Posted By Halina Ward
on 13th January, 2012
It’s been good this week to see lots of debate over how best to bring the needs of future generations into UK democracy. The discussion has been triggered by the publication of Alliance for Future Generations member Rupert Read’s new paper, Guardians of the Future: a Constitutional Case for representing and protecting Future People.
The paper has been published by the new think tank Green House as a discussion paper for the Alliance for Future Generations, which was itself launched in March 2011 (not this week, as a blog post in The Telegraph incorrectly claimed).
Rupert Read’s proposal is for a sort of ‘super-jury’; a third House whose members would be selected by sortition (the same basis as jury service) to ensure that the needs of future generations were brought fully into the legislative process.
The proposal is grounded in the idea that ‘the interests of future generations should be formally represented within our existing parliamentary democracy’; that what Rupert…
Posted By Joe Short
on 19th November, 2011
In preparation for Universal Children’s Day on 20th November, we’ve posted up a home page for a fictitious “Ministry for Future Generations”. It paints a somewhat rose-tinted picture of how the world could be improved if such a ministry were called into existence. No more fossil fuels, education for all — all kinds of global problems miraculously solved.
Okay, the web page is not real. And in the real world, another traditionally-structured Government ministry probably isn’t even the right solution. But we are in fact very serious about the possibility of reforms to our democratic and political systems specifically designed to defend the needs of future generations. We think such reforms would help and we think they could realistically happen, possibly quite soon.
Experience from other countries
In 2008, the Hungarian Parliament created a ‘Parliamentary Commissioner for Future Generations’, to safeguard the constitutional right of Hungarian citizens to a healthy environment. Dr Sándor…
Posted By Joe Short
on 26th October, 2011
PRESS RELEASE, 26 October, 2011
On a day when the Cabinet is coming under fire for being split on green issues [1], the House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee (EAC) has published a report [2] warning that business as usual may rule the day at the Rio+20 UN Conference on Sustainable Development next year.
Halina Ward, Director of the Foundation for Democracy and Sustainable Development (FDSD), whose written evidence [3] has been extensively referenced [4] in the EAC report, said:
On the EAC report:
“There is a real risk that Rio + 20′s green economy theme will deliver little more than ‘slightly greened business as usual’, particularly given the difficult economic circumstances in which many nations find themselves.”
On the possibility of the Prime Minister not attending [5] Rio+20:
“If the Prime Minister will not be attending Rio+20, we sincerely hope that Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg will go instead. It is vital that UK the…
Posted By Halina Ward
on 19th October, 2011
New think-tank the Intergenerational Foundation (IF) landed with a big splash today as they launched their new report Hoarding of Housing. The big headline is that there are now 25 million unoccupied bedrooms in British homes.
Meanwhile, the government is proposing a radical shake-up to the English planning system, to get the country back to growth by making development easier whilst tackling the housing crisis. So extreme is the government’s prescription for housing sickness, however, that even The Telegraph has been moved to campaign against the possible loss of greenness in our pleasant land.
IF’s report argues that “while younger families are increasingly squeezed into small flats and under-sized houses, older people are often rattling around in big houses with many bedrooms standing empty, often for years”. The solution they advocate is to find ways to make it easier for older people to move to smaller homes; not forcing them out, but nudging them (to use a vogueish…
Posted By Halina Ward
on 8th July, 2011
So the News of the World is to gasp its last this weekend. And in pubs and parks, in living rooms and at dining tables up and down the land people mull over the significance of the latest revelations over phone-hacking and more.
We can picture ourselves in our minds eyes as targets too. We can imagine, if we choose to go there, how we might feel if the kinds of conversations we might have in the middle of some personal horror or tragedy were breathed in by persons unknown. We can, if we want, make links to whatever it was that we said and thought about last month’s scandal over secret superinjunctions taken out by the rich and famous to protect themselves from salacious revelations – the sort of things that might have been published in the News of the World. And then we can reflect on whether we are…
Posted By Halina Ward
on 7th June, 2011
A new Natural Environment White Paper was launched today.
