking national environmental and economic policies to the goals of the Degrowth Movement. In particular, I will demystify the national credit scoring systems used by the three main national credit agencies (Standard & Poor's, Moody's, Fitch's) and discuss how environmental indicators might be incorporated into credit scores. Linking national environmental and economic performance through sovereign credit scores will raise the importance of finding solutions to environmental challenges that include the goals of the Degrowth movement and appeal to fiscally-minded politicians. I will lead a discussion of these topics through a multi-media presentation that includes audio/video, Prezi and a participatory brainstorming session.
K077 – G=PAE: Turning humanity from a parasite into a mutualist
Presenter: Gregory Mikkelson
Description: Some of the main drivers of human well-being cause ill-being in other species. However, economic equality–a heretofore neglected booster of human welfare–offers the possibility of improving the lot of humanity *and* the rest of nature.
K081 – Réduction du temps de travail au Québec
Présentateurs: Simon Tremblay-Pepin et Bertrand Schepper
Description: Conférence qui tente de situer ce que pourrait être une réduction du temps de travail en utilisant la méthode de calcul proposée par André Gorz. Une réflexion critique sur cette proposition sera ensuite présentée.
K113 – Connecting Our Normative Disciplines to Science
Presenters: Jon Erickson, Robert Nadeau, Cormac Cullinan, John Fullerton, Peter G. Brown, Paul Shrivastava
Description: To deal with current global crises, we need to identify the core assumptions underlying law, finance, religion and economics, and question their validity. In this panel we seek to develop alternative concepts, and unified knowledge that is mindful of social and ecological limits, by which to enable a flourishing Earth.
K114 – Sustainability through the pursuit of happiness?
Presenter: Joel Marcus
Description: Drawing on the relatively new science of happiness, Joel Marcus will argue that pursuing authentic happiness would promote much greater investment in social and ecological as opposed to economic capital, providing examples of communities that have achieved greater than average happiness whilst living more sustainably.
K116 – The Human Transition to Eusociality: A Key to Understanding the Economy as a Superorganism
Presenters: John Gowdy and Lisi Krall
Description: Agriculture marked the watershed into human ultrasocial (eusocial) evolution, changing the material dynamic of society. This evolutionary tendency was extended with the industrial revolution and market society. Our understanding of how we might live convivially and sustainably on the planet can be deepened by a more forthright understanding of our ultrasocial evolution.
K117 – Indigenous Perspectives on Degrowth
Presenters: Bob Thomson, Marcelo Saavedra-Vargas, Bob Lovelace
Description: The roundtable will look at northern and southern indigenous perspectives on degrowth. How different cultures perceive the world and society.
K122 – Energetics of Organic Agriculture: Case Study of Community Supported Agriculture in Kentucky
Presenters: Tyler Smith, Krista Jacobsen and John Schramski
Description: The presenters developed a computational agro-ecological energy model that calculates the associated energy transfers across a farm's physical boundary and the nutrient outputs of the farm's products. By understanding these metrics both quantitatively and qualitatively, farms can determine appropriate operational practices to become more sustainable while optimizing nutritional diversity and output.
K140 – Comment enseigner la décroissance aux jeunes générations?
Présentatrices: Annabel-Mauve Bonnefous et Isabelle Robert
Description: Cette table ronde est dédiée au partage transcontinental de nos expériences d'enseignement et de diffusion du paradigme de la décroissance auprès des jeunes générations. Nous souhaitons arriver à un enrichissement mutuel de la manière dont nous présentons la décroissance et que nous rendons ses principes compréhensibles et acceptables pour tous.
K141 – Public Banking versus Private Banking
Presenters: Jerry Ackerman, Ellen Brown, Paul Hellyer, Victoria Grant
Description: Usury-free expenditures for community goods and services can and will provide what people want – without the need for growth to pay the interest. This immensely lowers the cost of the undertaking. Canada's 1935-1974 experience demonstrates this precisely. Subsequent de-regulating of the chartered banks and the shadow banking institutions has brought inflation, deficits and monstrous, never-to-be-repaid debts. Interest charges of $165 million per day shortchange community needs:
health, education, social services, infrastructure. Americans avoided the possibility of emulating the positive aspects of the Canadian experience because their central bank has not been publicly owned. Consequently, their "need for growth" has persisted to a level of national bankruptcy. Proposals for action for the immediate, interim and worst-case scenario will be outlined.
K155 – Degrowth of scientific research or degrowth of knowledge?
Presenter: Hervé Philippe
Description: While the infinite economic growth dogma is under the fire of critics, the dogma of an infinite growth of knowledge remains a taboo. Hervé Philippe will argue that not only scientific research, through innovations, is a motor of economic growth, but also that it requires economic growth to feed its exponentially growing need of non-renewable resources. Moreover, the lack of limits inherent to the infinite growth of knowledge constitutes an important justification to infinite economic growth.
