Who we are
Research & Degrowth International, a think-and-act-tank dedicated to the radical transformation of our economies and societies through research, advocacy, education, training and events around degrowth.
As stewards of a more equitable and ecologically balanced world, R&Di stands at the forefront of a movement challenging the relentless pursuit of growth.
We are driven by the belief that a flourishing society can thrive without perpetually expanding its economic footprint, and we invite you to join us in reshaping the narrative towards a degrowth-oriented paradigm.
Our philosophy
R&Di defines degrowth as a multi-level voluntary path towards reduction of production and consumption aiming at ecological sustainability, good life, liberty, and social justice. For R&Di, degrowth is grounded in ecology, ecological economics, anthropology, psychology, and social sciences in general. In the degrowth process, R&Di is concerned with democracy, international cooperation, and understanding as opposed to societal closure, fragmentation, and authoritarianism.
Our values
Our core values are simplicity, care, conviviality and equality.
By simplicity we mean living simply (modestly/frugally) so that others may simply live.
By care we mean mutual aid and support for one another – especially for the more vulnerable members of societies.
By conviviality we mean a culture of sharing and finding joy in togetherness.
By equality we mean equal access to the earth’s commons, with the right to an adequate share of resources to live a decent life, for everyone, independent of race, ethnicity, gender or sexual preference.
As an organization we try to practice the values we espouse and invest significant time in internal processes of caring for one another, checking privilege and reflecting on – and addressing – visible and invisible hierarchies (based on position, class, gender, race).
We strongly believe in the value of dialogue and the importance of civic conversations – our goal is not to convince everyone that degrowth is the way to go, but to have an honest conversation about the limits of the current model and alternatives to it.
Our accomplishments
Advocacy backed by science-based research. Our researchers publish groundbreaking research at the frontier of the science of degrowth and convert it into debate changing policy briefs.
Training the next generation with the world’s first master’s programs on degrowth. In collaboration with ICTA-UAB we have organized five years of in- person master’s in Barcelona, two years of online master’s as well as annual international summer schools since 2010.
Events such as the 2023 Beyond Growth Conference in the European Parliament, co- organized by our team, that bring together important stakeholders from researchers to activists and top-level politicians.
Participating in the Horizon MERGE Project Measuring what matters: Improving usability and accessibility of policy frameworks and indicators for multidimensional well-being through collaboration
Living Lab spaces for experimentation and putting degrowth into practice on a local scale.
The central hub of the global degrowth community that continues to build networks with other degrowth and activist movements.
Our vision
We dream of societies becoming slower by design, not disaster. With our work and teachings we want to spread in civil society a conversation about the costs and limits of growth, spurring creative thought and innovation on alternatives to a one-way future consisting only of growth. Against the unfolding climate and socio-economic breakdown, our vision is to create the knowledges, practices and politics necessary for living well within limits.
Our theory of
change
Our theory of change builds on Antonio Gramsci’s political thought. We envisage a coevolution of transformational personal, communal and political change. As persons we have to be the change that we want to see in the world – dedicating more and more of our time in post/non-capitalist spaces of production and consumption. Unless, however, we change together with others, and unless we give a collective expression to alternative desires, our personal change becomes life-stylism. Coming together in alternative post-capitalist projects we are bound to face the limits of our actions and risk being eaten up by the market, or crashed by the state, unless we organize to defend such new commons, and the alternative economies we create. This requires political work and organizing.
We emphasise the coevolutionary aspects of this dynamic. We wont have political and policy change unless there are people who want it; and there will not be people who want it unless political institutions allow spaces where people can desire different things. Protest, reform and pre-figurative – personal and collective – change are then interrelated, one feeding the other.
A central concept is that of ‘common senses’ (in the plural) – taken for granted ideas that circulate in society, some of them with counter-hegemonic potential. At R&Di we want to cultivate alternative, post-capitalist senses of being, spread them in society, and demonstrate with research and embodied projects the value, and applicability of such common senses, informing in this way broader political projects.
Our short—
term goals
Strategizing with ‘movers and shakers’
at an international level on how to
mainstream the degrowth conversation
and make inroads to policy making.
Training different segments of society in ecological economics and post-growth thinking, co-developing solutions for viable futures.
Start mapping the most important degrowth/post-capitalist initiatives around the world, to visibilize them, and to start creating structures of support.
Foster the incipient international activist movement around degrowth.
Create knowledge on how to do degrowth in different domains of social life, and in different geographies or social contexts.
Demonstrate through a network of living labs the value of more modest and shared modes of living.
