Can Mexico City’s roof gardens help the metropolis shrug off its smog? Green roofs sprouting across Mexican capital not only purify the air but aid recovery of hospital patients, says environment chief

Via: http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2014/apr/24/mexico-city-roof-gardens-pollution-smog

In a sheltered corner of one of the greatest megacities on Earth, there is a place where lizards careen around tree trunks, butterflies drink nectar from vermillion flowers and hummingbirds whisk the heavy air with their wings.

Stand in the botanical gardens of the Bosque de Chapultepec (the Chapultepec forest) and listen carefully enough, and something remarkable happens: birdsong begins to pierce the groan of trucks and the screech of taxi horns from the long avenue that bisects the park.

The gardens are home to one of a growing number of azoteas verdes – or green roofs – that are springing up around Mexico City as part of the metropolis’s efforts to purge its air of the pollution that has long been among its least-desired claims to fame.

The azotea verde atop the circular single-story offices of the botanical gardens, is planted with hardy stonecrop, which can withstand the Mexico City summer, but which also produces oxygen and serves as a filter to draw out the carbon dioxide and heavy metal particles in the air. As well as providing the park’s squirrels with an arena in which to practise their parkour, the roof help regulates the temperature of the offices below and soaks up rainwater to keep the building dry.

Last year, the city’s environment secretariat spent almost $1m (£595,000) on the azoteas verdes project, bringing the total area of green roofs in hospitals, schools and government buildings to 21,949 sq m. This year, the investment will rise by a third.

Mexico City’s environment secretary, Tanya Müller, says: “In a city like ours where urban development puts pressure on the space we have at ground level, we have to take advantage of our rooftops to create a green urban infrastructure.”

Mexico City’s environment minister Tanya Müller stands in front of a screen showing live updates on pollution in the city

The green roofs do far more than simply purify the air: they reduce the “heat island effect”, teach children about nature and speed up the recuperation rates of hospital patients, she adds.

A little way across town, not far from the city’s ancient heart, the Zócalo, sits the secretariat’s air-monitoring lab. It too has been given over to greenery and from its neatly planted roof, where dedicated staff congregate for lunchtime exercise classes, the haze that blankets the capital is plain to see. It smudges the outlines of distant towerblocks, as well as the mountains that enclose the city and its 21 million inhabitants. But, as Müller is keen to point out, fighting air pollution demands rather more technological solutions than sowing seeds on rooftops.

Her glass-and-steel office, which overlooks the Zócalo, feels like a curious hybrid of an internet startup office and an architectural practice. On the wall by her desk is an enormous screen with a live Twitter feed and electronic maps showing the temperature and ozone levels of Mexico City and the surrounding area. On a wet April afternoon, the ozone levels are creeping above the normal levels, but other pollutants are within the usual range.

“I have this dashboard on my smartphone and it’s the same dashboard as the department of air monitoring has and the mayor has,” Müller says. “We know how the air quality is every day and whether we have to take decisions.”

Readings from the 29 air-monitoring stations in the city and the surrounding state of Mexico can trigger a variety of responses. If pollution levels are seriously high and remain so for 48 hours, the environment secretariat’s Hoy No Circula (No driving today) ban kicks in, and those cars with registration plates of a certain colour and two-digit code are not allowed on the roads.

Anyone found driving when they shouldn’t be has their plates taken away and must pay what Müller describes as a very harsh fine of 20 days’ pay based on the Mexico City minimum wage. “Even though the measures aren’t very popular – we’re the first administration not to have suspended Hoy No Circula for any holiday – they are very responsible,” she adds proudly.

Unsurprisingly, Müller, who cycles to work, is a big fan of pedal power. The two mountain bikes parked in a rack outside her office, up the stairs from the Diego Rivera murals that decorate the walls, suggest that her staff are too.

