For those who sense that something isn’t quite right with endless growth as an economic model, developing alternatives can be an isolated task. The evening news rarely leads with a story extolling the virtues of co-ops and community currencies, and the language of sustainability has been coopted by the status quo.

Although more and more people are busy creating new production models to meet the twin challenges of climate change and social justice, the hardest part may be getting them all together in a room.

For Justin Ritchie, this is exactly the opportunity that the New Economy Summit at UBC from April 4th to 6th is hoping to provide. Ritchie, one of the conference organizers and co-producer of a podcast on alternative approaches to social and economic organization called The Extraenvironmentalist, sees the 3-day event of panels and discussions as an opportunity to unite the efforts of a diverse network of people working with new economic models.

“One of our main goals in organizing the summit was to help connect many of the thinkers on campus and in the realm of the university with people working in the greater community of Vancouver, the Lower Mainland and British Columbia,” says Ritchie. “Perhaps the greatest challenge preventing many 'new economy' efforts from scaling up is that they are largely disconnected and poorly networked.”

Planning for the conference was spurred in late January of this year, thanks to a grant from the New Economics Institute (NEI) in Boston, MA. NEI were awarding grants to campuses across North America to host student summits on the theme of a New Economy, and the UBC application was selected to host the only event in Canada. Building responses to the increasing urgency of climate change, wealth inequality and financial volatility, similar conferences will be held across the United States over the course of the year.

The UBC summit plans to combine theoretical discussions with practical sessions on topics such as local agriculture, bringing together academics, writers and people who like to get their hands dirty. Although the topics presented are meant to foster a stronger movement for new economic models in BC, they’ll be drawing on ideas being put into practice around the world.

“We'll be talking about how to finance and scale up our local and regional food production, launching community currencies in a university environment, expanding opportunities for economics education at universities to include classes in ecological economics. Morris Berman will be talking about how Japan's craft economy could be a model for a post-growth world. Many other ideas will be discussed, like creating a not-for-profit world by 2050 and redefining value in our communities through focusing on alternative indicators rather than GDP.” 

One significant area of focus for the summit will be the university itself. As the global economy continues in its prolonged trajectory of stagnation and contraction, the basic assumptions of neoclassical economics have started to come undone. But while activists and local farmers have been working on new cooperative models for production and exchange, university economics departments have been slow to catch on.

“Our universities have the potential to be powerful engines for building this new economy movement, but they fill our heads with so many crazy ideas that have perpetuated the economic and ecological problems we face today. If we can start building momentum for a new economy at universities like UBC, then we have the potential to get a lot of people collaborating and moving in a positive direction.”

Registration for the UBC New Economy Summit is free with a refundable $25 deposit to aid with planning based on attendance.

The Extraenvironmentalist will be providing live media coverage of the event on their website. Their archive of past shows also provides helpful background material for many of the ideas discussed at the conference.

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