K156 – Heterodox Political Economy and the Degrowth Perspective
Presenter: Kent Klitgaard
Description: Mainstream economics does not understand how to provide sufficient employment in the absence of economic growth. However the era of economic growth is coming to an end, driven by resources scarcity, climate change and internal economic dynamics. New institutional and biophysical theories are needed to guide the transition to sustainability.
K165 – Penser l'impensable : l'ère de l'Éveil
Présentateur: Jean-Marc Fontan
Description: La présentation présentera une cartographie des changements à orchestrer pour que les rapports sociaux inégalitaires et d'exploitation de la nature deviennent des relations sociales conviviales. Elle se penchera sur l'apport des connaissances et du pragmatisme comme mode de lecture des transformations à réaliser pour faciliter la réalisation du projet "décroissance".
K170 – Limits to growth: Environmentalist's efforts vs nature's own restrictions
Presenter: Charles Hall
Description: There is increasing empirical evidence that despite most of humanity's best efforts, economic growth has simply stopped, and hence in many ways large portions of the world seem to be increasingly approaching a steady state (or even declining) economy–despite the best efforts of our leaders to prevent this from happening. We provide the reasons and data to explain why this is occurring, focusing particularly on peak oil and materials, and declining return on investment for all fuels and most materials. There is an energy and economic opportunity cost to dedicating available energy to extracting these remaining resources. Environmentalists may find that they are more effective by accepting this pattern, which has a high probability of continuing to occur, and adjusting their policies accordingly, rather than continuing to call for something that is politically unpalatable but appears to be happening anyway.
K172 – Renewable energy, the special period and degrowth in Cuba
Presenter: Julio Torres
Description: Description of the history of the work of the Cuban NGO CUBASOLAR during the last 17 years, as well as some experiences in satisfying agricultural energy needs with renewables, and finally, to put to debate some ideas and concepts about degrowth and sustainable development, not necessarily linked to economic and material wealthy growing, but growing in culture, in sovereignty, in healthy, in independence, in integration, etc., at the same time that degrowing in fossil fuels consumption, in pollution, in capitalist objectives, in wars, in exploitation, etc.
K173 –El binomio biodiversidad-sociodiversidad como basamento para el despliegue de alternativas societales y civilizatorias al desarrollo en América Latina
Ponente: Francisco Velasco
Descripción: En la segunda mitad del siglo XX se dio inicio al dominio progresivo de una visión reductora del mundo según la cual todos los pueblos, sociedades y naciones avanzan con distintas velocidades a través de una misma sucesión de estadios en la dirección del desarrollo, asignándole a este último un imperativo de universalización en el tiempo y en el espacio. Después de más de sesenta años de desarrollo un balance objetivo permite identificar algunos "triunfos" relativos. No obstante, la distancia que separa a los punteros "desarrollados" del rezago de los "subdesarrollados" no ha disminuido; muy por el contrario, aumenta continuamente a medida que se intensifican la dependencia política, la fragmentación social, la desventaja económica, el deterioro cultural y la destrucción ecológica. En el marco de la globalización capitalista este desequilibrio internacional tiende también a reproducirse a lo interno de cada nación.
Ante este cuadro en América Latina han surgido en los últimos lustros importantes críticas a la teoría y la praxis del desarrollo, en particular su apego dogmático al crecimiento económico, la idea de progreso y la racionalidad que subyace en sus formas de apropiación de la naturaleza. Se cuestiona su validez en tanto que concepto que expresa una visión unidimensional e industrialista del mundo.
En el contexto de crisis global que tiene como telón de fondo la confrontación de cosmovisiones y proyectos civilizatorios, aparece la posibilidad de configuración de pensamientos y prácticas contra-hegemónicas capaces de orientar una transformación radical del orden global dominante. En este sentido, América Latina, en virtud de su carácter biodiverso y sociodiverso, ofrece un enorme potencial para la generación de procesos ecosociales de transformaciones colectivas diversas orientadas hacia la creación de modos de vida, realidades sociales y ecológicas cualitativamente superiores, insertadas de manera complementaria y equilibrada en la constelación del proceso civilizatorio planetario.
Consenting / S'entendre / Consensuar
C001 – Dialogues on Degrowth: Report on a Preparatory Workshop for the Montreal Degrowth Conference
Presenter: Ann Dale/Robert Newell
Description: Report on a virtual on-line real time e-Dialogue on October 27th, and a regional workshop on March 30th, 2012 preparatory to the Montreal Conference, to be followed by another wrap-up e-Dialogue at the end of June, 2012. The March workshop featured virtual and face-to-face panels representing a diversity of perspectives, expertise and experiences drawing from economics, sustainable development, ecology and governance. The workshop was by invitation only of 30 British Columbian researchers, practitioners and civil society leaders to begin a critical dialogue on the implications of degrowth for Canada, and to develop a white paper to inform the Montreal Conference, May 13-19, 2012.
