Overview 2012

Get involved with the 22th Ecotopia Biketour – towards degrowth. This year from July to September we are cycling from Catalonia to Italy connecting projects, sharing skills, confronting destructive development and living as an eco-mobile action community.

What is Ecotopia biketour?

Every summer some 10 to 50 bikers from different backgrounds and origins travel together with all their equipment, using nothing but their bicycles and trailers. It is a totally exciting and chaotic tour! We aim to include all participants by using consensus based decision making and ensuring all tasks are shared. The bike fanatics who ride with us can expect a sleeping place every night and breakfast, lunch and dinner for a fair participation fee and their help in communal tasks.

What is Degrowth?

Degrowth is downscaling of production and consumption which, like cycling, increases human well-being and enhances ecological conditions and equity on the planet. It calls for a future where societies live within their ecological means, with open, localised economies, where resources are more equally distributed and people are empowered to make decisions collectively and horizontally. Such societies will no longer have to “grow or die.” Material accumulation will no longer hold such a prime position. Innovation will no longer focus on technology for technology’s sake but will concentrate on new social, and technical arrangements that will enable us to live convivially and sufficiency. We look towards a more sustainable level of production and consumption which leave more space for human cooperation and ecosystems.

How do we cycle towards degrowth?

In our cycle from Catalonia to Italy we plan to visit; permaculture farms, D.I.Y bike workshops, protest camps, ecovillages, intentional communities, ecological/cycling NGO's, bicycle events, protests, grassroots projects, and other creative alternatives to the damaging growth mentality of capitalism. Each day we try to live as a self managed community on wheels, challenging consumption habits by eating as locally, fairly and ecologically as possible and sharing skills. In our journey of over 2,000km we will experience first hand local problems and solutions relating to degrowth and strengthen the activist network.