Topic 1｜Situating Degrowth: Between Disciplines and Paradigms

Climate and other environmental crisis are part of a larger systemic polycrisis, which is widely characterized as an existential crisis of unprecedented magnitude affecting human and more-than human life on Earth. At its core it can be best understood as a crisis of meaning both originating and manifesting in dominant human-made systems. Degrowth, in this context, as a normative concept, describes an emancipatory and transformative transition that would, at its best, serve to resolve the polycrisis and enable participatory and ecologically sustainable societies with improved quality of life. While the ideals, principles, and concrete infrastructures for such an envisioned state are variously and partly articulated and constructed, the web of meaning in which the proposed world would be suspended in requires more elucidation. Applying an anti-disciplinary perspective and employing Kuhn’s theory of paradigm shifts as well as the ecological theory of panarchy, I trace theoretical developments across disciplines that illustrate a transitory trajectory towards a new paradigm and attempt to map some major nodes in the emerging web of meaning. My key argument is that degrowth should not be seen as merely a(nother) new framework, but as a portal into an emerging world that is incommensurable with the present one and that comprises qualitatively new states of mind, new common senses, and new criteria for generating and experiencing meaning. The purpose of such a semantic map is to serve the “inner compass” and allow practitioners and scholars alike to better map pathways towards the world that the concept of degrowth represents.


Presenter 1｜Timothy Seekings

Dr. Timothy Seekings is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Research Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences, National Science and Technology Council, and the Center for the Advancement of the Humanities and Social Sciences, National Taiwan University. He earned his Ph.D. in Natural Resources and Environmental Studies at National Dong Hwa University, Taiwan. His research focuses on sustainable food systems, food culture, and alternative proteins, with extensive experience in employing participatory and engaged methods as well as interdisciplinary perspectives.


#polycrisis  #panarchy  #paradigm shift  #webs of meaning  #emergence



Topic 2｜European Hydrogen Diplomacy in MENA: Green Transition or Extractive Continuity?

Core Question: Does Europe’s quest for green hydrogen from North Africa and the Middle East genuinely reflect a desire for climate cooperation, or is it simply old extraction in new environmental packaging? The Basic Problem: By 2050, Europe wants to be carbon neutral. To do that, it intends to import tons of “green” hydrogen from the MENA countries. Morocco, Egypt, Mauritania, Gulf states are all included. Packaging it as a win-win deal, Europe receives clean energy while MENA, development investment. But there's a catch. Water-scarce regions of the world need huge water and land requirement for the hydrogen projects. The energy produced is sent to Europe and not used for local development. Most of the value chain is meanwhile controlled by European companies and financing structures. Why This Matters? The “degrowth” lens highlights an important reality: True climate solutions mean Europe using Less Energy Overall. European policy instead seeks to outsource the resource burden elsewhere to maintain current consumption levels. Farming green hydrogen lets us keep developing without the ecological costs showing up at home. The policy frameworks embed this, not a conspiracy. The hydrogen strategy of the EU puts energy security and strategic autonomy above fair partnerships.


Speaker 2｜Hazem Almassry

Hazem Almassry is a postdoctoral researcher at Academia Sinica examining how Europe’s green hydrogen plans in MENA reshape power, resources, and environmental inequality under the language of climate cooperation.


#green hydrogen  #EU–MENA  #climate governance  #energy politics  #extraction  #water scarcity  #standards  #sovereignty  #degrowth



Topic 3｜From Managing Resources to Transforming Consciousness

This paper approaches the contemporary debate on degrowth not simply as an economic proposal, but as a deeper inquiry into human consciousness. It argues that the crises of growth, consumption, and ecological degradation are not only failures of economic systems, but symptoms of a deeper epistemic torn that imagines the human being as separate from and superior to nature. The paper retraces the evolution of degrowth thought from its early ecological warnings to its later critiques of the modern economic imagination and its current focus on justice and social well-being. It situates the present study within this most recent shift, where attention moves from material production to the underlying modes of awareness that shape how humans relate to the world. Using three symbolic narratives from different cultural traditions (Robinson Crusoe, Hayy Ibn Yaqzan, and Mai An Tiêm) the paper employs literature as an entry point to show how different forms of consciousness generate different forms of life with nature and with others. It argues that the world is not a single “island of thought,” but an archipelago of cultural and spiritual perspectives that offer diverse ways of imagining the human-nature relationship. Indigenous ecological traditions in the Americas, the principle of ahimsa in Indian philosophy, and the African ethic of Ubuntu illustrate alternative modes of awareness grounded in partnership, mutual respect, and coexistence rather than domination and extraction. The paper concludes that genuine sustainability is not a balance between production and consumption, but a state of harmony between the human being, the self, and the surrounding world, a harmony that begins with consciousness before policy, and with vision before technology. Degrowth, in this sense, is reframed not as a rejection of growth, but as an awakening of awareness toward a shared existence based on belonging rather than possession, and participation rather than control.


Presenter 3｜Kahlan Alradhi
Kahlan Alradhi is a Ph.D. candidate in Social Research and Cultural Studies at National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University in Taiwan. His research focuses on migration, identity, gender governance, and environmental thought. He is also a Research Assistant at the Institute of European and American Studies, Academia Sinica. Alradhi has experience organizing academic events, co-authoring peer-reviewed publications, and supporting international collaborative research. 


#degrowth  #consciousness  #sustainability  #environmental ethics  #cultural worldviews