C025 –The Relevance of Permanent Land Protection in a Society Fixated on Growth
Presenter: Margo Sheppard
Description: This presentation will provide an overview of instruments currently used to protect land in Canada and a brief description of the land trusts that employ them. The discussion of 'permanence' will offer some insights from prominent thinkers and enable participants to imagine a future for conserved land that addresses their own concerns and interests.
C033 – Degrowth: A Return to Authoritarianism?
Presenters: Stephen J. Purdey and Steven J. Mock
Description: The powering-down of the world economy ultimately means re-localization to relatively autonomous, self-sufficient communities, but the degrowth discourse consistently ignores the threat that this process could lead to violence and social regression. Values such as liberal democracy, progressive individualism and social mobility could be lost forever. These social goods evolved during the Enlightenment era because of their intrinsic value, but also because they served the practical needs of newly-formed growth economies. Without growth, re-localized communities could be politically and socially regressive, rigidly structured and ripe for authoritarianism.
C040 – Comment offrir une vie digne à nos personnes âgées, dans un monde qui bouleversera leur place dans la société?
Présentatrice: Sylvie Robert
Description: Cette présentation suivie d'un moment de travail en groupe invitera les participants à réfléchir à l'écart vertigineux entre les attentes créées par la société actuelle envers la période tant attendue de la retraite, et la réalité d'une société vieillissante et n'ayant plus les moyens de ses ambitions. Quels seront les défis à relever et les possibles solutions sous cinq aspects : mode de vie des personnes âgées, place dans l'économie, image dans la société, santé, et besoins émotionnels et spirituels.
C046 – The Rule of Ecological Law
Presenter: Geoffrey Garver
Description: Just as ecological economics provides a compelling alternative to environmental economics founded on a growth-insistent paradigm, "the rule of ecological" provides answers to the critical shortcomings of contemporary environmental law.
C075 –La Ciudad: Entre el Espejismo del Crecimiento y la Utopia del Matabolismo Sostenible, Caso Bogotá D.C.
Ponente: Cristian Julian Diaz Alvarez
Descripción: Se expone, desde una visión ambiental, el devenir de Bogotá D.C. desde su fundación hasta el día de hoy. Se discute el paradigma de la necesidad de crecimiento y sus maquinarias como vía para el progreso. Por último, se propone la austeridad del metabolismo urbano como utopía de la sostenibilidad.
C079 – Governing a Degrowth Society: the End of Democracy as We Know It?
Presenters: Bruce Jennings, Lisa Eckenwiler, Jack Manno, and Stephen Latham
Description: The legitimacy of liberal democratic governance is based on maintaining economic growth and rising material standards of living. Must a degrowth era also be a post-liberal democratic era? Must the governance of a degrowth society be less popular and more elite driven? Or can it be more participatory, deliberative, and decentralized?
C084 – Leveraging meza-level Nodes: From Theory to Managing for DeGrowth
Presenter: Sara Wolcott (via SKYPE)
Description: In order to enable the wide level of political support and concrete action necessary to enable de-growth, this paper argues that we need to delve into the critical nodes where people are already managing highly complex systems and learn from them how we can re-direct the goals of their particular sector. It also suggests that there may be places where de-growth is already occurring but is un-recognised as such.
C100 – Quels Impacts des Politiques de Décroissance sur Les Pays d'Amérique Latine? Le cas du Mexique
Présentateurs: Alpha Ayandé et Ricardo Cuevas
Description: La problématique de décroissance se heurte néanmoins à un modèle de développement économique et social qui se caractérise par des mesures de déréglementation économique qui continuent d'accroître les inégalités sociales – dans les pays et à travers les pays - par le biais des politiques néolibérales subséquentes à la mondialisation. En effet, comment pourrait-on envisager des politiques qui s'inspirent fortement d'un tel concept de décroissance sans pour autant freiner l'ambition de certains « pays du sud » qui aspirent à atteindre le même niveau de développement des pays riches de l'occident ?
C101 –Does Ecological Economics have a future? Discourse, contradiction and renewal in the age of climate change
Presenters: Michael M'Gonigle and Blake Anderson
Description: Our paper will consider the nature and implications of a basic contradiction that animates the treatment of climate change in the journal Ecological Economics. This contradiction will be assessed in relation to the hegemonic intellectual ideology and institutional power of mainstream (neoclassical) economics. The paper will then discuss the potential for a critical, empirically-based 'meta-conversation' that, by its nature, will draw upon a broader constituency the involvement of which would help both to re-invigorate ecological economics and to propel the Degrowth movement.