A garden on the roof of the environment secretary’s air-monitoring labs in Mexico City

By expanding the city’s Metro system and investing in the Ecobici bike hire scheme – which is used for about 26,000 journeys a day – she hopes to wean people off their dependence on cars. “We still have a long way to go: although 80% of the population uses public transport, the city is still very car-orientated,” Müller says. “What we’re trying to do is make people conscious of how you use you car: it has to be in a much more rational and responsible manner.”

Other initiatives to improve the city’s air quality over the past two decades – such as moving refineries beyond its boundaries and introducing cleaner buses – appear to be paying off. Between 1990 and 2012, levels of ozone fell from 43 parts per billion to 27 parts per billion; sulphur dioxide from 55 parts per billion to five parts per billion, and carbon monoxide from 84 parts per billion to 10 parts per billion.

Muller says air quality is her priority “because it has an impact on your health and that obviously has consequences for your quality of life”. She adds: “We’re working on air quality and climate change together, because whatever we do for air quality and emissions will have a positive effect on climate change. At the end of the day, we want a city that can offer better quality of life for its citizens.”

Mexico City’s efforts to clean up its act have not gone unnoticed; Müller recently met officials from Tehran who wanted to compare notes, while members of the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group have also shown interest in the city’s smartphone apps.

As Mexico begins to shrug off its smog and attendant grimy reputation, Müller believes its strategies could help cities further north. “What’s very interesting for us is what’s happening right now in Paris and London: we somehow have this perception that in these very developed, first-world European cities with great transport and infrastructure, you’ve overcome these issues of air quality,” she says.

“But we’re seeing that it’s not so. The origin and the problem is the same: it’s the use of private automobiles. People need to know that even if you have a great public transport system, if you do not rationalise private car use, you’re going to have problems.”

Greenwashing in Vauban

By Roxana Slavcheva

 

Acknowledgements

I would like to first of all thank the Bartlett School of Architecture and Planning at UCL for awarding me the Sir Herbert Henry Bartlett travel award, which allowed me to visit Freiburg for the purpose of this investigation. Secondly, I thank Ani Gollas from the bottom of my heart for sparking my interest and providing me with foremost insight into this report’s topic, for welcoming me into her home, facilitating the logistics of my sojourn in Vauban and suggesting interviewee contacts whenever possible. I am grateful for the wonderful people I met while in Vauban and Freiburg and especially to my interviewees for their cooperativeness and professionalism. Lastly, I am very much indebted to my professors and colleagues at the Bartlett Development Planning Unit and my MSc program in Urban Economic Development. It is thanks to our studies, formal and informal discussions that I became deeply interested in the topic of this report and chose to pursue this interest further.

Foreword

I set out to visit Vauban, the eco-district of Freiburg im Breisgau in southwestern Germany, with the intention to interview local residents. I was interested in why they settled in this green-minded, newly-built district and what sacrifices they may have to make to live there rather than in a non-eco residence. Vauban is cited in the literature and media as a model eco-neighborhood within the eco-city of Freiburg. I was curious to explore, however, the underlying cause for the eco-district to be planned, designed and inhabited in its current shape and form. Was Vauban’s attractiveness a result of employment opportunities located there, a heightened sense of safety, or was the primary pull factor the eco lifestyle imbedded in every aspect of daily routine? How often do Vauban residents go into town (Freiburg or other cities) and for what purpose – shopping, amenities? How often do they use a car and for what purpose – commuting to and back from work, commercial activities? Most importantly, I wanted to find out what they missed the most in Vauban and what they wished the district had more of. Did they feel like they were making any sacrifices living there? These questions were engraved in my mind since I had read Andrew Purvis’s critique published in The Guardian in 2008, questioning the viability of this often-cited example of environmental sustainability.

Nevertheless, Vauban residents in general did not feel comfortable speaking about their decision to live in the neighborhood. The impression was that they had already received requests for interviews by previous researchers and did not see the point in continuing to participate in others. They refused to be treated as subjects in a great experiment but wished to be left in peace to enjoy their consciously chosen lifestyle. Perhaps too many scholars have spent time studying, researching and critiquing a grassroots movement such as the Vauban bottom-up, participatory planning process without realizing that not every example can be replicated with the same result. Neither are its problems necessarily a result of the organizational structure but that outside factors matter too.