I still can’t quite believe that the government thinks it can ‘mainstream’ sustainable development across government, as it has said it will do, without a sustainable development strategy. And that’s even leaving aside the question of whether it can be properly transparent and accountable to the public about its approach to ‘mainstreaming’ sustainable development without a strategy.
And so my first look at the Natural Environment White Paper (which covers England only) was a simple word-search experiment.
I searched, across the 80-odd pages, for phrases including the words ‘sustainable’ or ‘unusustainable’.
My hope was that I’d thereby be reassured that the government really is committed to mainstreaming sustainable development in England; that it really does know what it’s up to and has a sustainable development strategy – albeit one, a bit like the UK’s constitution, that hasn’t been pulled together into a single source document.
My conclusion is that…
Posted By Halina Ward
on 19th May, 2011
The House of Lords Reform Draft Bill and accompanying White Paper were presented to Parliament by Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg on Tuesday 17 May.
The documents set out long-awaited options for a reformed House of Lords.
The Bill is grounded in a smaller, 80%-elected House, retaining (controversially) the Bishops. The White Paper indicates that a 100% elected upper House has not been ruled out.
One striking feature of the proposals is that they have nothing at all to say about the functions of Westminster’s upper house. In fact, the White Paper’s summary of the proposals states that “[t]he reformed House of Lords would have the same functions as the current House. It would continue to scrutinise legislation, hold the Government to account and conduct investigations.”
So the proposed changes would be in form, not in substance.
Now assuming that Parliament’s upper chamber has a role in equipping democracy to deliver sustainable development, is this enough to do the job?
Surely not.
A…
Posted By Halina Ward
on 12th May, 2011
The UK Coalition government’s approach to sustainable development looks increasingly like a Potemkin village. Its smart websites and fine rhetoric hide the misery of the social fallout from cutbacks in our age of austerity, slow progress on environment, and the impoverishment of democracy.
Most recently, the coalition government’ s Red Tape Challenge makes utterly laughable its aspiration to be ‘the greenest government ever’; its reassurance that sustainable development will be mainstreamed across government; and the forgotten second pillar of the coalition’s government alongside the Big Society: a ‘new horizon’ to eliminate political short-termism.
It’s long, so I’ve also posted the text of this blog post as a pdf file.
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I’ve been brewing this post for a little while. It’s a sort of score-card, one year in, on the extent of the coalition government’s commitment to sustainable development delivered through vibrant democratic practice.
Sadly, like a laughable Eurovision entry, the ‘nearly-nul-points’ verdicts keep rolling in.
Among the most damning…
Posted By Halina Ward
on 10th April, 2011
FDSD has learned with very great sadness of the death of Sir Geoffrey Chandler; friend, former trustee, co-conspirator and mentor. John Elkington opens a set of reflections on his life and our work with him.
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There is a certain class of Englishman that you can hear coming up the stairs from three flights away, from a New York street block away, and Geoffrey Chandler could so easily have been one of those. You could certainly hear him coming several flights down, but your heart leapt in anticipation that you were about to be treated to displays of erudition, affection and moments of waspishness that made him, for me at least, a unique specimen of Homo sapiens sapiens.
Many years ago, deep in the mists of history, I asked Geoffrey to become a member of Board of Trustees of The Environment Foundation, now the Foundation for Democracy and Sustainable Development (FDSD). It…
Posted By Emma Woods
on 14th February, 2011
On the back of my previous post (Atmosphere: exploring climate science…), which raised questions about the value of science in a social vacuum, I’ve been thinking more about the space occupied by science in society.
As a science graduate myself, I’ve always favoured scientific research for scientific research’s sake. Many of the natural sciences’ most pragmatic societal applications have been the outcome not of applied, but rather of pure, scientific research. An obvious example would be Faraday’s curiosity-driven experiments on electricity, which into the bargain led to the electric light replacing the candle in our everyday lives.
So far, so scientific.
Yet now with a new, very different hat on – as an intern here at the Foundation for Democracy and Sustainable Development – I’ve been forced to reassess my position. I have begun to look at science in terms of how it contributes to sustainable development – in the famous words of the Brundtland Commission, how well it allows…
Posted By Emma Woods
on 7th February, 2011
With Paper Four (Climate Change: an overview of science, scenarios, projected impacts and links to democracy) in our project on The Future of Democracy in the Face of Climate Change posted to the FDSD website, Halina (FDSD’s Director) and I decided to reward our hard work with a trip to the Science Museum and its new Atmosphere gallery.
