Summer School on Degrowth and Environmental Justice

We are pleased to announce the third edition of the Summer School on Degrowth and Environmental Justice, organized by ICTAand Research & Degrowth, taking place in Barcelona (Spain) and Cerbère (France), 4th-15th July 2016!

The intellectual and emotional impetus for degrowth, as a path to environmental justice that aspires to recreate the conditions for a 'good life', or 'buen vivir', as grounded in participative democracy, will have another momentum this summer. The ICTA/R&D summer school come as a warm up to the 5th international conference on degrowth, hosted in Budapest this year.

Using various teaching tools, such as academic lectures, discussions or participative workshops, this event will thus try to tackles issues around embracing and implementing the degrowth frame within communities and societal organizations; around the integration of the diversity of degrowth sources, strategies and actors into a single proposal; around South-North and North-South dynamics, and so on. 

Around the world, a myriad of bottom-up local initiatives challenge the narrative of growth-driven prosperity. The importance of deliberation and building bridges bring us to focus on areas of convergence between EJ and degrowth. Firstly, the initiatives that take place in urban context, where most of the people in the global North live, will be explored. To this end we will use the unique opportunity of having new municipal council in Barcelona, rooted in the city’s civil society, social movements and solidarity economy networks. Secondly, the defence of the commons, and the processes of communing, will be embraced as a theoretical base for developing degrowth proposals. Thus we will focus on effective collective practices and radically democratic solutions for organising social relationships and serve material needs.

Last but not least one day will be dedicated to a visit and exploration of a nearby environmental conflict, from where participants will move on to Can Masdéu, an occupied peri-urban, semi-rural, intentional community and social center on the outskirts of Barcelona, dedicated to experiencing social and environmental sustainability.