• Can we vote our way to a sustainable future for a world of 9 billion people – or are new forms of leadership going to be necessary?
• What kinds of systems of governance and decision-making best place countries and people to move towards more sustainable forms of development?
• Can the time-frames of democratically elected governments deliver sustainable development?

If not, what needs to be done – and by whom?

In March 2008, The Environment Foundation, together with 21st Century Trust, SustainAbility and the Dana Centre, and with the support of the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, organised a consultation on ‘Democracy and Sustainability’ to discuss these and other questions at the interface between democracy and sustainable development.

The event took place at the Dana Centre. It had two parts: a smaller meeting involving a group of some forty sustainable development experts, followed by a public meeting Chaired by Chris Patten at which a panel of experts including Charles Secrett, John Elkington and Samantha Heath spoke, and participants worked in small breakout groups to discuss identify key issues for them .

Questions posed at the event were influenced by the results of a poll of SustainAbility Faculty members. You can read the results of that poll here.

You can download background papers for the event by Sara Parkin, Ian Christie and Tim O’Riordan here.

A summary of the event is available here.

John Elkington and John Lotherington published an article summarising the overall discussions and the key issues raised on Open Democracy. You can read that here.