Green City Hotel Vauban

As a result of Vauban’s fame, its inhabitants have developed wariness towards researchers and journalists. Yet, in the process of conducting field research, I found a topic that touched the hearts of most residents in this small, tight-knit community. The following report discusses a recent building project, completed and opened in June 2013 in Vauban. With construction finished, Green City Hotel Vauban has been the center of controversy publicized by the local and national media, but without receiving international recognition. I set out to explore if accusations hold ground on whether the hotel deceives the public that it is indeed “green” by capitalizing on Freiburg’s reputation as a green city. This is a popular marketing tactic known as greenwashing, which Investopedia defines as the use of the term “green” to manipulate public opinion to support ecological initiatives or images but in reality operating “in a way that is damaging to the environment or in an opposite manner to the goal of the announced initiatives […] through misleading advertising and unsubstantiated claims”. Through interviews, the investigation led me to uncover the true causes for controversy in building this hotel in the Vauban eco-district.

Vauban has several housing co-operatives that look something like this one: Selbstorganisierte unabhängige Siedlungsinitiative (SUSI), July 2013

 

The co-operatives, and one in particular called SUSI, were central to Vauban’s design and development. Although several inhabitants and members of the SUSI office did not wish to be interviewed under the pretext that all information could be found on the organization’s website, one dweller (who preferred to remain anonymous) agreed to respond to inquiries via e-mail correspondence. The interviewee is an architect who lives at the housing co-operative SUSI for the duration of a six-month long internship. She admitted that she is not particularly involved in any activism but regularly attends social events organized by SUSI such as the SUSI jubilee and live music concerts in the co-operative’s café lobby. She dubbed SUSI “the heart of Vauban” and described it as “extremely important for the spirit and authenticity of the district”. The interviewee elaborated: “It is where the development of the district started from and where ideas about sustainability, community and self-organization were able to grow in the first place. Nevertheless, SUSI is not entirely connected with Vauban, but is still an independent unit, an island within the district.”

She was not aware if and how the public was notified of the project for the building of Green City Hotel Vauban or whether it was first proposed with the support of the city administration. She underlined, however, that SUSI was not supportive of this project. As far as she knew, SUSI inhabitants enjoyed the open space previously provided in lieu of the current hotel building and would have preferred that either an appropriate alternative space was proposed for having what in German is called a “Wagenplatz”, an open trailer space in English, and/or that social housing buildings were built on the site currently occupied by the hotel. She admitted to never having heard of the hotel management having asked for public opinion or participation during the design and construction process. Previously, on the land where the hotel is currently located, there were community people illegally occupying the land and living in caravans, who were removed by the police. The interviewee referred to these as the “Rhino inhabitants”, who according to her and the local media resisted but were completely peaceful in their resistance. Yet, people from outside, who sympathized with the dislocated people, started riots by burning barricades and throwing paint bombs at the hotel’s façade, which according to the interviewee “was not at all in the sense of Rhino”. However, they did feel disappointed that the media only emphasized the violent part of the resistance in its reporting. After all, such news is much more sensational than civil disobedience or peaceful protests. She was not aware neither where the Rhino inhabitants went, nor whether they had been compensated. Neither was she aware of the usual process of dealing with such issues but commented that there was an impressive number of police officers removing the inhabitants of Rhino.

