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The UAB to unite worldwide experts on degrowth and environmental justice

ICTA
The ICTA-UAB organises the fifth edition of the Summer School on Degrowth and Environmental Justice from 24 June to 6 July. The theme of this year is “Making Sense by Democracy, Non-Violence, and Conviviality” which will tackle the role of degrowth and environmental justice in the transformations towards a fairer society.

22/06/2018

The Institute of Environmental Science and Technology at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (ICTA-UAB) will become a global hub of degrowth and environmental justice theories. For the fifth year running, some forty internationally renowned researchers, academics and activists from nineteen different countries will gather at the Summer School of Degrowth and Environmental Justice, which this year is entitled “Making Sense by Democracy, Non-Violence, and Conviviality”.

The school is organized by ICTA-UAB in collaboration with Research & Degrowth and will take place from June 24 to July 6, 2018, at the ICTA-UAB building located in the UAB Bellaterra Campus, as well as in Barcelona (Spain) and Cerbère (France). Degrowth is an economic theory that places its bet on downscaling of production and consumption as the only way to increase human well-being and enhance ecological conditions and equity on the planet.

The Summer School on Degrowth and Environmental Justice will reflect on transformations needed to achieve a sustainable, fair and just life. The school aims at discussing the different transformations that, based on degrowth theories, promote non-violent, democratic, autonomous and convivial ways of life, and on how these social models can flourish under the hegemony of imposing powers that strive for economic growth.

Throughout the course, cutting-edge research on degrowth and environmental justice will be disseminated, and participants will discuss how to articulate stable collaborations between activists and researchers on radical socio-ecological transformations. The school will focus on three primary aspects: challenges, proposals and processes. Lectures and workshops will help in theorizing the challenges, understanding grassroots environmental justice activism and the politics of degrowth will be the entry point into the proposals, while working in small groups with more collaboration and understanding academic-activist engagement for creating a better community will help in discovering the processes.

It will bring together leading scholars in the field of degrowth and environmental justice such as Joan Martínez Alier, Professor of Economics and Economic History at the UAB and ICTA-UAB researcher, and ICTA-UAB researchers Giorgos Kallis, Beatriz Rodriguez-Labajos, Anke Schaffartzik, Federico Demaria and Giacomo d’Alisa, among many others.