How about thinking about the world with new economies? That’s why Mariana Madureira, founder and Executive Director of Raízes DS, was selected to be part of the Post Growth Institute’s Fellowship 2024 program. The program chose researchers, thought leaders, activists, artists, and entrepreneurs from diverse backgrounds, cultures and histories to exchange experiences from April to November 2024.
What do these people have in common? They are united by their work in post-capitalist fields and alternative approaches beyond the growth economy. “The group aims to learn together and inspire others about how we can think about a world that is more about development than growth,“ explains Mariana.
More about the initiative
The term fellowship, in one of its translations, can mean scholarship, according to the Cambridge Dictionary. Another translation says that the word can also mean a group of people with similar interests. These two translations can be associated with the Post Growth Institute program.
The Post Growth Institute (PGI) is an international organization that accelerates global change towards a society that thrives within ecological limits. The community economy and non-profit forms of business offer the greatest hope for designing a prosperous and sustainable economy. Therefore, the Institute’s training and consultancy is centered on processes that stimulate local exchange and provide people with the knowledge and resources they need to develop successful non-profit enterprises.
Through the fellowship, conversations and group presentations are facilitated, as well as the curation and promotion of content created by the fellows – as those who take part in the program are called. This week, Mariana had her first online meeting with the group.
“Each of the fellows has to produce at least one piece of content over the next eight months and the idea is that we learn together and also inspire other people about how they can think of a world that is more about development than growth. A world in which an economy develops on more sustainable premises”, he explains.
The program brings creativity and clarity to complex economic challenges while articulating the causes of the harsh realities that underlie our current global situation, as well as outlining specific steps towards a prosperous and alternative future, centered on the best rather than the biggest.
Sustainable development, capitalism, and new economies
Sustainable development is a concept that aims to meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. It involves ensuring that people, both now and in the future, can achieve an adequate standard of social and economic progress, as well as human and cultural fulfillment. This is done while using the planet’s natural resources responsibly and preserving species and natural environments.
Capitalism, on the other hand, according to Politize!, “is an economic system that aims for profit and the accumulation of wealth and is based on the private ownership of the means of production”. In the capitalist system, products are sold on a free market, where there is little or no intervention by the state, so companies sell their products according to the laws of supply and demand.
The extensive devastation of the environment is an inherent feature of the “traditional” capitalist production system that we know. When left unrestrained, capitalism has a tendency to deteriorate the environment, which is essential for humanity’s subsistence, thus resulting in damage both to itself and to humanity.
Esther Bemerguy de Albuquerque, an economist and former secretary of the Council for Economic and Social Development of the Presidency of the Republic between 2004 and 2011, told Jornal da USP that “the capitalist model delays sustainable development and that unbridled consumption and incessant accumulation make it impossible to respond to climate change”.
PGI’s Fellowship program is designed to investigate how to create a new, fair, and sustainable market economy. The aim is to open up and broaden the dialogue around ideas, information, and post-growth inspiration, thinking about the world more in development than growth, recognizing that many alternative approaches are emerging and continue to be administered at the bottom of the globe and in historically marginalized communities around the world.
We are very happy with Mariana’s achievement, which will bring not only more personal knowledge but also important inspiration to Raízes.