SUSI is located in immediate proximity – less than 50m – to a controversial, newly-built, three-star hotel, the Green City Hotel Vauban:

 

Green City Hotel Vauban’s lobby, July 2013

 

Green City Hotel Vauban’s façade with remnant paint bomb markings, July 2013

In their turn, staff members at the Green City Hotel Vauban were responsive and willing to partake in an improvised, short-notice interview. They seemed to take their PR aspect of the job seriously. They confirmed that plans for the project began three years ago, in 2011, with the name of the hotel Green City Hotel Vauban admittedly stemming from the character for which the area is famous. The interviewed Assistant to the Manager, Ms. Nadine Regel, stressed the uniqueness of the hotel in its dual emphasis on inclusion and ecology. By inclusion was meant the employment of handicapped or disabled staff. The ratio of disabled staff working at the hotel was 11 out of 19. All of the jobs were taken on by local people from Freiburg. However, only 3 out of the 49 rooms were wheelchair accessible. Since the hotel employed handicapped people, it has almost twice as many employees than a hotel this size normally does (around 10-11 employees according to Ms. Regel). Therefore, the hotel bore an additional cost to provide more salaries. The ecology aspect consisted of planting flowers and plants in pots placed on windows, expecting them to grow and provide insulation – warmth in the winter and coolness and shade in the summer. Moreover, the energy-saving aspect consisted mainly of having installed solar panels on the roof and water-cooling walls to avoid using air conditioning in the summer. Ms. Regel confirmed the hotel’s practice to encourage guests not to request to have their towels or sheets washed and changed every day. However, she clarified that if the guest preferred it, they would adhere to the “customer is always right” rule and change them every day. Car parking was also discouraged since there was limited possibility (12-14 spaces) in the area reserved next to the hotel which included a per diem parking tariff of 5€.

When questioned about the history of the hotel from its inception, design, construction, completion and everything in between, Ms. Regel was evasive, maintaining that she was a recent hire (since beginning of June 2013) and did not possess this knowledge. When pressed to name some hurdles the project may have faced, she mentioned that the architect hired for this hotel had no experience in building hotels before. The Assistant to the Manager did not know why the architect was hired in the first place then. Moreover, when questioned about the land’s use before the hotel plan, she stated that there had previously been people living there, though not on developed residential land, but in caravans and RVs without legal property rights to the land. Ms. Regel acknowledged that there were some “problems” with the previous albeit-illegal occupants of the land. She confirmed that there were protests but that overall the hotel would benefit local businesses by providing accommodation during big, popular events such as the famous Freiburg summer jazz festival.

When asked to comment on whether SUSI feels that the hotel is exploiting Vauban’s reputation of a green district and Freiburg’s of a green city, the first interviewee living at SUSI could not confirm the co-operative community’s previous accusations that that the hotel is involved in greenwashing. According to her, the main issue is that “housing is required in Freiburg and a hotel does not help solve this problem, that both the hotel and the housing units which have been built are expensive and large, so that only rich people will be able to afford them, while more and smaller units could have provided room to live for a broader range of and more people”. Moreover, she stressed that there has been criticism that the handicapped and disabled people employed at the hotel do not earn as much as non-handicapped employees. This does not support Ms. Regel’s aforementioned argument that the hotel incurs higher costs in salaries for hiring more people. Finally, she added, however, that she thought it was “good that the building has been done in an ecological manner”.

The question remains whether Green City Hotel Vauban strives to achieve a lower carbon output, reduced energy use and waste as it advertises vis-à-vis its name. Some hotels have encouraged eco-friendly behavior from their guests (e.g. not changing the sheets or towels every day in order to save on washing them up and wasting resources such as water and electricity) but as a whole do not have a reduced carbon impact or cancel this behavior by wasting in other ways. Those in favor of green marketing and greenwashing practices acknowledge this trend as a step in the right direction, better than not even attempting to care for the environment. Generally, at least the hotel is promoting an environmentally friendly way of life. This is in the interest not only of green activists but the entire human population. Furthermore, according to some defenders of the greenwashing trend, such superficial championing of eco causes and practices may actually cause a genuine reduction in damaging behaviors towards the environment. However, as a consumer or customer, one surely feels at least a bit cheated and offended by the greenwasher’s assumption that society is ill-informed, easily-manipulated and/or superficial, in the sense that they do not care enough for reducing their carbon footprint and leading a green lifestyle, but want to merely appear that way, mimicking the greenwasher’s behavior.