How has London’s famous Science Museum gone about communicating climate science to its visitors?
In our own work, Paper Four aims to uncover links between the current state of climate science on one hand, and democracy on the other. As with any area that is both scientifically and politically complex, the question arises as to how civil society – or more broadly, members of the public – can gain sufficient understanding of climate change to become meaningfully engaged in democratic discussions about it.
Museums, of course, play a central role in delivering and heightening the public’s understanding of science. So…
Posted By Emma Woods
on 20th January, 2011
I came across this audio clip among the online media for the 2009 International Climate Conference ‘4 Degrees and Beyond’. Professor Bertrand Guillaume of Troyes University of Technology presents ‘Avoiding a 4+°C world: a challenge for democracy’.
Drawing on the Stern Review, he outlines the current state of the Earth’s climate, before addressing the scale and timing of mitigation necessary to stabilise greenhouse gases at 450 parts per million.
The biggest stumbling block to successful mitigation, he insists, is the human condition: people value smaller rewards soon over larger rewards later, and perceive the future as ontologically weak; unreal. Neither convincing scientific evidence, nor unprecedented levels of public awareness of climate change, will necessarily overcome our mitigation inertia, he warns.
Most interesting for our work on ‘the future of democracy in the face of climate change’ are Professor Guillaume’s closing remarks on the challenges for democracy. Even if climate change mitigation were to be achieved, he…
Posted By Emma Woods
on 10th January, 2011
Video courtesy of Ian Brown
With the so-called ‘Ruggie process’ drawing to a conclusion, we are pleased to post an interview with Professor John Ruggie, Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General on Business and Human Rights. The interview was filmed in February 2009 during a three-day event on ‘Democracy and Sustainability in Emerging Economies: India as a Case Study’. The event, which took place in New Delhi, was organised by FDSD (at that time known as The Environment Foundation), in collaboration with the 21st Century Trust, Salzburg Global Seminar, Paul Hamlyn Foundation, and in association with TERI’s 2009 Delhi Sustainable Development Summit.
Talking to FDSD Director Halina Ward, Professor Ruggie discusses how his work on business and human rights relates to democracy. Human rights and democracy are two sides of the same coin, he says; both describing the duty of governments to serve the needs and rights of the people. But business is…
Posted By Halina Ward
on 10th January, 2011
WWF-UK, FOUNDATION FOR DEMOCRACY AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
PRESS RELEASE
EMBARGOED TO 00:01 GMT, 10th January 2011
Non-governmental organisations call for stronger role for Parliament in sustainable development
Today’s report from the Environmental Audit Committee (1): “Embedding Sustainable Development across Government” confirms that sustainable development has not been fully embedded across Government because the political will to do so has not been maintained. However, it does not go far enough in calling for urgent institutional reform to make this the “greenest government ever” (2), say WWF-UK and FDSD (3).
WWF-UK and FDSD share the Committee’s concern that sustainable development will become sidelined unless it is part of the central change-making mechanisms of Government. The two organisations endorse the Environmental Audit Committee’s proposal that a Minister for Sustainable Development be appointed within the Cabinet Office to drive action on sustainable development across government. However, WWF-UK and FDSD warn that it is essential that DEFRA’s existing sustainable development expertise…
Posted By Emma Woods
on 23rd November, 2010
A conversation between Ian Christie, Vice-Chair of the Foundation for Democracy and Sustainable Development (FDSD), and János Zlinsky, new FDSD trustee, and Head of Strategy and Research with the Office of the Hungarian Parliamentary Commissioner for Future Generations.
Amid UK worries about the Coalition government’s withdrawal of funding for independent watchdog the Sustainable Development Commission, Hungary appears to be taking a different approach. As János Zlinsky discusses, democratic Hungary is attempting to attach greater importance to long-term issues through the establishment of a ‘green ombudsman’. This too is a watchdog role, aimed at safeguarding the constitutional right of Hungarian citizens to a healthy environment. Could Hungary’s example pave the way for a widespread shift away from democratic short-term thinking? And how could the UK go about following suit?