C106 – Building community resilience through intersectoral action in the face of environmental and economic decline
Presenter: Blake Poland/Chris Buse
Description: By exploring several promising examples of collaborative efforts seeking to 'manage decline', the authors address the role of intersectoral collaboration in building resilient communities.
C109 – Petite histoire du Mouvement québécois pour une décroissance conviviale (MQDC)
Présentateurs: Léo Brochier et Julien Lamarche
Description: C'est dans la foulée du mouvement européen sur la décroissance et à la suite de l'appel lancé lors du premier colloque québécois sur ce thème en 2007 que le MQDC officiellement voit le jour. Cet atelier aura comme objectif de dresser un portrait historique du MQDC à travers ses actions et son travail de sensibilisation et de discuter des défis et paradoxes inhérents à une telle mission.
C115 – GrowthBusters: Hooked on Growth (Documentary film and discussion)
Presenter: Dave Gardner
Description: Frustrated by public resistance to the message of limits to growth? This bold and entertaining documentary is a valuable tool to break down barriers and engage public, journalists and policymakers. After the screening, filmmaker Dave Gardner answers questions and explains how the film can be used to help degrowth advocacy.
C130 – Taking it local: Transition Town global social movement for degrowth through grassroots relocalization and community resilience
Presenters: Blake Poland, Michelle Colussi, Greg Greene, Michel Durand, Cheryl Teelucksingh, and Mark Dooris
Description: A fast-paced interdisciplinary international panel featuring practitioners, academics, community activists, and a documentary film-maker focused on the convergences and synergies between a degrowth agenda and the international Transition Town movement and featuring exciting examples of work in progress from 3 provinces and beyond in building community resilience for the transition to a steady-state economy and low-carbon future.
C135 – Firms as Political Actors: The Structure of the Global Environmental Policy-Planning Network
Presenter: Jean-Philippe Sapinski
Description: This presentation explores the political agency of firms in the context of the global environmental crises, and their quest to uphold the growth paradigm and discredit any alternatives. It presents an analysis of the changing structure of the corporate-led environmental policy-planning network promoting growth in response to environmental crises.
C139 – Deep Debt and the Invention of "Conscious Capitalism"
Presenter: James Magnus-Johnston
Description: On the heels of the global 'occupy' movement, there is increasing public consciousness about the inadequacies of the global money and banking system. CASSE's Canadian Director James Johnston explains why the debt-based banking system is the greatest barrier to degrowth towards a steady-state economy.
C153 – The Macroeconomics of De-Growth: Can a de-growth strategy be stable?
Presenter: Dina Padalkina (via SKYPE)
Description: The paper targets to provide the main economic obstacles for a de-growth strategy to be implemented and to consider required structural changes from the macroeconomic perspective. Also we try to provide insight on how the non-growing economy may be sustained after its implementation.
C154 – Utiliser l'Indice de progrès véritable pour identifier des pistes
Présentateur: Harvey Mead
Description: Les évidences fournies par la prise en compte de l'empreinte écologique et des défaillances de la croissance démontrées par le calcul d'un IPV fournissent de nombreuses pistes pour des changements de fond dans la société. Le résultat: un tissu urbain plus dense, une campagne revalorisée et la consommation réduite.
C175 – Crisis and transition in civilization: macroeconomic implications of a carbon-constrained world
Presenter: Alfredo de Romana
Description: A whole range of resource-efficient organizational alternatives are thwarted by a policy framework calibrated to produce and redistribute commodities. Only structurally decentralized resource redistribution ensuring an environmentally level playing field can avoid the dilemma between ecological catastrophe and economic dislocation, and catalyze the flourishing of life in a carbon-constrained world.
Relating / Interagir / Relacionarse
R008 – The Myth of Sustainability and the Quadrillion Dollar Economy: Why Must the Economy Grow?
Presenter: Richard Robbins
Description: In his book, Prosperity Without Growth, Tim Jackson says that "We must make economic growth sustainable or degrowth stable." This paper will example why perpetual growth is necessary and, yet, can only lead to environmental, social and political ruin. We will examine why this is so and the steps that are necessary to avoid a quadrillion dollar global economy.
R011 – Degrowth and Money: Future Scenarios
Presenters: Anitra Nelson and Ferne Edwards
Description: This symposium is designed to collaboratively explore the potential and barriers of both monetary and non-monetary strategies for achieving degrowth. Our discussion will assume a broadly agreed vision of degrowth as 'a society in which we can live better lives whilst working less and consuming less' (Latouche 2009: 9). The task is to scope the specific role/s of money in future degrowth scenarios by discursively interrogating distinct paths. The emphasis is very much on the 'how' of degrowth, what is possible given the circumstances we are moving from, why and how keeping or dispensing with money might prove difficult, and how transformation will take place.
