Presenting military emissions and spending to the Degrowth community

Posted on by TPNS

It was a pleasure to be part of the Joint Conference of the International Degrowth Research Networks and the European Society for Ecological Economics in Pontevedra, Spain 18 to 21 June 2024.

With an attendance of more than 1100 people from 48 different countries, the conference had the participation of academics, activists, students and teachers of secondary education.

Deborah Burton joined Corinne Lamain to present the session ‘Degrowing the military: reducing military emissions and rethinking responses to socio-ecological conflicts.’

Deborah’s presentation addressed how and why we must degrow the military-industrial complex, and built on the paper ‘Placing the military in the degrowth narrative‘ published in 2023.

Corinne’s presentation spoke to degrowth as a driver of reduction of so-called ‘climate conflicts’ and drew on her research as PhD Candidate in the Political Ecology Research Group at the  International Institute of Social Studies at the Erasmus University in the Hague.

It was the first time the topic of the military in the context of degrowth had been presented at this annual conference. Our session drew a good and highly engaged audience and it was an honour to have Dr. Samer Abdelnour, Director of the MSc in Global Strategy and Sustainability at Edinburgh Business School, join our session.

Samer’s opening Plenary presentation to the entire conference was a powerful and unforgettable one, addressing primarily the war on Gaza. It drew on his work ‘Making a killing: Israel’s military-innovation ecosystem and the globalization of violence’.

Thanks to Corinne for inviting us to be a part of this exciting conference moment and to be able to join with her in sharing the topic of military emissions and spending with yet another ‘new’ audience.

We look forward to future collaboration on this topic.

Read and watch more

Samer Abdelnour: Video Plenary Presentation.

Deborah’s Event Presentation: Military and Degrowth.

TPNS’ Transform Defence publication.