In Vauban’s case, the source of the problem – the reason why the heart of Vauban’s community is angered – is multifold. Firstly, the hotel’s construction encroached on land that was not vacant, although the displaced people did not own or claim any legal right to it. They were squatting, highly mobile and living in caravans so technically they could move onto another site. Yet, the community stepped in by organizing and standing up for these people who did not have rights and therefore their voice did not matter in legal terms. Secondly, the decision for the hotel’s construction came from the top, approved by urban planners and administration, but without participation from the civil society. This is a community priding itself in the participatory process of urban planning, coming together as a forum and designing its living space from the bottom up. Since people felt so strongly that the land should not be developed, because in their mind it was already occupied by their community members (albeit illegally), then the disappointment with the administration’s lack of support for the displaced is not surprising. Thirdly, as foreshadowed by the interviewed SUSI occupant, Vauban has more immediate and important issues at present that require creating affordable housing for those in need rather than erecting a building to house short-term eco-tourists. The question remains whether the city of Freiburg needs more hotels. There are plenty inside the city and even more around the popular hiking destination of the Black Forest to choose from.

Finally, the fourth reason is the hotel’s greenwashing practice of exploiting the city and the community’s reputation for private gains. This accusation is made apparent through the white banner hung on the SUSI building, mocking Vauban’s claim to fame and welcoming the visitor to “Greenwash-City”. The public seems to agree that using the “green’ adjective to describe the hotel is misleading and utilized only to advance the hotel’s monetizing aims. This is echoed especially in the local media, which stipulates that the hotel makes no mention of the fact that it has not been constructed to “Passivhaus” (passive house) standard of high energy efficiency and much less energy consumption. Although commercial buildings in the district are not required to be built to this standard according to the administration, this is not the case for new residential buildings in the eco-district (Forum Vauban). By omitting to state this fact, Green City Hotel Vauban overstates its commitment to the ecological aspect of its design and operation and thus misleads the public for private gains.

The banner hung on the SUSI building’s fence, July 2013

 

Nevertheless, its claim is that private gains are also social gains. By being an inclusive hotel, it empowers community members who normally may not have the opportunity to participate as full members of society. Moreover, people are encouraged to stay at the hotel in order to help the hotel help the handicapped. The model of hiring handicapped persons to empower them through job opportunities is not new but has been replicated in hotels all over Germany. One cannot help but ask then, if the hotel’s main attracting attribute is social inclusion, why not name it “Inclusive Hotel Vauban”? Is the “Green City” in the name just a way to acknowledge Vauban’s reputation but not to directly profit from it? The line is blurred especially since other commercial franchises in the district have avoided using the word “green” in their title perhaps precisely so that they do not fall into a greenwashing trap. 

References

Forum Vauban. Last accessed September 18, 2013. Available at http://www.vauban.de/forum/index.php

Investopedia. Greenwashing Definition. Last accessed September 18, 2013. Available at http://www.investopedia.com/terms/g/greenwashing.asp

Purvis, A. (2008). Is this the greenest city in the world? The Observer, Sunday 23 March, 2008. Last accessed September 18, 2013. Available at http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2008/mar/23/freiburg.germany.greenest.city

Presentations of Urban Studies and Environmental Sciences within the ChileGlobal Seminars London [ChileGlobal]

It is a series of seminars jointly organized by Chileans studying and working in London, part of the UCLU Chilean Society and ChileGlobal. The aim of this seminar was discuss about researchs that relates topics such as Urban Studies and Environmental Sciences.

Here is the list of presentations that appears in this video:

1. Pablo Salas – U. Cambridge: Climate Change Mitigation Cost or Investment? A Paradigm Shift.

2. Paola Valencia / UCL: Lessons learned from the UK Residential Energy Efficiency Policy and how these can help develop the Chilean approach.

3. Néstor Garza / U. Cambridge: Skycrapers and the Economy in Santiago: 64 Floors of Globalization Agenda.

4. Francisco Vergara Perucich / UCL: Democratic Cities: Santiago as the Paradox Of A Democratisation Process. 1990-2012 .

