Results from Barcelona 2010 on the topic

Childhood

The following are the results of the GAP at the Degrowth Conference 2010 in Barcelona that are particularly relevant for this working group

The document first presents a summary, including links to other working groups (in bold & italic), and then the complete results of those Barcelona working groups with some relations to the current one

Summary

Incentives are needed to encourage companies to enable work sharing and part-time work (including provision of accessible childcare). Unpaid work needs to be shared (education, sharing/cohousing).

Advertising from public spaces should be limited and all ads that affect children/vulnerable people, health, involve CO2-intensive sectors, or have sexist messages should be regulated (human nature -dealing with needs, indicators). For the purpose bans, regulation and taxation of advertisement should be introduced.

The degrowth movement welcomes the conscious procreation, co-responsibility of the partners in child rearing (education).

Working Groups from 2010 GAP in Barcelona with some connections

Work-sharing

Research questions

• Relationship between labor productivity and reduced resource use?

• How can we achieve changing recognition of different kinds of paid work and unpaid work?

• What is the definition of work in a degrowth society?

• Reflections on barriers to lower working hours from other elements of degrowth

• Debt Consumerism Low incomes

• Access to the conditions for a good life

• What is the aim of work in a degrowth society?

• Relationship between a basic income and reduced working hours

• Research that can recognize the value and contribution of the core economy (unpaid, household work) in our current economy

Political proposals

• Tax reform / Tax on resources, not labor / A more progressive income tax, with a larger tax-free threshold

• Incentives to encourage companies to enable work sharing and part-time work

• Other uses of taxes

• Need to provide accessible childcare, including at conferences like these!

• Legislation that supports co-housing

• Need to reduce the power of financial capital

• Focus on gender issues, including the equality of pay for genders

How to deal with advertising

• Advertising increases consumption by creating the illusion that people can satisfy their needs – real or imaginary - through products. It is wasteful and is driven by the competitive nature of the capitalist system.

• To deal with advertising, we need a bottom-up and a top-down approach. Bottom-up focusses on changing people’s perception of advertising to recognise its manipulative nature. Top-down refers to government action to impose limits. More research is needed on freeing communications channels from advertising.

Bottom-up proposals:

• Empower people to enable them to deconstruct advertising

• Detox from the imagery of the consumption society

• Community child protection from advertising

• Debunking the myth of satisfying immaterial needs with material goods

• Reduce inequality – inequality drives consumerism

• Expose ubiquity of advertising

• Expose exploitation of values in advertising

• Direct action, ie subvertising

Top-down proposals:

• Ban everything (all ads) possible from public space

• Regulate everything (all ads) possible that affect kids/vulnerable people, health, CO2-intensive sectors, sexist messages, etc.

• Advertising should be as expensive as possible, i.e. taxes, accounting standards, etc.

Research questions:

• Do we need ombudsmen for advertising?

• How to free the internet from advertising?

• How to organise free communications financially? (i.e. What are the real costs of a newspaper?)

Participative/direct democracy

Research questions:

• In a degrowth scenario, what ideas and practices of direct / participatory democracy are relevant for different scales of decision-making? Including with respect to different types of enterprises??

• In a degrowth trajectory, what kind of incentives can / should be set to motivate people to participate in political activity and decision-making?

• How can we ensure that existing participative decision-making arrangements are taken into account by existing institutional framework?

Proposals:

• Create spaces and networks for enhanced participation in politics and decision-making (e.g. citizen juries)

• We should de-commercialize / de-commodify politics

• Increase critical and deliberative capacity by creating holistic spaces of education

Demography and degrowth

Proposals:

• The degrowth movement advocates full reproductive rights taking into account environmental and social consequences for our own and other species

• The degrowth movement welcomes the conscious procreation, co-responsiblity of the partners in child rearing

• The degrowth movement opposes government coercion and opposes the incentives to increase the birthrate as seen in some countries

• The degrowth movement welcomes the declining rate of population growth and peak population

• Migration is not caused by overpopulation but primarily because of the extreme inequalities in the world. The degrowth movement supports the right to migrate and opposes the “lifeboat” ethics. Simultaneously, degrowth movement supports the shift to greater local resilience to reduce the need to migrate.

Research proposals:

• When women are given the right to choose and when the appropriate health services exist, population rates tend to decline. Further research is required on this topic.

• The viability and usefulness of alternative ways of living (ie. Nomadism) should be investigated.

• Research on forms of cohabilitation, its relation to happiness and resource use is required.