Results from Barcelona 2010 on the topic

Consumption

The following are the results of the GAP at the Degrowth Conference 2010 in Barcelona that are particularly relevant for this working group.

The presents the complete results of those Barcelona working groups with some relations the current one.

Working Groups from 2010 GAP in Barcelona with some connections:

Reduction of natural resource exploitation

Political proposals

• Global extractive moratoria on areas with high biodiversity and ethnographic value

• Internalization and transparency of mining real (and long term) costs

• Binding capacity for local communities in deciding about mining projects. Full information, a proper process and respecting national and international environmental protection norms

• To create funds for financing independent researches on mining

• To promote companies international accountability (campaining in countries of origin)

Research questions

• How could we enforce a national cap on fossil fuels and other non-renewable resources while maintaining fair access?

• How to tax advertising for discouraging resource consumption? With which criteria?

• Which could be the results of an international found for compensating socio-environmental impacts?

Also disagreement points

Basic income and income ceiling

Basic income for all

Research Themes/Questions:

• Comparisons between BI and a negative income tax plus a social welfare state to inform public opinion. That is, not only from a monetary-based approach, but also from a moral perspective.

• Will economic degrowth provide sufficient means to finance a BI institution in the long-run?

• Can a BI institution be a viable and fruitful alternative to development aid?

• How has human psychology, values, and moral ideas played a role in preventing the application of a BI system in the past? What psychological insights can be derived from human populations where BI as an institution has been applied?

Issues needing further attention:

• In order to finance BI sustainably a tax-based approach should be implemented progressively on income rate, rent or ownership, natural resource use, and consumption.

• Is a basic income preferred to a guaranteed-job-offer? Should local currencies, or product-specific vouchers play an important role in the making-up of a basic income-rent?

• How to implement BI at a political level; in particular taking into account voter participation in political processes.

• What are the links between a society of employment and a society addicted to consumption?

Income Ceiling

IC is on the political agenda in Europe now.

Measures to redistribute income & wealth and measures to give equal access to environmental services are compatible and, in fact, they should go together.

Proposals on IC:

1. Minimum-maximum ratio

1. Ratio within companies

2. New ways on attaining social status (in the absence of high incomes) should be found

Social Metabolism and transitions

Socio-Political aspects

• Link environmental movements with social movements and focus on underlying root causes to form alliances.

• Aim at the consumption level of the sustainable peoples/classes of the world though this consumption levels take place in an unsustainable systems and therefore cultural changes are necessary even among within these peoples.

• Create autonomous and intentional communities (niches of sustainability), and connect them. Promote this way of living and intervene in the system.

• We need to change the current narratives that focus on material wealth to shift the focus on values that acknowledge the sustainability principles.

Bio-physical sphere

Global level

• Closing material cycles as much as possible

• Reinforce the product design-reduce its material requirements-make it more re-usable and re-cyclable.

• Reduce, eliminate toxic chemicals (industrial fertilizers)

• Return to the traditional, innovative way of agriculture-agro-ecology

• Reduce the global throughput of energy and materials adjusting it to the carrying capacity of the biosphere

• Put a limit to human appropriation of net primary production. Limit deforestation, change in industrial agriculture

• Internalize real costs

Local and regional levels

• Not exporting trash

• Reduce long-distance imports

• Less energy consumption in inputs

• Switching to locally produced renewable energy

• Construct with regional materials

• Bio-climatic architectural design

• Use seasonal, ecological and local food

• Re-ruralisation

• Foster proximity relationships through urban redesign-re-organization

• Reduce the transport infra-structure and make it more collective

• Promote sharing of electronic home equipment. Perceive them as commons

Which social changes we expect with bio-physical decrease?

• Demographic

• Human time

• Fool sovereignty

• Immigration

• Gender issues