Conflict Over Natural Resources in Cities [via: Polis]

resource: polis: Conflict Over Natural Resources in Cities.

When thinking of conflicts over natural resources, we tend to think of rural resources:oil in South Sudan, deforestation in Bolivia, dam building in the Brazilian Amazon,blood diamonds in Angola. In the United States, one might recall the Spotted Owl or, more recently, the Keystone XL Tar Sands Pipeline campaign.

Natural resources permeate cities as well. They include street trees, parks, beaches, rivers and creeks. As Alex Schafran reminds us, it’s important to remember the urbanwhen thinking of the protests in Turkey. Likewise, we shouldn’t forget the urban in conflicts over resources.


Protesters under the canopy of sycamore trees in Gezi Park. Source: Adam David Morton

Carl Pope, former chairman of the Sierra Club, argues that efforts to preserve the sycamores in Gezi Park illuminate regimes of access to and control over natural resources in Turkey. He adds that trees become “a tangible symbol of the common space which autocrats claim to serve, but actually destroy.” Andy Revkin riffed on Carl’s piece at Dot Earth, and Naomi Sachs riffed on Andy’s at the Therapeutic Landscapes Network.

At local ecologist, I reviewed several local (NYC) conflicts over natural resources: Rudy Giuliani vs community gardens, the Sexton NYU 2031 Plan vs Greenwich Village, and Major League Soccer (MLS) vs Flushing Meadows Corona Park in Queens, though the latter may soon be MLS vs the Bronx.

In a political ecology course I took at UC Berkeley, the professor asked us to consider how the “materiality of a resource” influences conflicts over its management. In cities, a spatial characteristic of many resources is boundedness. A park, for example, has definite material boundaries. If someone builds on it, they change the boundaries in significant ways. They diminish public access. They change the way benefits are derived, and by whom.

Privatization of public resources — from Istanbul to NYC — diverts their benefits to the few who can afford them. When this takes place undemocratically, it is an injustice to be fought with the collective strength of many.

Georgia Silvera Seamans is an urban forester and founder of local ecology. More of her writing can be found at local ecologist.

Transition to a world without oil

Here we present you a Rob Hopkins’ lecture,  the man behind the idea of Transition Towns, explaining his proposal to a future more sustainable and independent of fossil fuels.

Rob Hopkins at TED

DE-GROWTH DEFINED: INTERVIEW WITH SERGE LATOUCHE

At: http://www.stopwarming.eu/?news&id=203

Q&A: ‘Time to De-Grow’
IPS, August 3, 2009
Claudia Ciobanu interviews economist SERGE LATOUCHE

BUCHAREST, Aug 3 (IPS) – Serge Latouche, professor emeritus of economic science at the University of Paris-Sud, is one of the main proponents of “the society of de-growth”.

He calls for “abandoning the objective of growth for growth’s sake, an insane objective, with disastrous consequences for the environment.” The need for a ‘de-growth’ society stems from the certainty, he says, that the earth’s resources and natural cycles cannot sustain the economic growth which is the essence of capitalism and modernity.

In place of the current dominant system, Latouche argues for “a society of assumed sobriety; to work less in order to live better lives, to consume less products but of better quality, to produce less waste and recycle more.”

The new society would mean “recuperating a sense of measure and a sustainable ecological footprint,” Latouche says, “and finding happiness in living together with others rather than in the frantic accumulation of gadgets.”

Author of many books and articles on Western rationality, the myth of progress, colonialism and post-development, Serge Latouche describes the main principles of the de-growth society in his books ‘Le Pari de la Décroissance'(The Bet of De-Growth) and ‘Petit Traité de la Décroissance Sereine” (Small Treaty of Peaceful De-Growth) published in 2006 and 2007.

Serge Latouche spoke to IPS correspondent Claudia Ciobanu about de-growth society.

IPS: What are the features of the society of de-growth, and are any practices in the world today compatible with this vision?

Serge Latouche: De-growth does not mean negative growth. Negative growth is a self-contradictory expression, which just proves the domination of the collective imagination by the idea of growth.

