Protocol Day 2 (consumption)

Gap on Consumption – September 4th, 2014, Degrowth Conference, S313

Attendence: 17 People
(clockwise: Felix, Lukas, Corinna, Martin, Dieter, Kathi, Christine, Melani, Anke, Martin, Alex, Karl-Heinz, Christiane, Christopher, Ben, Anne, Dietmar) – Anke is new (welcome!), Kathrin has a flew, good health!

Time Schedule:

17:30-17:35 warming up

17:45-17:45 resume of day 1 + feedback

17:45-17:50 Barcelona

18:06-18:45 stirring paper II

18:45-18:55 stirring paper III

18:40-19:00 consensus for moving forward

warming up:

How you feel about yesterday? 3 words

Resume of day 1 + Feedback from community:

Read all cards from the group session and distribute them in the room by interest

Barcelona:

again put attention on some notes from Barcelona and connect them with our ideas

Paper II: Self-providing as a motor for degrowth

Corinna:

Assumptions:

• All people move in one direction → growth, degrowth is a different direction.

• Self provision is the answer to degrowth!

• Micro level: Changing direction will make people feel more skillfull.

• Meso level: More resources will be in place.

• Macro level: systematic change, paradigmic change

Questions:

• How we can make people change directions?

Action:

• Academia for sufficiency which tries to provide small containers of sufficiency actions. Spaces where local self sufficiency is practiced.

Discussion:

• Handshake: Some like the narrative of self sufficiency. / Others don´t see it as a big pathway. / Agreement that on sum goods it might be nice.

• Anke: Some agree on micro level of self-production will produce self-change, but discussion on macro level results.

• Dieter: Corina´s research message is it will change the macro level.

• …: Problem of upscaling to some goods can danger the good narrative.

• Melani: I thought of auto-archism , which I feel is not a way. But in the discussion about learning and bringing together communities it is useful for.

• Christiane: Do we need a positive narrative?

Paper III: Where does Responsibility begin and end?

Anke:

Assumptions:

• Material flow accounting on country level on hidden material flows. E.g. you not only import a good with its materials but also the energy and the waste kept back for production of the good.

• It is going to become a indicator using GDP methods and aiming for being at such a status.

• EU lines out such initiatives to be fruitful.

Questions:

• What can the individual consumer be held responsibility for? There are boundaries of making people accountable for it.

Action:

• Research on an new indicator.

Discussions

• Responsibility is related also to social impacts. / We focus on environmental impact.

• Pricing is not the point, but putting awareness.

• What is it for? / Data helps to see my responsibility. Or at least

• Internalization? Is it a product footprint?/ Yes it is a footprint system. Global North is supposed to dematerialize. The indicator may help doing it. But no internalization.

• How is it related to eco-labeling?/ Life-cycle analysis and eco-labeling, yes! Footprint differently tries to deeper back track the resource need.

Consensus for moving on tomorrow:

• we stop for now

• we want to rate and cluster proposals in the room

• we narrow it down tomorrow on 3-4

• we cluster today

• we prioritize the clusters

Pictures from the last GAP session, see Attachments.