The ‘Exploring Postgrowth Finance’ Series

Arketa Institute Co-Founder Anastasia Linn speaking at ‘Investing in Systems Change’ in Zurich, Switzerland, in November 2023.

In spring of 2023, Arketa Institute Co-Founder Anastasia Linn initiated the Exploring Postgrowth Finance project as a part of her work with Degrowth Switzerland. The purpose of the project was to create a space for discussions about degrowth and growth-independent practices within the sustainable finance community, while also highlighting the opportunities for further research in this area among degrowth scholars.

Since then, the series has included both online and in-person events with pioneers in this emerging field.

The first event featured a discussion with Melanie Rieback of Nonprofit Ventures / Post Growth Entrepreneurship, ecological macroeconomist Louison Cahen-Fourot, and Vibeka Mair, a journalist at ESG Investor. The full recording is available here.

In November 2023, this was followed by a second event: “Investing in Systems Change”. Organized as part of the Fintopia exhibition in Zurich, Switzerland, it centered around a conversation between Leonard Creutzburg, Anastasia, and co-panelists Peter Haberstich (then of Greenpeace Switzerland) and Johannes Tschiderer of TransCap Initiative.

The third event was organized in collaboration with Jennifer Wilkins of Heliocene as part of the joint Degrowth and Ecological Economics Conference held in Pontevedra, Spain, in 2024. The session—titled “Investing in degrowth: resourcing post-growth futures”—featured inputs from Hans Stegeman (Chief Economist at Triodos Bank), systemic risk researcher Anja Janischewski, and Alex Lopez, a board member at Ekhilur Cooperative, an innovative local payment system that’s establishing itself in the Basque country. A briefing document summarizing the basis for the discussion is available here, as is this summary and transcript of the event itself.