On the other hand, de-growth is not the alternative to growth, but rather, a matrix of alternatives which would open up the space for human creativity again, once the cast of economic totalitarianism is removed. The de-growth society would not be the same in Texas and in the Chiapas, in Senegal and in Portugal. De-growth would open up anew the human adventure to the plurality of its possible destinies.

Principles of de-growth can already be found in theoretical thought and in practical efforts in both the global North and the South. For example, the attempt to create an autonomous region by the neo-Zapatistas in Chiapas; and many South American experiences, indigenous or others, such as in Ecuador, which has just introduced in its constitution the objective of Sumak Kausai (harmonious life).

All sorts of initiatives promoting de-growth and solidarity are starting to spread in the global North too: AMAP (The Associations for the Preservation of Peasant Agriculture in France, that promote direct links between producers and consumers, and organic agriculture), self-production according to the example of PADES (the Programme for Self-Production and Social Development, developed in France to help individuals and communities produce goods for themselves and others, eliminating monetary interchanges).

The movement of Transition Towns started in Ireland and spreading in England could be a form of production from below which closest resembles a society of de-growth. These towns are seeking firstly energy self-sufficiency in the face of depleting resources and, more generally, promote the principle of community resilience.

IPS: What would be the role of markets in the de-growth society?

SL: The capitalist system is a market economy, but markets are not an institution which belongs exclusively to capitalism. It is important to distinguish between the Market and markets. The latter do not obey the law of perfect competition, and that is for the best. They always incorporate elements of the culture of the gift, which the de-growth society is trying to rediscover. They involve living in communion with the others, developing a human relationship between the buyer and the seller.

IPS: What strategies could the global South pursue in order to eliminate poverty in a different way than the North has, at the expense of the environment and producing poverty in the South?

SL: For African countries, decreasing the ecological footprint and the GDP are neither necessary nor desirable. But from this we must not conclude that a society of growth must be built there.

Firstly, it is clear that de-growth in the North is a precondition for opening up of alternatives for the South. As long as Ethiopia and Somalia are forced, during the worst food shortage, to export feed for our domestic animals, as long as we fatten our cattle with soya obtained after destroying the Amazonian forest, we are asphyxiating any attempt at real autonomy in the South.

To dare de-growth in the South means to launch a virtuous cycle made up of breaking economic and cultural dependency on the North; reconnecting with a historical line interrupted by colonisation; reintroducing specific products which have been abandoned or forgotten as well as “anti-economic” values linked to the past of those countries; recuperating traditional techniques and knowhow.

These are to be combined with other principles, valid worldwide: re- conceptualising what we understand by poverty, scarcity and development for instance; restructuring society and the economy; restoring non-industrial practices, especially in agriculture; redistributing; re-localising; reusing; recycling.

IPS: The de-growth society involves a radical change in human consciousness. How is this radical change going to come about? Can it happen in time?

SL: It is difficult to break out of this addiction to growth especially because it is in the interest of the “dealers” – the multinational corporations and the political powers serving them – to keep us enslaved.

Alternative experiences and dissident groups – such as cooperatives, syndicates, the associations for the preservation of peasant agriculture, certain NGOs, local exchange systems, networks for knowledge exchange – represent pedagogical laboratories for the creation of “the new human being” demanded by the new society. They represent popular universities which can foster resistance and help decolonise the imaginary.

Certainly, we do not have much time, but the turn of events can help accelerate the transformation. The ecological crisis together with the financial and economic crisis we are experiencing can constitute a salutary shock.

IPS: Can conventional political actors play a role in this transformation?

SL: All governments are, whether they want it or not, functionaries of capitalism. In the best of cases, the governments can at most slow down or smoothen processes over which they do not have control any more.

We consider the process of self-transformation of society and of citizens more important than electoral politics. Even so, the recent relative electoral success of French and Belgian ecologists, who have adopted some of the de- growth agenda, seems like a positive sign. (END/2009)

Serge Latouche