2CND GAP MEETING ON TRANSPORT&MOBILITY, THURSDAY SEPT.4
The goal of today's meeting was to come up with some specific proposals for degrowth on mobility. While we had some time to discuss our ideas and proposals in small groups (3) it was still due to time limit that we weren't able to fully work through all the issues, yet a start was made.
Thanks to a process of grouping our ideas along main themes and then subsequently signifying our main interests by marking the top three ideas with pen, we came up with the following themes:
1. Free public transport / cycling / sustainable transport
2. Modal shift – the transformative process of changing belief or adherence to the car, and switching to sustainable transport /degrowth of mobility
3. Lobbying/community organization/ Vision for Urban design
Here you can see the proposals grouped according to the flow chart of Transform/Vision including both consensual as well as controversial topics. It should be noted that due to lack of time, most of our proposals are in the transform realm and also most of them are consensual.
Transform / Consensual
(from free transport section)
- insurance system to share public transport fines (a la planka.nu)
- public transport companies in public hand (public stock company)
- electric bus
- improving quality of public transport -> right to access infrastructure and service
- making car transport less attractive (parking fees, speed limits, access limits)
- education campaign about the needs of making pt free and examples
- decreasing prices of public transport -> affordable for everyone
- do it step by step
- make bike transport more attractive (bikeways ...)
(from modal shift section)
- increase attractiveness of bike and public transport
- common cargo bikes
- fantasyfull bikes, stats on bikes instead of cars
- nice and funny public transport (budapest electric light tram example)
- Pedibus – Walking school bus
- Reduce parking places for sake of bike path (example Friedrichshain Berlin)
- Programs to go by bike for new cyclists (budapest bebiciklizes example)
Vision / Consensual(from visions for urban design section)
- lobby city/region/state around holistic urban design
- community organizing for holistic urban design
Transform / Controversial
(from free transport section)
- it is a right to get to health care by PT. It is a human right on a second level
- is transportation a human right? Would create demands? Where is the limit?
In addition to this start, we also collected email addresses so that we can try and continue these topics even after the conference in a degrowth working group on transport and mobility.
Results of group 1, 4.9.2014
"Can hightech be produced democratically & sustainable in a degrowth society?"
- Do we have answers?
- Today or visions for future?
- High tech needs rate earth elements etc. causing social & environmental conflicts => could recycling make this possible => are recycling rates we have ... enough for high tech supply
- Rebound effect: if we have fair produced high tech - will we use it less?
- We need commons, peer-to-peer, share economy for democratization
- Every high tech gadget today means less ploughs tomorrow
- Recycling in Africa -> mountains of garbage
- Will technical skills and the ability to run high tech projects increase freedom and self-confidence?
- What about democracy? What does it men to produce high tech democratically?
- World will be divided into growth and degrowth parts (two societies)
- Producing guns with 3d fablabs => govenance for decentralization needed?
- "Global village construction set" makes you free
- Some things are too complex for decentral production
- What are relevant needs of society high tech can satisfy?
- Innovation, research, development needs money - who is doing the funding?
- Only if people don't have to do very unhealthy jobs those things can be produced - e.g. mining activties, coltan
- Is someone willing to do it (e.g. mining) (without market forces)
- Will open access education lead to a more sophistaced usage of technology?
Visions for tomorrow
- Open Source in schools ***
- Female technology: intuitive, integrative, self-explaining ****
- If people have the need for high tech they should be ready to produce it from raw materials onwards ****
- Energy to mass replicator like in star trek, in every household *
- Technology in the right hands leads to more free time for ... *
- Consumers' wishlist for developers **
- More sharing of technological devices in society **
- Basic income -> more freedom for specialits *
- (technical) knowledge leads to freeedom & independence -> peaceful co-existence *
- Low-tech, low-energy consumption revolution **
- Different materials in high-tech are recycleable
- Independent research necessary (from industry etc.) *
Thanks for a good discussion - too short! Here are a few thoughts on the three questions Ulrich proposed.
Resource and Extraction GAP
1) How should the issues of "resources and extraction" be approached from the core of the degrowth proposal and persepctive?
- Must start with the question: extraction for what, and for whom?
- OK: to support lives based on buen vivir, simplicity, sufficiency, solidarity (which must connect the people at the point of extraction to the end users of what is extracted)
- Not OK: to make rich capitalist investors even richer, extractivism
- extraction must be consistent with the concept of buen vivir, which means that it must only cause unavaoidable ecological harm and must completely avoid social coercion or domination, i.e. as little extraction as possible
- unavoidability is tied to elimination of overconsumption, over-wealth, luxury (e.g. gold and diamonds for jewelry), financial speculation, etc.
- solidarity and community must bridge the North-South divide; and ultimate goal of degrowth should be to eliminate this divide
- for fossil fuels, extraction of what, and where, needs to derive from a cautious estimate of "burnable carbon", with a global democratic process (!!) for deciding what to extract and where, aiming for the least ecological and social disruption achievable. On the ecological side, this should give strong consideration to energy return on energy invested (EROI), so that the greatest energy return possible is achieved; and use of burnable carbon should be focused largely on transition to renewable energy systems combined with drastic decrease in energy demand.
- extraction related to renewable energy systems should also be tied to the least achievable ecological and social disruption
- extraction should be funded by the public sector, and nobody should get overly wealthy from financing or working in extractive sectors
2) How can the hegemony of developmentalism and extractivisim in the global South and the Global North be questioned? And what is the role of the DG proposal in the global North in this?
- this is a transitional problem – a goal of degrowth is to eliminate this hegemony, which has the effect of making all consumers complicit to some extent
- debt forgiveness
- eliminate austerity-based structural adjustment
3) How can the experiences of struggles and proposals of the global South contribute to degrowth debates and practices in the global North?
- I will think more about this!
Geoff
Summary of the outcomes of the GAP:
Our group worked on an action plan based on the results of barcelona conference in order to build collective actions. As a movement, we think that we first need a more clear identity and that could be achieve throug wirting of a sort of manifesto, in which to declare generally our sources, who we are, who we are not, what to do and how to do it.
That will help to easily map the movement itself. Afterthat, we will need to create phisical hubs and local clubs (eg. Can decreiz for training and research and local clubs as experienced by MDF, linked with virtual networks aimed at facilitating knoledge exchange.
Afterall this process as a Degrowth international movement we will easier develop alliance with NGOS and conflicting/oppositional subjects.
We costitute a working group to help this process and we invite everyone who is intersted to join it!
For any information you can write to: jean.aillon@gmail.com
Topics for discussion
Education
learning what matters
at public schools
consequences of consumption
awareness raising
value chain problems
re-skilling
Advertisement
tax
reduce
restrict
influence on social status
Standards/Labels
better?
More?
Transparency
Basic Income
Products
materials
life cycles
open questions