The organizational team of the conference comprises of Zagreb-based organizations active in the fields of scientific research and communication, climate justice, energy transition, degrowth activism and visual culture: IPE – Institute for Political Ecology, DOOR – Society for Designing Sustainable Development, Multimedia Institute (MaMa), Institute for Social Research in Zagreb, Scientists for Climate and What How and for Whom/WHW. 9th International conference is realized in partnership with the City of Zagreb and its institutions. The conference was held in Zagreb from August 29 to September 2, 2023. The conference takes place in a post-pandemic, postquake, municipalist green transition city which is reinventing itself for a safer and kinder, even if precarious and climate-constrained, century. It brought together over 800 participants: scientists, activists, political organisers, researchers and cultural figures from all over the world. The rich conference program includes varied research presentations and discussion panels, with keynote speakers including Kohei Saito, Françoise Vergès, Roland Ngam, Karin Doolan, Diana Ürge-Vorsatz, Paul Stubbs, Marwa Arsanios, Pablo Martinez, faridrakun (ruangrupa), Alexandra Köves…
What new alliances can be put together and what new strategies can be put forward among degrowth and post-development thinkers, social movements and civil society? How can degrowth envision new forms of sociability and social solidarity through new food systems, agroecology, solidarity economy…? How can it ally with working-class interests, both industrial and metaindutrial, and build alliances with organisations of industrial and reproductive labour? How can degrowth represent/help/support these struggles and teach decolonisation of western imaginary, thought and practice? How can degrowth advance forces of ecological and social reproduction in the web of life? How to best operationalise research aimed at deconstructing the dominant capitalist worldview and normalising the counterhegemonic worldviews? What are the potentials of art in transforming the existing world? How can it spawn new degrowth subjectivities? How can the production and presentation of art be more responsible towards resources? How can art put forward new cultural practices committed to degrowth? How can art renew alliances between artistic ecologies, communities, institutional experiments and new forms of activism for social and environmental justice?