This article is part of a series that highlights why The Beyond Growth 2023 Conference aligns with several of the ten theses of ECOLISE
The Beyond Growth Conference, taking place from May 15-17, 2023, is set to bring together experts, activists, and practitioners from around the world to discuss the urgent need for transformative change in our societies.
The conference has several mutually reinforcing goals, including:
- discussing the significance of economic growth as a policy goal
- shifting the discourse towards future-oriented economic policymaking
- shaping the EU’s path to a more resilient economic agenda
- creating real policy impact with new proposals to establish a new social, economic, and environmental contract, and creating new and unusual alliances between a great diversity of stakeholders
In this context, the importance of transformative change cannot be overstated. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has stressed the need for fundamental external and internal transformation, including changes to policies and legislation, but also to culture, values, and attitudes. The IPCC defines transformative change as “a system-wide change that requires more than technological change through consideration of social and economic factors that, with technology, can bring about rapid change at scale.”
CLIs have been living transformative change for decades, showing that a good life within planetary boundaries is possible. Holistically-oriented processes of socio-ecological innovation, such as those found in the Transition movement and ecovillages, are enabling a high quality of life with ecological and carbon footprints that are far lower than national averages. CLIs bring something crucial – a systemic view of the planetary crisis, which sees the interconnectedness of different symptoms such as climate change, biodiversity loss, pollution and their root causes in an extractive economy.
The European Green Deal (EGD) stands for a potential paradigm shift at European policy-making levels, indicating that the time is ripe for fruitful connections between pioneering CLIs and forward-thinking civil servants and policymakers. The systemic ambition of the EGD is palpable, especially in policy packages which stand for binding targets in legislation such as the EU Climate Law and the proposed EU Nature Restoration Law, but also overall strategic approaches such as Farm to Fork or the circular economy action plan.
In light of this, ECOLISE calls for:
- A structured stakeholder dialogue to be established between the EU and community-led initiatives, with a focus on community-led transformation and taking the European Green Deal to the local level.
- Obligatory inclusion of CLIs within consultation bodies at all levels of policy-making and funding, in accordance with the partnership principle.
- Communication from the EU acknowledging the relevance of collective citizen action in the needed systemic change, and the role of CLIs in this.
- A new integrated EU policy on community-led transformation and resilience, integrating and updating existing EU local development funding instruments, such as Community-Led Local Development (LEADER/CLLD), and also including horizontal measures to ensure that community-led approaches are mainstreamed across other relevant policy areas (e.g., climate, energy, food, mobility, healthcare).
The Beyond Growth Conference is a timely reminder of the importance of community-led transformative change in our societies. It is essential that we listen to and support the work of CLIs, as they provide crucial models for the kind of systemic change that is needed to address the planetary crisis we face.
The link to the European Green Deal
The EU is working towards the 2030 Agenda and the SDGs, yet without an overall prioritisation of a healthy biosphere, and including SDG 8 with its demand for sustained economic growth. Arguably, the European Green Deal is the main instrument for implementing the 2030 Agenda – and the EU’s new definition of “sustainable development” in itself. The EU has started to mainstream this notion of sustainable development into all its policies, including local development policies within Europe. One example: The Rural Pact and its goals as part of the Long Term Vision for rural areas embrace a holistic notion of sustainable development, with social, economic and environmental aspects. Yet the vision and its action plan lack the prioritisation of a healthy biosphere as a prerequisite for all human activities (see thesis 2), as well as a strong notion of intergenerational and social justice. Also, rural development is still funded and defined as part of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), which still places “competitive agriculture” as its priority. The EGD’s Farm to Fork strategy with its focus on sustainable food systems is meant as a corrective to the CAP, yet it is currently blocked mainly due to vested interests from agro-industries. Leading NGOs such as the EEB are warning that the new CAP (starting in 2023) will not deliver on the EGD.
This article is part of a series that highlights why the The Beyond Growth 2023 Conference aligns with several of the ten theses of ECOLISE
The Beyond Growth Conference, taking place from May 15-17, 2023, is set to bring together experts, activists, and practitioners from around the world to discuss the urgent need for transformative change in our societies.
The conference has several mutually reinforcing goals, including:
- discussing the significance of economic growth as a policy goal
- shifting the discourse towards future-oriented economic policymaking
- shaping the EU’s path to a more resilient economic agenda
- creating real policy impact with new proposals to establish a new social, economic, and environmental contract, and creating new and unusual alliances between a great diversity of stakeholders
