Summer school on Degrowth and Environmental Justice
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
Institut de Ciència i Tecnologia Ambientals
Edifici Cn, Campus UAB
08193 Cerdanyola del Vallès
Barcelona, Spain
Cerbère (France)
This year, the third edition of the Summer School on Degrowth and Environmental Justice, organized by ICTAand Research & Degrowth, takes place place in Barcelona (Spain) and Cerbère (France), 4th-15th July 2016.
This event entails many debates focused around the issue of degrowth, as a path to environmental justice that aspires to recreate the conditions for a 'good life', or 'buen vivir', and grounded in participative democracy. It comes 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, the Summer School on Degrowth and Environmental Justice will thus try to address questions around the degrowth frame itself and how to embrace it, especially on a local level; around the integration of the diversity of degrowth sources, strategies and actors into a single proposal; on South-North/North-South dynamics around environmental justice; around the role of commons, social movements and ground-level democracy, and so on.
Emphasis will be put on bottom-up local initiatives around the world that challenge the narrative of growth-driven prosperity. Firstly, the initiatives that take place in urban context, where most of the people in the global North live, will be explored. In this respect, having new municipal council in Barcelona is a unique opportunity, for it is 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. Participants 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.
- 203 reads