Who We Are
Mission & Vision
PGR is committed to mutually beneficial ways of living and relating
We collaborate with others to make post-growthA commitment to mutually beneficial ways of living and relating, rather than an economy fixated on continuous growth. visions a reality, building relational social worlds beyond and against a fixation on economic growth. Grounded in plural knowledge practices and transdisciplinary research, our work honors ongoing struggles for social and environmental justice by recognizing systemic inequities, centering lived experience, learning by listening, and respecting community contexts and histories.
We uplift degrowthA purposeful, equitable, and managed process of minimizing harm. as a democratic, equitable, and ecological pathway for a just transition toward mutually enhancing relationships with the whole community of life. Through enduring partnerships that connect communities, advocates, academics, and social movements, we work collectively to support the many life-affirming ways of knowing and being.
The ideas and practices of degrowth – a purposeful, equitable, and managed process of minimizing harm – are foundational for this work. Post-growth futures are built by promulgating worldviews respectful of all beings; creating more inclusive, participatory, and autonomous structures of law and governance; supporting collective, cooperative, and localized economies; and prioritizing sufficiency and redistribution in broader economic life.
Our goals:
Place post-growth and degrowth at the center of democratic, equitable, and environmentally sound pathways for a just transition to life-affirming ways of being.
Build public awareness of feasible pathways to post-growth futures; build capacity and awareness in academia; and foster, support, and engage with creative resistance and collective responses to destructive economic models.
Promote reclaiming relationships of mutual care, collectivity, and connection between all living beings.
Mission
To activate a degrowth transition to post-growth futures where all life can thrive.
PGR is committed to working toward post-growth futures in Turtle Island / North American contexts by:
1. Organizing translocal collaboration through enduring strategic relationships;
2. Originating and widely diffusing degrowth ideas and research;
3. Collaborating in continuing to build a degrowth/post-growth ecosystem in the Americas;
4. Developing a coordinated strategy for adoption and implementation of degrowth ideas;
5. Facilitating public engagement to reimagine prosperity beyond financial profit and GDP growth.
The Bigger Picture
Growth, Inequality & Injustice
Post-growth research examines systemic issues and root causes, drawing on historical, global, and decolonial perspectives. Dominant models of unfettered economic growth privatize profits while socializing costs, creating an antidemocratic concentration of wealth and power.
As wealth accumulates ever more rapidly among the world’s richest, exploitation and inequalities deepen within and between countries. These growth-driven models continue to prove ineffective in ending global or domestic poverty.
“Achieving justice and shared prosperity in the Global South and Global North is not possible without degrowth, decolonization, and demilitarization.”
Whose Knowledge Counts?
Post-growth research examines systemic issues and root causes, drawing on historical, global, and decolonial perspectives. Dominant models of unfettered economic growth privatize profits while socializing costs, creating an antidemocratic concentration of wealth and power.
As wealth accumulates ever more rapidly among the world’s richest, exploitation and inequalities deepen within and between countries. These growth-driven models continue to prove ineffective in ending global or domestic poverty.
“Prevailing definitions of prosperity and the assumed desirability of economic growth, like other belief systems, also have epistemic effects: they marginalize, suppress, and devalue non-predominant ways of knowing and being”
Vision
Our vision for a post-growth world is one where everyone experiences dignity, care, and interdependence as the norm – of just and peaceful societies built collectively through solidarity and the practices of degrowth.
PGR promotes transformative, collaborative social change to share and renew life-affirming ways of being in a multi-path, interdependent world.
Multiple paths of possibility and emergence lead toward post-growth futures; there is not a singular trajectory of linear change ahead of us. While post-growth ideas include certain specific proposals (such as a reduction of unnecessary production and consumption in the global North), we also emphasize the unfixed and emergent results of what happens when we heal and renew our relationships with each other and with the wider community of life.
How We Work
Designing and implementing these priorities are processes that draw on, reflect, and respect the many forms of diversity that have been fundamental to adaptation and resilience throughout history¹, as well as the many 'exiled capacities' that have been systematically silenced, excluded, and erased.
We recognize and uplift the indispensable roles of both human and more-than-human beings in shaping social futures and deepening shared experiences of belonging, well-being, and togetherness.