FDSD Director Halina Ward and WWF-UK’s Carol Day recently debated the UK’s approach at the Environmental Audit Committee’s Inquiry into Embedding Sustainable Development Across…
Posted By Halina Ward
on 10th September, 2010
UK Deputy Prime Minister Clegg today delivered a key speech in which he called for a ‘horizon shift’. Our political culture, he said at the Institute of Government, “and in many ways our society more generally – has become too focused on immediate needs and demands, rather than considering our obligations to the future. We need to look towards a further horizon.” So far so good.
Of course it is no coincidence that the kinds of cuts in public spending that are heading our way might be easier for the government to implement if we all shared a sense of commitment to the long-term. But how does the speech stack up against the goal of equipping democracy to deliver sustainable development?
Close readers of this blog will remember that in early June 2010 we and more than twenty other signatories wrote to PM Cameron and DPM Clegg calling for the two to…
Posted By Halina Ward
on 16th July, 2010
The Prime Minister of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, Nguyễn Tấn Dũng, has just made a strong statement on the link between democracy and sustainable development in an article titled “Rapid and sustainable development – The kernel in Việt Nam’s socio-economic development strategy.“
Naturally, Vietnam’s democracy is a socialist one, which makes the express commitment to link democracy to sustainable development somehow all the more interesting. Liberal democracies in other parts of the world might also reflect on this.
The particular emphasis on expanding ‘direct democracy’, linked as it is to a stern reference to ‘discipline and rule’, is intriguing.
I don’t know Vietnam well (having last visited in 1992, just a couple of months after the Rio Earth Summit). If anyone reading has reflections on the Vietnamese approach to linking democracy and sustainable development – particularly on what it could mean in practice and whether there are any lessons for other countries – I’d…
Posted By Halina Ward
on 15th July, 2010
FDSD Vice-Chair Ian Christie and I headed to the home of former trustee Sir Geoffrey Chandler and his wife Lucy for lunch yesterday. And our conversation turned to intergenerational thinking, and to the challenges of integrating long-termism and regard for future generations into political democracy.
Sustainable development has long been inextricably linked to the idea of ‘intergenerational equity’, that is, fairness as between generations alive today and those yet to be born, whom philosopher and green party politician Rupert Read dubs ‘future people’.
The underlying challenge is one which we and our co-signatories identified in an open letter to Prime Minister Cameron and Deputy Prime Minister Clegg (we await a reply). And it has also received Select Committee attention in the UK, with a 2007 report of the House of Commons Public Administration Select Committee, Governing the Future.
Here at FDSD, we have in the past pointed to institutional innovations such as Hungary’s Parliamentary Commissioner for…
Posted By Halina Ward
on 1st June, 2010
FOUNDATION FOR DEMOCRACY AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
PRESS RELEASE
Civil society call for a ‘new politics of the future’
In an open letter dated 1st June 2010 to Prime Minister Cameron and Deputy Prime Minister Clegg, a group including chief executives of ten civil society organisations calls for the two to ensure that the government goes beyond ‘New Politics’ to adopt a “New Politics of the Future”.
In their letter, the group warn that short-termism in contemporary politics on issues including climate change, changing demographics, youth unemployment, and environmental and social injustice, could endanger not only the UK’s ability to achieve meaningful progress in these areas, but even democracy itself.
The open letter calls on the Prime Minister to commit to an annual ‘State of the Future’ speech and asks Prime Minister Cameron and Deputy Prime Minister Clegg fully to investigate the potential to adopt other mechanisms that could better equip and encourage Members of…
Posted By Halina Ward
on 22nd May, 2010
I’ve just returned from the final session of the ISO (International Organisation for Standardisation) International Working Group on Social Responsibility. The ‘SR’ Working Group has been driving efforts to develop a consensus-based, globally applicable, voluntary international guidance standard on social responsibility for organisations of all sizes, sectors, and locations.