R043 – Degrowth Equals Regrowth: A Discussion of Eduardo Galeano's work
Presenter: Anitra Nelson
Description: The term degrowth signals a break with growth, a capitalist concept measured in monetary exchange values, and shifts the stress to appreciation and production of use values. This paper discusses how the point of view of Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano highlights these distinctions, unconsciously elucidating degrowth values.
R054 – Structural Violence: The Victims of Neoliberal Growth
Presenter: Laura Westra
Description: A rigorous turn-around is needed in the definition of legal persons and corporate personhood, as only serious limits to the increasing power of legal persons may foster degrowth in order to protect the human rights of their victims.
R068 – Speed and Equity as Barriers and Tools in the Degrowth Transition
Presenter: Robert Herendeen
Description: To bridge the gap between the big picture of global overshoot and the street view of human needs, Robert Herendeen presents a framework addressing two key factors–speed and equity–as both barriers to and tools for action; illustrating for energy/carbon taxes, vehicle standards, and materials policy.
R071 – Building Compassionate Communities
Presenter: Judy Nagy
Description: Building Compassionate Communities is key for creating a sustainable society that thrives. This workshop will share the story of a suburb that has harnessed the generosity and empathy of its citizens to create a Circle of Friends model that uses project management tools and social media to help neighbours in crisis, protect the environment and experience "spiritual gifts' that have changed lives. Learn how to start a Circle of Friends in your own area and build a community that relies less on outside institutions and more on each other.
R072 – The Priced versus the Priceless
Presenter: Derek Rasmussen
Description: The fear that underlies a civilization like ours emphasizes scarcity instead of abundance. How do we recover and encourage our feeling for abundance and our appreciation of things (and nonthings) without prices? A Buddhist activist draws on a decade of work in Nunavut and personal conversations with Ivan Illich and Noam Chomsky to provide practical advice for exercising compassion without being stymied by market relations.
R073 – Selective Degrowth, Population, & Natural Rights
Presenters: Suzanne York and Randy Hayes
Description: We are at a turning point where society can reject unsustainable economic growth and replace it with growing what we truly want, and enhance this movement by acknowledging rights for nature. Join us for an invigorating discussion of how we can create this paradigm shift for a better world.
R088 – Redd or Green Economy? The bioeconomics of protecting or growing forests
Presenter: Valny Giacomelli Sobrinho (via SKYPE)
Description: Green economy is the present keyword. Shortly, it means growing economically without damaging natural resources and services. How far does it apply to forest resources whose growth is biophysically limited? The clash between forest protection (REDD) and plantations (CDM) is analyzed by an input-saving bioeconomic model for tropical and temperate economies.
R108 – Monetary and Fiscal Policy for a Steady State Economy
Presenters: Joshua Farley, Gary Flomenhoft, and Brian Kelly
Description: We propose a new set of policy goals compatible with shared prosperity on a finite planet, and the monetary and fiscal policies required to achieve them. The right to create money must be restored to the public sector, and taxes used to reduce throughput and inequality and regulate money supply.
R128 – Sortir de l'économie
Présentateur: Yves-Marie Abraham
Description: Les objecteurs de croissance prônent généralement une "sortie de l'économie". Il s'agira dans cette intervention de tenter de clarifier ce qu'ils entendent par "sortie de l'économie" et de présenter les moyens envisagés pour ce faire.
R134 – la Valeur, les valeurs
Présentateur: Julien Lamarche
Description: « Valeur », au singulier, rappelle l'utilitaire, tandis que « valeurs », au pluriel, ouvre sur l'axiologique. Nous survolerons les deux notions dans une perspective historique large, insistant sur la privatisation des valeurs et la quantification de la valeur. Nous évaluerons leur place dans la formulation d'un projet de société décroissant.
R149 – Justice climatique et décroissance
Présentateur: Roger Rashi
Description: Exploration du rapport entre le concept de décroissance et celui de « bien vivir », (bien vivre) mis de l'avant par les mouvements autochtones des Amériques. "Bien vivir" a un caractère bien plus ouvertement transformateur et anti-capitaliste que "décroissance" ce qui explique son succès auprès du mouvement pour la justice climatique.
R161 – La gouvernance environnementale et la question de la décroissance
Présentateur: Alain Létourneau
Description: Pouvons-nous dégager les processus de gouvernance environnementaux comme domaine d'études empiriques, en posant un regard critique sur le développement durable? Sans doute, et la critique de la croissance nous aide en ce sens. Mais si nous voulons que des acteurs économiques puissent participer à un rapport responsable avec la nature et les ressources, il va falloir fournir un cadre qui rend possible cette participation.
