Presentation short abstract

With very few inhabitants and newcomers promoting communal practices, the tiny island of Alicudi offers a way to ask what social, ecological, and organisational conditions would be needed for it to become a case of Real Existing Degrowth.

Presentation long abstract

Alicudi, the most remote and least populated of the Aeolian Islands, offers a small-scale context in which the idea of Real Existing Degrowth (RED) can be explored in concrete and grounded terms. With only a very small permanent population and minimal infrastructure, the island already functions with limited connection to a growth-driven economy. Recent demographic changes have introduced new dynamics: newcomers, often “foreigners” seeking a slower pace of life and a closer relationship with nature, are increasingly the ones promoting communal and cooperative practices, such as shared maintenance of paths and terraces or collective approaches to food provisioning. These ideas coexist with the habits and expectations of long-term inhabitants, producing moments of alignment as well as tensions around everyday organisation and visions for the island’s future.

Alicudi is not proposed here as an existing case of RED. Instead, the island serves as a site to consider what conditions -social, ecological, and organisational- might allow a community like this to move toward forms of degrowth in practice.

By focusing on Alicudi’s demographic fragility, ecological constraints, and emerging social initiatives, the paper uses the island as a lens to reflect on the practical pathways and challenges involved in building degrowth-oriented ways of living. Rather than presenting a model, Alicudi becomes a space for examining how small, remote communities might negotiate the conditions needed to move toward Real Existing Degrowth.