"We must learn to live well with less"

"The production, distribution and consumption model we have will become smaller and smaller, and more and more people will be left out of the system."

"In addition to small scale changes such as self-management of businesses, etc. there is a need for large scale changes, with the involvement of committed politicians." 

Anthropologist, engineer, lecturer and social educator, Yayo Herrero is considered one of the most influential activists in eco-feminism in all of Europe. Her tone was kind, but at the same time clear and convincing as she explains the global situation. At the end of the master lecture she gave at the UAB on 3 March, Herrero kindly answered all the questions students had for her in the packed UAB Theatre Hall. The same kindness she used in the interview held before the lecture.

-What is eco-feminism?
It is a current of thought and social movement that brings together the concerns of women's movements - centuries old - and more recent environmental movements, only a few decades old. The first person to use this concept was Françoise d’Eaubonne in the early 1970s, shortly after the Meadows' report The Limits of Growth (1971) was published. This report is the starting point of eco-feminism.

-How did this dialogue between ecology and feminism come about?
It appeared at the moment in which the scientific community tells us that our lives are at risk. It is then that we see that life depends on nature, and that the life of human beings is impossible if we do not have a nature from which we can obtain everything we need to live. But this nature has physical boundaries that have been overstepped.

In addition, life is contained in bodies that must be cared for throughout a lifetime, especially in the childhood years, when ill, older and in vulnerable situations, and those who have cared for these bodies throughout history are women. Not because we are genetically prepared for that, but because we live in patriarchal societies with specific gender-related division of tasks in which women are non-freely assigned the task of caring for people.

-You talk about a "civilisation crisis". Why do you consider our civilisation to be in a crisis?
Our civilisation is based almost hegemonically on the availability of oil. And since 2006, when we reached peak oil, the point of maximum production, there began to be a doubt about the industrialised and globalised production model. So the alternative would be to substitute oil for clean and renewable energy, including nuclear energy, albeit its inconveniences. However, these energies depend on minerals that have also reached their point of maximum extraction or can no longer be found, And renewable energy will never be able to substitute what oil has provided us with.

-What does that entail?
It means that all material things will have to degrow. this is not an option, it is a fact. The production, distribution and consumption model we have will become smaller and smaller, and more and more people will be left out of the system.

-Leave more and more people aside?
Yes. For example, we can see this with what is happening in Lesbos. Ultra right-wing xenophobic people were hitting the migrants arriving to Lesbos this morning. In other words, we are now at a point where the fence enclosing rich Europe is closed and does not let migrants enter, but the same fence opens and closes every day to let in energy, minerals, materials, food, and other products coming from these same countries. Rich Europe would not last even two months without receiving all the goods from the countries they are exploiting, where the land is deteriorating, where there are wars and people are forced to flee. It is a profound expansion of inequalities.

And within our country we also have people who are unemployed and cannot change their situation, even people who work but see their work conditions become worse and worse. That has a lot to do with the economic models which do not grow through a real economic, but are part of a financial economy. Since the early 1980s, the economy stopped being real and is growing at a spectacular rate, and that does not generate workplaces. If we also add the crisis of caring for people, we have a civilisation crisis.

-But if we stop buying, many people lose their jobs… isn't that a catch-22? What is the alternative?
We need to rethink the model. Degrowth on the material scale of the economy is a reality and that forces us to think of the needs of people which must be fulfilled and not create new needs as conventional economic models do. Products that are dispensable are being manufactured with raw materials that are becoming scarcer. I am referring to needs such as a healthy diet, housing, paying less in utility bills, etc. A principle of sufficiency, learning to live well with less (less materials and less energy).

If we think like that, we can see what needs to be produced and done. For example, in the agriculture sector, we can grow food that will not poison us or the land, and buy what is grown close to us, with short distribution circuits, reduce the consumption of industrialised animal protein. Or in the field of mobility, we need to rethink how we transport ourselves and move around, and foster walking and using bicycles.

-You often also mention the need for a different city model.
Yes, we speak of the need of polycentric cities. In other words, cities in which inhabitants move around less in cars or public transport because everything they need is nearby. The mayor of Paris, for example, started a campaign focused on “everything at 15 minutes”, by reformulating public transport and readjusting housing, with lower rent prices if you live close to where you work.

-It must be difficult to tackle the housing issue... it's a free market.
It is not easy. In addition to small scale changes such as self-management of businesses, etc. there is a need for large scale changes, with the involvement of committed politicians. In terms of housing, we need politicians who intervene in the rental market, for example.

-Since we are at a university I must ask you how young people can contribute to these changes.
I am very happy in this sense. I am now 54 years old and I have been involved in social movements since I was 14, and I have never seen such opposition to so many structural problems as I am seeing now, and by such young members of society. Everything  represented by movements such as Fridays for Future or the feminist movement gives me tons of hope. Plus, in the past months I find that secondary school students are aware and fighting to change these issues.  

But I must say that the university is behind in this aspect: it is not playing the role it should have in tackling this civilisation crisis and emergency we are experiencing. However, there are lecturers and groups of young poeple working to solve this crisis.

-Shall we end this interview with optimism, then?
I am not sure optimism is the word. I would say that, given all that is happening around us, I see many possibilities in our local surroundings, and it is worth making changes.