The draft International Guidance Standard on Social Responsibility has gradually been taking shape over the past five years. ISO is a private nongovernmental body, headquartered in Geneva. And it is also the world’s largest developer of international standards.
The final plenary of the working group in Copenhagen yesterday marked a major milestone: agreement on a revised final draft of the guidance standard. That means that the development of the standard now moves on to the final stages of the process. The next step is to hand a revised draft to ISO’s members (standards bodies from more than 160 countries) for a two-month voting…
Posted By Halina Ward
on 12th May, 2010
I’ve been happily distracted, in all the general election and coalition mayhem and the musings on the implications of Coalition and hung parliaments for sustainable development.. by a visit the Conservation Economy blog. Jon Alexander, one of its founders, told me about it at our event on Mobilising Democracy to Tackle Climate Change. It’s a space “to provoke a fundamental questioning of the role of marketing, advertising and the communications industries in driving consumption”. Hard-core stuff indeed.
In a 29th April 2010 post, Jon draws a key distinction between consumption and Consumerism. And elsewhere on this blog, guest Jules Peck, over at Citizen Renaissance, argues that the mix between consumerism and citizen action for sustainable development needs to be reconfigured in favour of the citizen.
We can expect that these kinds of musings will be key underlying themes in our new UK coalition government as it seeks to redefine the relationship between citizen…
Posted By Halina Ward
on 2nd May, 2010
The interface between local citizen-led action and representative democracy is right at the cutting edge of sustainable development.
There has already been a lot of work on community empowerment in relation to existing processes of local government (this is ‘inside-out’ thinking; mostly motivated by the need to reinvigorate existing processes of representative democracy).
‘Outside-in’ thinking would mean working with community groups that focus on sustainable development issues. It would mean a bottom-up process of thinking about how community organising could help democracy to work for sustainable development.
There are also wider questions about how community groups self-organise on issues related to sustainable development in the public sphere, and what happens when they choose not to engage with local government or to develop alternative approaches.
In the UK, the rapidly accelerating Transition Town movement is just one example of community self-organisation on sustainable development. Not only does it challenge economic growth models to which most democracies are…
Category: democratisation, local democracy
Tags: community empowerment, consultation, direct democracy, duty to involve, Infrastructure Planning Commission, local government, Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Act, Regional Development Authorities, representative democracy, Sustainable Communities Act, Transition Towns
Posted By Halina Ward
on 16th March, 2010
Sustainable development, and party politics in the UK, are both fond advocates of localism and decentralism. In the case of the UK Conservatives, party leader David Cameron promises no less than the most “radical decentralisation” seen in a century if his party is elected. There is something of an environmental zeitgeist in this language too. One of the most visible meta-signals in the aftermath of the 2009 Copenhagen Climate Summit was disaffection with national and international level government solutions on the part of environmentalist civil society groups, and a corresponding emphasis on the importance of local activism and bottom-up solutions to the challenges of climate change.
Community-based activism on issues such as energy and food seems never to have been so vibrant as it now is in the UK. The phenomenal rise of the Transition Town movement and local ‘climate action networks’ around the country are just two examples.
I’ve been meaning to write this post since the launch…
Posted By Halina Ward
on 15th March, 2010
Give Your Vote, a campaign to get the UK’s voters to donate their votes in the forthcoming General Election to citizens of Bangladesh, Ghana and Afghanistan, is launched today, and seems to be attracting quite some interest in the mainstream media and in the world of social networks.
Give Your Vote is an offshoot from the campaign group Egality Now. The campaigners argue that:
“We think we can do better than a world where politicians from the strongest countries decide for everyone else.
The UK makes decisions about climate change, migration, poverty and war that directly affects millions around the world. There is no democratic means for those outside the UK to have a say in how these decisions are made.
Giving your vote is an act of solidarity with those who do not have a say in the decisions that affect them.
Decisions taken across borders should not mean decisions taken without accountability.
Give your…
Posted By Halina Ward
on 10th March, 2010
FDSD is pleased to announce a collaboration with Schumacher College- the International Centre for Sustainability, Dartington Hall Trust, Salzburg Global Seminar and Goodenough College in London to present an international leadership seminar on ‘Mobilising Democracy to Tackle Climate Change’ in the centre of London on 19-20 April 2010.
