Some 430 researchers, professors, students, activists, professionals, artisans, cooperative members and representatives of social movements from 38 countries met in Mexico City, as registered attendees at the Conference, to discuss the latest conceptual and empirical contributions of the movements that object to unlimited growth (degrowth-descrecimiento), usually understood as a response to the breakdown of contemporary society.
Structured mainly by thematic presentations in parallel sessions and plenary discussions, the Conference was held between 3 and 7 September at the Palacio de Medicina (Former School of Medicine) of the UNAM-Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mexico, the first four days and at the Teatro del Pueblo, the last day.
Below you can see the Report of January 10, 2019:
To download, please, click here
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?
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?
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?