CALL FOR PAPERS: INTERNATIONAL DEGROWTH AND LAW CONFERENCE: CRITICAL REFLECTIONS ON THE ROLE OF LAW TOWARDS A POST-GROWTH SOCIETY, 11-12 May 2027
Cáceres, Spain
Humankind has now surpassed seven of the nine planetary boundaries, transgressing safe operating thresholds in areas ranging from climate change and biosphere integrity to novel entities and freshwater use. Far from abstract scientific thresholds, these transgressions signal a structural crisis of the development model that has shaped politics and lawmaking around the globe since the mid-twentieth century.
Yet, as the endless quest for economic growth – measured through GDP – remains on top of policy agendas, this time under the imperative of “competitiveness”, or as part of a new cycle of open rivalry between dominant powers and rush for natural resources, ever-widening cracks are appearing in this edifice. The failure of GDP growth to facilitate urgent decarbonisation and halt the ongoing biodiversity collapse – the premises of green growth theory – is now in plain sight. Moreover, the entrenched belief that GDP growth is a sine qua non for poverty reduction is being contested, as the work of the UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights has shown (See ‘Eradicating poverty beyond growth’, 2024; ‘A Roadmap for Eradicating Poverty Beyond Growth’, 2026). The fundamental premises of degrowth and post-growth theory are being vindicated: GDP growth for its own sake is not merely unnecessary for addressing poverty and planetary health, but constitutive of these crises.
CALL FOR PAPERS:
The Scientific Committee of the International Degrowth and Law Conference: critical reflections on the role of law towards a post-growth society invites contributions that address the three following interrelated questions:
How have different legal disciplines perpetuated or attempted to distance themselves from this GDP bias and accumulation-by-destruction mentalities and policies?
What theoretical, institutional and practical synergies can be drawn within and between law and postgrowth frameworks – steady-state economics, degrowth, doughnut economics, well-being economy, and others – to challenge this paradigm and build legal architectures that will help us operate within planetary and social limits?
How can existing instruments and principles contribute to sheltering the roots of such transformation?
We hope this conference will show both the depth and diversity of current legal research on degrowth and post-growth and will be the occasion to connect and to create an international network. The Scientific Committee welcomes presentations on any branch of the law, as long as the research is about law and growth-critical/degrowth/post-growth (etc.) frameworks in any geography (national, regional, international). The list below provides an indicative and non-exhaustive list of possible topics to be addressed.
Deadline: November 6 , 2026
The congress will be held entirely in person
REGISTRATION, VENUE & DATES
The Conference will take place in person, at the Complejo Cultural San Francisco, in Cáceres, Spain on May 11-12, 2027.
The organisers will provide coffee breaks and lunch during both conference days at no cost.
We are pleased to offer an optional dinner event on Tuesday 11 May 2027.
There won’t be any registration fees. Registration opening date: 11 January 2027
For more details, refer here