R169 – Sovereign Debt: Whose Debt Is It Anyway?
Presenters: Judy Kennedy, Mark Anielski, Richard Priestman, Keith Wilde, and Andy Storey.
Description: Three aspects of government debt will be presented: money creation and government debt financing; the role of central banks in debt creation; and debt audit commissions to determine which debts were incurred legitimately - for the public good. Discussion will follow.
R174 – Culture and Nature. Growing while Degrowing
Presenter: Ricardo dal Farra
Description: We are reaching a critical point where the relations between the resources we use, the interconnected economies and changes in our environment could take us quickly to a new reality where human beings would need to be as creative as never before to survive. Have the arts a role in all this? Have artists a responsibility in this context?
Sharing / Partager / Compartir
S012 – Degrowth and Restorative Racial Justice in the U.S.
Presenter: Brian Gilmore
Description: Degrowth and Restorative Racial Justice in the U.S. examines racial economic inequality in the U.S. and how it has been perpetuated in the modern era. It will also suggest strategies for addressing this issue if degrowth expects to be successful.
S018 – Is Socially-Just Degrowth Compatible with Capitalism?
Presenter: Karen Bell
Description: Though degrowth may be better for the natural environment, many would argue that it will increase poverty and inequality. Ironically, the rise of the degrowth movement has coincided with economic recession and stagnation in the richer countries, on a scale not seen since the 1930s. The result of this does, indeed, seem to have increased poverty and inequality. This situation forces us to consider whether degrowth is feasible in a capitalist economy, which appears to depend on growth – and if not, what this tells us about how we should transition to an equal, just and ecological society.
S028 – Degrowth and health – A case study in Costa Rica
Presenter: Heidi Monk
Description: Costa Rica achieved a massive health transition in the 1960s -1980s, with a relatively small economy, through an emphasis on an intersectoral approach to promoting health and preventing illness. Today as health expenditures spiral, we will discuss how this early approach could be used to improve health, without necessitating incessant increases in health spending.
S087 – The Path to Degrowth in Overdeveloped Countries
Presenter: Erik Assadourian (via SKYPE)
Description: How do we normalize degrowth in overdeveloped countries, where both people and the planet will benefit from working and consuming less? This talk will walk through several ways to shift consumption patterns, better distribute taxes and work hours, and help move societies away from consumerism and toward a 'plenitude' economy.
S089 – Decrecimiento y cultura política en Colombia
Ponente: Ana María Martínez Cifuentes
Descripción: Se buscará identificar algunas condiciones prácticas para abordar propuestas de Decrecimiento en Colombia, atendiendo al contexto particular de conflicto que, además de ser histórico, deviene como estructural. La presentación se realizará en un formato sencillo de fácil lectura y comprensión que equipare el saber popular con el saber académico.
S090 – Epistemología de la sustentabilidad contemporánea
Ponente: Izarelly Rosillo Pantoja
Descripción: Presentación de artículo y ponencia respecto de "Epistemología de la sustentabilidad contemporánea" el cual contiene temas como: 1) La inexistencia del desarrollo sustentable, 2) El Sistema de Cuentas económicas y ecológicas de México
3) La pobreza y su globalización, 4) La racionalidad ambiental, 5) La sustentabilidad contemporánea, 6) Otros Temas que pretender plantear que: " Vivir éticamente implica estar junto a los otros y renunciar a estar sobre los otros".
S092 – Des technologies libres vers des communautés autonomes
Présentateurs: Julien Lamarche et Francis Poisson-Gagnon
Description: Cet atelier vous invite à découvrir le monde des technologies « Open Source » et leurs principaux acteurs . Utilisées à petite échelle et développées librement partout dans le monde, elles peuvent permettre une décroissance soutenable dans les pays riches et améliorer le sort des pays en développement.
S099 – Achieving Food Self Sufficiency: Does the WWII Experience of a Small Island State Teach Us to Share?
Presenter: Susan Mahon
Description: Barbados, the Caribbean's easternmost island, was forced into food self-sufficiency during World War II. This paper addresses the islanders' determined attempts to produce food and draws conclusions on the diffusion of creative problem-solving, sharing across historic class cleavages, and the possibilities inherent in the public acceptance of generalized need.
S105 – ICTs and Degrowth: Sharing the Wealth of Nations. The Message is the Medium.
Presenter: Robert Rattle
Description: This session will explore how ICTs can contribute to degrowth from a societal, rather than a technological deterministic perspective.
