Building Alternative Livelihoods
in times of ecological and political crisis

https://www.isee-esee-degrowth2021.net/

International Online Joint Conference of the international degrowth research networks, the International Society for Ecological Economics, and the European Society for Ecological Economics, hosted by University of Manchester, UK, July 5-8, 2021

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The ISEE-ESEE-DEGROWTH 2021 Conference begins next Tuesday and will run for four days, from Noon to 8.30 pm GMT+1. More than a thousand people around the world have registered for the more than 130 sessions and another 300 individual papers. To attend all or any of the presentations, you are required to REGISTER (at NO CHARGE).

Note that some, but not all, sessions will be recorded.

The draft programme is now available on the conference website.

There is a very full programme of 135 parallel sessions on a wide range of themes on degrowth and ecological economics and with a global reach of speakers from Asia, Africa, South America, North America, Australia, and Europe.

Please do look at the programme for full details of sessions (all registered attendees will receive a full list of actual speaker names closer to the date of the conference).

The conference is free to attend, and registration is open.

Links

Link to the conference:
https://www.isee-esee-degrowth2021.net/ 

Link to overview of events:
https://www.isee-esee-degrowth2021.net/call-for-papers 

Link to the registration:
https://www.eventsforce.net/hg3/197/register

Plenary Panels Include

Building alternative livelihoods in time of crisis: The roles of academia and activism

• Participants to include Tania Briceno, Gabriela Cabaña, Alexandra Köves, Tonny Nowshin, Clive Spash, Julia Steinberger 

The future of ecological economics

• Participants: Bob Costanza, Corinna Dengler, Beatriz Saes, Bengi Akbulut, Lisi Krall, Louison Cahen-Fourot

UBI, UBS, UAA, and care income 

• Participants to include Jan Otto Andersson, Maeve Cohen, and Vincent Liegey

Trade unions and the Just Transition

• Participants to include Sean Byres (Trademark), Paul Goldrick Kelly (Nevin Economic Research Institute), Brenda O Neill (Waterford Institute of Technology)

Mainstreaming new economics: Levers for change in a post-COVID economic recovery

• Speakers:  Jasper Kenter, Bina Agarwal, Jane Mariara, Sandra Waddock, Simone Martino,  Sam Buckton

Plenary speakers include Naomi Klein, Glicéria Jésus da Silva, and George Monbiot. 

Register Now!

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Building Alternative Livelihoods in times of political and ecological crisis is the overarching theme of the conference. Economic systems have always co-evolved with social, environmental, and technological systems. The worsening ecological and climate crisis means we must urgently abandon practices of production and consumption associated with ecological degradation or relying on unsustainable extractivism. We must develop alternative livelihoods that are harmonious with planetary limits and safeguard material living conditions.  We must invent and trial new ways of working, providing for everyone’s needs, caring for each other, and democratising the economy. We must seek clarity about the systems of provisioning which will be utilised in a society beyond growth where states and markets play more peripheral roles in the allocation of resources. In short, we must ask what are the alternative livelihoods which ensure the future conditions of societal wellbeing.

The construction of alternative livelihoods entails a radical transformation of economy, culture, and society. What are the institutional arrangements which safely provide for basic needs, social stability, and democratic legitimacy in the transition to environmental sustainability? How can both social justice and ecological justice for the populations of the Global North and the Global South be ensured? How can political support be mobilised for the necessary transformations? How can a socially just transition to environmental sustainability be made politically viable and democratically legitimate?

We list below some of the topics that the conference will cover. We also look forward to ideas beyond these, which would expand the geographical and thematic scope of degrowth and ecological economics, as well as advance and further substantiate current  ​debates in these fields.

1. The economy beyond states and markets
2. The future of employment, work and care
3. Debates on degrowth, green growth, the circular economy, and decoupling
4. Forms of decommodification and non-capitalist modes of resource allocation
5. The democratisation of the economy and alternative models and forms of organisation
6. The production and conservation of energy
7. Low carbon and low energy futures
8. Commoning resources
9. Money, debt and the financial system
10. Monetary and non-monetary measures of prosperity and well-being
11. A universal basic income or universal basic services
12. The green new deal, degrowth, and ecological economics
13. The decentralisation of power
14. Decolonization and feminist economics as challenges to power
15. Post- growth policy-making, law and governance
16. How to respond to the ethno-nationalist environmentalism and anti-environmentalism of ascendant populist groups
17. The politics of transitions to sustainability and the lessons to be learned from past socio-economic and cultural transformation
18. Spatial issues: planning, housing and the future of cities
19. Diversity, degrowth, and ecological economics: class, race, gender, abilities
20. Sustainable development goals, degrowth, and ecological economics
21. Conflict resolution processes and socio-ecological transformations
22. Biodiversity, ecosystem services, and sustainable livelihoods
23. Degrowth, ecological economics, and social metabolism
24. Political economy and ecological economics/degrowth
25. Sustainable livelihoods and ecological sufficiency
26. Languages of valuation and ecological conflicts
27. Extractivism, Environmental Justice, and illicit activities
28. Social-ecological economics and degrowth
29. Production, consumption,  degrowth, and ecological economics
30. Strategies for achieving a socially just sustainability transition / degrowth : lessons from the Vienna conference
31.    Economy and livelihoods after Covid-19: The Covid-19 pandemic and responses to it have had deeply unequal impacts on lives, livelihoods, and well-being across race, gender, and class. At the same time, it has opened up the space for new possibilities for building alternative livelihoods and economies that can take us beyond a capitalist economy that requires ever-expanding growth. This is an additional call for papers that look more specifically at the implications of the Covid-19 pandemic both for the forms of inequality that exist within current society and for the possibilities for building and rebuilding alternative livelihoods.   Existing contributors to the conference are also welcome to revise their papers in the light of the pandemic if they would like to do so.