Systemic alternatives for the economic growth model
Speakers: Arpita Bisht (academic researcher), Pablo Solon (Fundación Solon), Nick Meynen (EEB)
Moderator: Martha Claeys
Language: English
Our linear economic growth model faces obstacles within and between countries: an increasing use of resources, high environmental and climate costs, and unequal social welfare.
Redesigning our economic system to fit planetary and social boundaries must become a priority to ensure that we address the climate and biodiversity crises with the highest urgency.
Many alternatives are already emerging to restructure society away from the economic growth model and towards a more holistic relationship between people and nature. Three speakers will share their strategies and experiences from their very own concrete realities and dynamics.
This session promotes a constructive and creative dialogue between these different visions and makes a case for processes of complementarity. This complementarity of visions does not seek to build just one single alternative but to develop multiple systemic alternatives.
Speakers
Pablo Solón
Pablo Solón is the Executive Director of Fundacion Solon. He is an activist, researcher and policy analyst in the areas of water, climate, the environment, trade, finance and systemic alternatives. He was the Ambassador of Bolivia to the United Nations from 2009 to 2011.
He is most well known for championing the rights of nature and the fight for climate justice in the international climate negotiations when he was Chief Negotiator of Bolivia.
He is also known for his work on securing the approval of the UN Resolution sponsored by Bolivia on the Human Right to Water and Sanitation in 2010. He was also the Co-organizer of the People’s World Conference on Climate Change and Mother Earth Rights in Cochabamba, Bolivia.
Arpita Bisht
Dr. Arpita Bisht is a a Marie-Sklodowska Curie LEaDing PostDoctoral Fellow at the ISS, Den Haag.
Her work focuses on environmental and social justice resistance movements and Ecological Distribution Conflicts (EDCs) generated as a result of expanding mineral commodity frontiers.
Her research lies at the intersection of political ecology, ecological economics, cultural and social anthropology, human geography, human ecology, conflict studies, natural resource management, policy studies and post-growth economics.
Nick Meynen
Nick Meynen is a freelance journalist, geographer, conflict expert, and works as a Policy Officer for Environmental and Economic Justice at the European Environmental Bureau (EEB).
He writes and speaks about globalization, natural resources, the relationship between man and nature and environmental conflicts.
His most recent books are: De val van Icarus. Het virus als kantelpunt (2020) en Frontlijnen. Een reis langs de achterkant van de wereldeconomie (2017).