S123 – Creative Construction: From Conditional Cash Transfers to Basic Income Grants and Personal and Societal Fulfullment
Presenter: Myron Frankman
Description: Exploration of the potential for the flourishing of vital communities that could arise from the establishment of unconditional basic income grants. The positive personal and community effects of existing conditional cash transfers will be examined, as will a sampling of existing 'best practices'. The focus will be on non-material growth.
S127 – Degrowth and Trade Deglobalization
Presenters: Janet Eaton, Raul Burbano, and Ruth Caplan
Description: Degrowth analysis of Neoliberalism should include awareness and critique of globalized Free Trade as a key mechanism for eliciting global economic growth and corporate profits. The roundtable will explore historical context of trade and advance recommendations for alternatives to global trade based on Prof Waldon Bello's deglobalization framework, from Ecological Economics literature, anti-globalization critique, and bottom up grass roots initiatives emerging in the US and Canada , with special reference to new approaches and perspectives coming into play in the South American context.
S129 – Degrowth, Equity, and Local/Global Redistribution
Presenter: Patricia Ellie Perkins
Description: Without growth, what can drive progressive redistribution and address historically-based material inequities, within and among countries and regions, as well as globally? This paper outlines recent trends in inequality, defines terms, outlines why equity is a fundamental goal for sustainable economic systems, and focuses on equity-enhancing redistribution processes under Degrowth.
S131 – Food and Degrowth: Food security outside and supply-and-demand economics
Presenters: Josee Methot and Aaron Vansintjan
Description: The intent of this session is to collaboratively work toward an idea of what food security can look like outside of a supply-and-demand framework. By placing emphasis on social capital and social-ecological well-being, participants will be invited to let go of growth-centric (productivist) approaches to food security and work toward a long-term, socially inclusive, and resilient vision of food systems with local roots.
S147 – Water Justice and the Green Economy
Presenter: Meera Karunananthan, Council of Canadians
Description: A water justice framework dictates the need to build economies based not only on reduced consumption, but commons-based management models that grant communities the tools to protect the environment and ensure equitable access to nature for current and future generations. This Council of Canadians roundtable will provide a critique of market mechanisms and provide examples of successful community-run models of environmental stewardship.
S148 – Rethinking Racial Justice in the Transition to Green Economies
Presenter: Khalil Shahyd
Description: This presentation will look at the concept of degrowth from the perspective of racial/ethnic and environmental justice communities. How will the transition to degrowth influence justice strategies among racial/ethnic minority communities and environmental justice movements?
S158 – Deux propositions de decroissance visant à diminuer les disparités sociales au Brésil
Présentateur: João Luís homem de Carvalho
Description: Pour réduire les différences sociales au Brésil nous suggérons une politique visant la decroissance d'au moins deux points: 1) Diminuer la production de voitures personnelles en reduisant le crédit et l'exonération fiscale, 2) Encourager (avec incitation à des pratiques agro-écologiques) la production et la distribution des aliments localement.
Experiencing / Expérimenter-vivre / Experimentar-vivir
E039 – De-Growth and Re-Growth: The Story of New England Food and Farming
Presenter: John E. Carroll
Description: The decline and collapse of the commodity and export-driven model of industrial agriculture (de-growth) in New England has opened the door to the replacement of that model with a highly de-centralized model of local food and farming (re-growth) - a revolution at the grass roots which completely rejects the centralization of the growth model we have known, based on direct marketing, farmer to consumer, and the economic empowerment (and eventual political empowerment) of local communities throughout the region.
E048 – Slow mouvement
Présentateur: Geneviève Tremblay-Racette
Description: Le slow mouvement est une philosophie de vie qui se rapproche beaucoup de la décroissance. Cette exposé parlera du mouvement général et plus particulièrement du slow food. Le slow mouvement proposé des actions très simples et concrètes, qu'on peut poser au quotidien et qui touchent les objectifs de décroissance.
E063 – Changing the (growth) channel
Presenter: Peter Graham
Description: Understanding the mediated nature of everyday experience is key to imaging how we might experience degrowth. This workshop will examine common contemporary mediators before inviting participants to "change the channel" by trying on some different lenses. This interactive workshop will provide experiential insights and potential roadmaps to use on our shared journey to degrowth.
E078 –Society v.2012: Subversive Strategy for Supplanting the Growth Imperative
Presenter: Summer Starr
Description: Can a subaltern cosmopolitan legality, a diverse, bottom up approach to law and economics, supplant the current paradigm and stand as a successful model for degrowth?
E096 – Mapping and Theorising a World beyond Economic Growth
Presenter: Donnie Maclurcan
Description: This paper presentation will cover findings from the creation of an encyclopaedic database of over 5,000 things that can (and in many cases already do) contribute to degrowth trajectories, as well as a macro-economic model that seeks to combine the wisdoms inherent in each of these databased contributions.
