The 2024 Degrowth Conference

Wish you were there.

Source: weathercrave.ca

You may have missed it, as there wasn’t much media coverage, but last week (18 – 21 of June), the 10^th International Degrowth Conference and the 15^th Conference of the European Society for Ecological Economics were held in Pontevedra, Spain.

I question the wisdom of holding a conference in June in a beautiful coastal town in Spain. Would you want to be walking somewhere in the picture above, or listening to hundreds of academics present papers on degrowth and ecological economics?

Look, I really like degrowth and ecological economics, but I might just pick some beach time in Pontevedra over that.

The conference included academic lectures, expert panels, and artistic workshops. Over 500 individuals attended, but unfortunately, you won’t find much information about the conference online.

I know some people who attended (I did not) and talked to them, but I’ve been disappointed that I couldn’t find much online or summarized in places beyond social media. For comparison’s sake, go to YouTube and type in “Beyond Growth Conference 2023” and you will likely need to take a day or two to sift through the speakers and panels at last year’s Beyond Growth Conference 2023, held in Brussels. If you haven’t seen that yet, it is a great resource for those looking to see the best and brightest in the degrowth world.

It’s too bad we didn’t get the same from Pontevedra this year, but maybe we will next year when the annual degrowth conference is held in Norway.

If you haven’t already, I encourage you to check out some of the organizations that helped put on the conference. Here they are: Research and Degrowth, Degrowth.info, European Society for Ecological Economics, Universidad de Vigo, and the Post-Growth Innovation Lab.  

So, let’s fix this.

Part of the reason I write this blog is to spread the word about degrowth, ecological economics, and a well-being economy. We don’t talk enough about an economy and culture that is focused on correcting the environmental problems we face by putting people and the planet above profit.  

Degrowth is becoming more popular and more understood because more people are hearing about it and spreading the word. I am hoping you can help grow this community in the future.

For an analog to what I see now in the degrowth world, I look back at the rise of sustainability and Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) considerations in the investing world that I worked in for most of the past 20 years.

Back in 2006, the UN introduced the Principles for Responsible Investment which called for integrating ESG into the investment process. Through the years, ESG and sustainability slowly made their way into the collective consciousness of the investment world.

Back then, nearly 20 years ago, if you went to a finance conference, there might be one breakout session on the last morning of the conference on ESG or sustainability with about a dozen people in attendance. If you stuck around until the end of the conference to go to those sessions, you would likely hear something new and exciting, from someone new and exciting about sustainability.

Today there are dozens of whole conferences dedicated to ESG or sustainability. I don’t attend most of them anymore, because I know most of the people talking, I know what they are going to say, and traveling to and from the conference to meet one or two new people isn’t worth the cost.

Let’s hope that we get to the same place with degrowth. I hope that soon I write about not attending “yet another” degrowth conference with people I have seen speaking at the last degrowth conference.

We are a long way from that world. So, keep spreading the word. Next year’s conference is in Europe, as have all the conferences before that. But don’t wait for the degrowth conference to come to you.

Use the degrowth database, this blog, or other resources to reach out to people, start talking to them, meet and organize, and put together our degrowth events.

I’ll get started. I’m in North America. If someone has an idea for an in-person degrowth event in North America that I can help with, I’m all ears. I’ve been working on this too, and some people want to do this. So, if you have any good or bad ideas, let me know. Bad ideas can usually be fixed.  

And then hopefully, in the not-too-distant future, there will be so many degrowth events, that we will complain on forums like this that we stopped going because they just aren’t that exciting anymore.