Degrowth was a concept that floated into our house in mid 2019. <\/span>Degrowth, the book by Giorgos Kallis<\/span><\/a> followed it in a few months later, and I confess (\ud83d\udea8 nerd alert!)\u00a0 it was \u201cunputdownable\u201d for me. We got in touch with Giorgos, out of interest to see what we could do together, he and his family stayed here during Covid lockdown for a bit, and one thing led to another! We were invited to join the Research & Degrowth Association<\/a>, as a “Living Lab”, and have since joined a few other member labs in developing the Living Labs remit and programme.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n We’ll tell you more here:<\/p>\n What is Degrowth?<\/b><\/p>\n Degrowth is a critique of the predominant neoliberal capitalist system, which pursues and prioritises economic growth over human happiness and environmental health. This is a system that has led to unfair exploitation of large numbers of people to generate wealth for a few, and has wrought unrivalled carnage on our planet in only 150 years, with no method in place to redress this imbalance. Degrowth asks us to slow down, and re-organise ourselves into a system where we put social and ecological well-being ahead of profits.\u00a0 You can read more about it here: <\/span>https:\/\/degrowth.info\/degrowth<\/span><\/a>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Why is this any different than other analytical frameworks about the current planetary crisis and mass extinction?\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n \u201c<\/span>Sustainability<\/b>\u201d, actually coined like half a century ago, starts from a human-centric position of trying to act in such a way, that we do not prejudice the ability of future generations to live on planet Earth with similar quality of life to that which current generations enjoy.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201c<\/span>Regeneration<\/b>\u201d, a more recent buzz-word and concept, starts from a planet-centric position, suggesting that we behave in a way that our actions produce planet-improving impacts, and assumes that future human generations will benefit from this (but this is not the end goal).<\/span><\/p>\n \u201c<\/span>Green growth<\/b>\u201d is the idea that the financing and fostering of fast-growing industries such as renewable energy (solar, wind, biomass, hydro) or zero emissions vehicles (electric, hydrogen), or natural-fibre clothing could mean our societies continue to be highly-shaped by neo-liberal globalised economics and big companies, but are somehow \u201cgreened\u201d by dint of the products and services being exchanged being \u201cgreen\u201d.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n There are issues with all of these systems – no strategy is perfect – and while Sustainability and Regeneration are bandied around by many companies who have no business using them, \u201cgreen growth\u201d is probably the most dangerous and insidious one.\u00a0 Kallis and the rest of the Degrowth economics academics and activists have published potent analysis on the ecological and material limits to resource extraction, and mapped this against the resource requirements of the kind of growth required by advocates of green growth to achieve global-scale replacement of \u201cdirty\u201d industries by their \u201cgreen\u201d equivalents.\u00a0 Put shortly, there simply isn\u2019t enough resource, and no way to get at it in a clean way, for the green transformation of our planet\u2019s industries to be complete without going waaaaaay past 1.5 degrees celsius of global warming, and crossing into planetary destruction.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n But degrowthers aren\u2019t the only ones talking about this, to be frank, you can even read that \u201cwe can be green, or we can have growth, but we can\u2019t have both\u201d, in the <\/span>Financial Times<\/span><\/a>.\u00a0 They\u2019ll explain it better than I can too!<\/span><\/p>\n What is a Living Lab?<\/b><\/p>\n Here is how we recently defined it at the first R&D Association Assembly of 2022:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u200b\u200b<\/span>Degrowth Living Labs are places where degrowth experiments and practice take place. Research, in its practical form, can also take place, in a Living Lab<\/span><\/p>\n What does this mean for La Bruguera?<\/b><\/p>\n A variety of things!<\/span><\/p>\n Master\u2019s Project Supervision<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n Supervision of end-of-year projects for students of the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona\u2019s <\/span>Master\u2019s in Political Ecology, Degrowth and Environmental Justice<\/span><\/a>. The R&D association is linked to the UAB, and therefore we will become available as a case study possibility for the master\u2019s students, looking into topics like \u201chow does being a business work in a degrowth transitional economy?\u201d or \u201cwhat does a degrowth business plan look like?\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n We have our first student already on board, who we will write about\/with in a further blog post in the future, who is from Inner Mongolia, and is looking through our business practises, to see if there are any particularly impactful elements of our processes which could be swapped over for low-tech, or appropriate-tech techniques which come from her indigenous Mongolian roots.\u00a0 This is going to be suuuuper interesting.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Teaching content\u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n We are going to start trying to turn the educational events and experiences which we provide here to our guests, into properly documented educational content.\u00a0 It would be wonderful one day to get this online, but in the meantime, we will begin to make this available in other ways, through the association.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n R&D retreat hosts<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n We are excited to have been chosen as the location for the R&D retreat, which will bring together lots of the leading lights of the movement for a weekend of debate, team-building, brainstorming, chilling out, and getting to know each other in the Empord\u00e0 forest, here.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Will La Bruguera teach Degrowth or host any events?\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n Totally!\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n We are excited to have been chosen as the location for the R&D retreat mentioned above, but w<\/span>e are also getting the content for a few degrowth short courses together, and getting the relevant experts to get time in the diary to provide these to our community and guests this year and next.\u00a0 We are working on a Calendar page for the website now, and will begin to advertise soon, as well as adding the short courses to the Services \/ Experiences page of the website where people can peruse the kind of stuff they can add to their holidays.<\/span><\/p>\n How can you get involved?<\/b><\/p>\n Get in touch<\/span><\/a>!\u00a0 If this interests you, there are lots of ways to get involved.\u00a0 Volunteering, attending courses, learning ways to change your own behaviour to lower its impact, staying here and joining an event or learning from our Living Lab!\u00a0 If you want to talk about it, do <\/span>get in touch<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n Further viewing \/ reading<\/b><\/p>\n Websites<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n Publications<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n Video<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Mike Duff We are now the La Bruguera Degrowth Living Lab!\u00a0 Here’s a little context and history, to explain what this means.\u00a0 Since we met, Michelle and I have been interested in (nay, concerned about) our impact on the planet, from my starting a career in urban sustainability in 2001, us doing an eco-renovation […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":6299,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[75,74,71,70],"tags":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n\n
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