The 2018 First North-South Conference on Degrowth, Mexico City to be held on September 3 to 7, 2018, will be a forum to present the latest in thought and practice of degrowth in the world and put it in dialogue with the context of the countries of the global North and South countries in the twenty-first century.

Axial or central themes

SURVIVAL

How can we unleash the mobilization and the social organization that are indispensable to face the new risks or threats that Climate Change and new technologies from the North have created: genetic engineering, artificial intelligence, robotics, nanotechnology, synthetic biology, cybernetics, geoengineering, among others? How to cope with the pressures that Growth Societies have introduced in the global environment? How to address the growing violence against the human body? How to deal with scientific essays intended to produce genetically modified individuals? How to cope with the extinction of species, desespeciación, and the transhumanism movement; How to address nuclear leaks, waste and radioactive poisoning? How to deal with military errors of nuclearized countries and terrorism induced by governments?

CULTURES

How to protect languages, indigenous cultures, wisdoms, words and free expression, from modern cultural totalitarianism, represented by the "pensée unique" and the invasive technologies with illusory promises of happiness that cannot fulfill? How to confront the multidimensional war against indigenous people, peasants and workers: irruption of the mass media in their collective imaginary, paternalist attitudes, plundering of their land and resources, extractivism, intensive contamination of their environment? What lessons and inspirations do vernacular cultures offer to the degrowth movement? How can cultural diversity in the North and in the South be strengthened?

WEALTH

How can we radically reduce the economic ties among people, the sweeping dependency on markets and the concentration of wealth? How can we escape from the dominant concepts of poverty and wealth that prevail in a Growth Society where Science and Technology are drivers? How can we create a Society that radically reduces the dominance by Economy and Technology and instead save the Natural and Cultural richness of the world? How can we defend and increase the biological and cultural diversity that the Economy and Technology destroy every day: clean oceans and rivers, the beauty of the landscapes, the free relationships face to face, friendship, collaboration, solidarity, communal living, contemplation, human rhythm and human scale? How can we eliminate the wealth that forms the basis of the destruction of the life on Earth?

Cross-cutting themes

Based on the conclusions of Budapest 2016, the following seven transversal Axes have been established, for the whole of special parallel proposals and individual presentations, together with the thematic axes of the Conference:

1. Degrowth in the North and Descrecimiento in the South

Differences and similarities of ideas and practice of degrowth, decroissance, descrecita, decrecimiento, postwachstum in the North and descrecimiento, Buena Vida, neo zapatismo in the South; convergences of the degrowth movements in the North with similar movements in the South.

2. The decolonization of the social imaginary

The Schooling Society. Publicity and media manipulation, Facebook, twitter and internet. The Society of the Spectacle. The American Dream. Lifestyles. Changes in the psicosocial organization; Daily consumption; Economic ideas and ideals. Mystification of work, productivity and competitiveness. Urban life. Megaprojects

3. The connection between the local actions and the global actions

Think globally and act locally. Why ideologies are against the concrete reality?. State, religions, freedom and degrowth; the relationship of the global disasters and the local ones: Mother Nature as the enemy; the human being as part of the ecology. Propaganda and power relations. Revolution and Tecnique. The encarnation of the thought. The roots of the riot. Rejection to use power weapons. The articulation of the local and global actions in benefit of the ecology, cultures, communities survival, local economy and direct democracy.

4. Links and connections with related movements

With feminism, Indigenous movements, La Via Campesina, Political Ecology, Social Ecology, Anarchism, Ecosocialism, Communalism, Agro-ecology, Animal rights, Ecological economics, Solidarity economy, Economy of equivalences, Gandhian Non Violence, Human Rights, LGBT, Transition Towns, Slow Food, Climate and Environmental Justice, Buen Vivir, Filosofías mesoamericanas.

5. Convivial science and technology

Recovery of the sense and proportionality in the science and technique produced in private and State institutions. Ways out of the scientific reductionism and the quantifications; Global resistance to new technologies: geo-engineering, synthetic biology, artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, robotics, Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO) , electronic, open-pit mining, fracking, deep water, mining, mega-projects; the need to deter the hyper specialization and the technique created in the heart of a large private or public organizations, to concentrate power; rejection of the planned obsolescence; importance of the distality of the technique; Popular and vernacular technique. Multidisciplinary; de-professionalization of society.

6. Individuals, groups, communities or institutions that make the change

Autonomy vs heteronomy. Institutions that serve for the purpose for what they were created. Individuals and groups that help change institutions. Communities that make radical changes.

7. Global Action Now!

Alliance of global alliances to address the climate, ecological, water, biodiversity, cultures, communities, cities, societies, disasters. To confront the "pensée unique" of globalization.

Sub-themes

Work

Cities and infrastructures

Transport and mobility

Democracy/construction of political decisions

Commons

Finance, currencies, commerce

Agriculture

Energy

Consumption and publicity

Spectacles, television, radio and newspapers

Schooling

Clinics and hospitals

Investigation centers and universities

Constitutions, jurisprudences, legislations, governments.

Militarization, security forces, paramilitary, espionage, prisons, concentration camps, genocides

Huge scale scientific experiments

Public Relations and lobbies

Transnationals, franchises, maquila, outsourcing

Social limits to growth, well-being and good life

Environmental limits to growth and environmental conflicts in the North and South

Social enterprise, cooperatives and solidarity-based economy

Gender

Technique