E107 – Video: Three women, one cycle.
Presenter: Anna Davidson
Description: This short film tells the story of three women in one cycle of growth and degrowth. Viewing the everyday practices of menstrual care across three generations, this piece discusses the personal and ecological fall-out from disposable options, and points towards the potential for social and environmental growth brought by alternatives.
E120 – Video: The "transition initiative" Techno-Industrial Ecovillage - Calafou, Spain
Presenter: Sheryle Carlson
Description: Cooperativa Integral Catalana is "a transition initiative" in Spain, using a new model of post-capitalism on the basis that a degrowth approach to living is necessary for a sustainable, equitable economy. Sheryle Carlson will relay the cooperative's actions on the ground as related to a degrowth vision and premier a video.
E121 – Work-Time Reduction and a Post-Growth Ecological Strategy
Presenter: Anders Hayden
Description: This presentation will look at the argument and evidence that work-time reduction is a key way to move beyond endless economic growth, reduce environmental impacts, and improve well-being. It will consider the obstacles to renewing the movement for work-time reduction as well as the new opportunities that are emerging.
E124 – Eco-feedback: If the walls could talk, they'd tell you to unplug your idle phone charger.
Presenter: Cheryl Gladu
Description: Eco-feedback as a tool for building a culture of conservation. You know what they say – "knowledge is power," but "timing is everything". This talk will explore the benefits of eco-feedback: how timely, often beautiful information can inspire people to reduce their resource consumption every day.
E132 – From Habitat 67 to Habitat 2067: What have we learned and how do we design for a future of declining resources?
Presenter: Myrna Hall
Description: What have we learned forty-five years after Habitat 67 about creating dense, equitable, human habitat that is ecologically and socially sustainable? American cities, particularly those of the Rust Belt, need to attract reinvestment and repopulation of their city cores. We probe how this can be achieved in a degrowth era.
E151 – Imaginons ensemble dès aujourd'hui la sociétédécroissante de demain
Présentatrice: Daniela Stan
Description: Cet atelier est une invitation à rêver afin de sortir de la « logique d'une société qui emprisonne notre capacité à imaginer autre chose que notre routine quotidienne». Que faire ? Par où commencer, avec qui? Les questions sont aussi importantes que les réponses. Notre échange devrait nous amener à trouver des d'idées qui peut-être deviendront applicables à court ou à long terme. L'invitation est lancée : «Qui veut rêver avec moi ?»
E157 – L'exode urbain, enjeu majeur du 21ème siècle?
Présentateurs: Hervé Philippe, Éric Pineault, Patrick Déry, Béatrice Roure
Description: Contrairement à l'exode rural du 20ème siècle, l'exode urbain, rendu nécessaire par la déplétion des ressources, devra faire face à de nombreux obstacles tant humains que matériels et à la perte de savoirs et savoir-faire. Cet atelier s'intéresse à identifier ces obstacles et les actions nécessaires pour favoriser la désurbanisation.
E159 – L'État des expériences de GREB
Présentateur: Patrick Déry
Description: Le GREB présentera l'état de ses expériences qui touchent notamment l'énergie (sources alternatives, efficacité énergétique, habitudes de consommation…), l'aménagement du territoire, l'architecture (construction bioclimatique solaire, cycle de vie des matériaux, mécanique du bâtiment…) et l'agroalimentaire (agriculture de proximité, maintien de la fertilité, alimentation de saison…) lors de la conférence.
E167 – Leaving Oil in the Ground - Exchange of experiences and ideas: Yasuni-ITT and Quebec anti-fracking (avec exposition de photos, « Mines au Guatemala, Gaz au Québec: même dépossession? »)
Presenters: Joan Martinez-Alier, Robert Thomson, Patrick Bonin (TBC), Nicolas Kosoy, and Leah Temper; expo-photos du Projet Accompagnement Québec-Guatemala, présentée par Marie-Dominik Langlois
Description: This round table aims at identifying the shared key elements between oil exploitation in Yasuni-ITT (Ecuador) and shale gas fracking in Quebec. We will begin with a projection of the (30-45min) documentary of Arturo Hortas on Yasuni-ITT, and then discuss the process by which the Yasuni-ITT proposed to maintain the crude oil in the ITT field underground indefinitely. Bottlenecks and milestones for this process might help the articulation of a response against fracking activities, not only in Quebec, but also in other geographic areas of our Americas.
Photos: L'exposition-photos cherche à montrer les impacts de l'exploitation minière canadienne au Guatemala et faire le parallèle avec la situation des gaz de schiste au Québec, avec comme toile de fonds la revendication à la consultation des populations directement affectées par de tels projets de
« développement ».
Last updated: 05/10/12 EC
