Coordinators:
Sanna Komi (University of Helsinki, Global Development Studies, and Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Institut de Ciència i Tecnologia Ambientals)
Riina Bhatia (University of Helsinki, Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Sustainability of Society)

Description:
What would natural resource use look like without the imperative of economic growth? Degrowth offers a starting point for exploring alternatives to extractivism and organizing resource use around sufficiency, ecological integrity, and collective well-being. In this working group, we are interested in examining what degrowth could mean across natural resource sectors, and how existing local alternatives and resistance to extractivism might contribute to broader transformations. We seek to connect discussions of extractivism and its alternatives with degrowth debates, bringing political economy and a multiscalar perspective into dialogue with locally situated practices. Central questions concern how alternatives are organized, what technological practices they involve, and how they interact with national and transnational structures. Throughout the working group, we would like to investigate how local alternatives can be strengthened within extractivist contexts and connected to structural change, without overlooking the challenges of translating practices between different contexts.

We invite empirical, historical, and conceptual contributions from researchers, activists, and practitioners across disciplines, working in the Global South and Global North, addressing one or more of the following themes:

• Resource use without economic growth: What would degrowth mean in mining, forestry, energy, or other natural resource sectors?
• Existing alternatives to extractivism: Case studies or historical examples of resource use organized around sufficiency, commoning, care, or democratic decision-making.
• Resistance and collective organizing: How communities resist extractive projects, including emerging frontiers such as data centres, and develop alternatives.
• Technologies for non-extractivist futures: Alternative technological practices and infrastructures, including perspectives from technological diversity and decolonial science and technology studies.
• Local alternatives within global systems: How local initiatives navigate national policies, global markets, production networks, and geopolitical pressures.
• From local initiatives to structural change: What alliances, institutions, and political strategies can strengthen alternatives and enable wider transformation? What challenges arise when practices are adapted to other contexts?
  

Funding note:
Participants are expected to secure their own funding of traveling to Helsinki.

Contacts:

Sanna Komi, sanna.komi@helsinki.fi (University of Helsinki, Global Development Studies, and Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Institut de Ciència i Tecnologia Ambientals)

Riina Bhatia riina.bhatia@helsinki.fi (University of Helsinki, Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Sustainability of Society)