The seminar will focus on the central question: what innovations are needed in democracy and participatory decision-making, if we want them to deliver the actions required to mitigate and adapt to climate change?
Priced at £75/Euro 85 for the one and a half day seminar, the programme has been designed for leaders and change makers in central and local governments, businesses, non-governmental organisations and communities, and anyone concerned with mobilising democracy to tackle climate change.
Places for the event are likely to fill soon so please book early to avoid disappointment.
You can read more about the programme, speakers and booking information on the Schumacher College and Salzburg Global Seminar websites.
To whet your appetite further,…
Posted By Halina Ward
on 25th February, 2010
OFFICE OF THE HUNGARIAN PARLIAMENTARY COMMISSIONER FOR FUTURE GENERATIONS
EMBASSY OF THE REPUBLIC OF HUNGARY IN LONDON
FOUNDATION FOR DEMOCRACY AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
UK ENVIRONMENTAL LAW ASSOCIATION
PRESS RELEASE
Hungary’s Green Ombudsman puts environmental futures at the heart of decision-making
A unique environmental watchdog role – protecting the rights not just of present generations but also future ones – will be explained tonight (25th February) at the Ministry of Justice in London.
What lessons can the UK learn from the role of the Hungarian Parliamentary Commissioner for Future Generations, Dr Sándor Fülöp? Should we be considering a similar role to protect the interests of the most excluded – those who are yet to be born?
In 2007, the Hungarian Parliament created a new independent watchdog – the ‘green ombudsman’ – to safeguard the constitutional right of Hungarian citizens to a healthy environment.
In his speech tonight (25th February) to an invited audience of lawyers, non-governmental organisations,…
Posted By John Lotherington
on 2nd February, 2010
There is a narrative which is emerging on the fringes of green politics – in throw-away comments, or after a few drinks – which characterises Copenhagen as not just the failure of democracies but the failure of democracy itself. (Mark Vernon, for instance, has commented on it)
There have been 20 years and more consciousness raising, bringing the science to the attention of voters, waiting for the increasingly green rhetoric of politicians to turn into the real commitments needed to mitigate climate change. In the meantime, untold billions have been spent on the waste of war, at the whim of a cabal of leaders - though all in the West were democratically elected and all re-elected to further terms of office. The deep disappointment at this is understandable, and the sacred cow of democracy can start to look less sacred and more bovine.
As a consequence, some people are turning to look with some envy at…
Posted By Halina Ward
on 26th January, 2010
Adding to 
some of the themes explored in an earlier post on the idea of the ‘consumer citizen’, this post from guest blogger Jules Peck, over at Citizen Renaissance, argues that the mix between consumerism and citizen action for sustainable development needs to be reconfigured in favour of the citizen.
The entry is also posted here.
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By Jules Peck
As we remain firmly rooted in our Western economic bath-tub and emerge from the dusts of Copenhagen, it seems ever clearer that Citizens are the missing link for 2010.
Politics continue to fail us and fail to recognise, let alone confront and overcome, the greatest challenges of our time.
The message we put out starting 18 months ago with Citizen Renaissance, is now being taken up by the business community. Even the relatively conservative World Business Council for Sustainable Development is reporting on the need for a shift away from rampant consumerism to more citizen-centric values.
The Worldwatch Institute’s…
Posted By John Elkington
on 28th December, 2009
A reflection by Niall Ferguson in today’s Financial Times on the historical significance of the past decade struck me as particularly apt and insightful. He explores the reasons behind the astonishing – and accelerating – shift to the east in the world’s economic (and, ultimately, political) centre of gravity. In the process, he asks what it was that gave the West its “ascendancy”, through the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Enlightenment and the ensuing race around the world, as far as the Antipodes?
His answer is that the West benefited from six “killer apps”. These were: “the capitalist enterprise, the scientific method, a legal and political system based on private property rights and individual freedom, traditional imperialism, the consumer society and what Weber probably misnamed the ‘Protestant’ ethic of work and capital accumulation as ends in themselves.”
Some of these, Ferguson argues, particularly numbers one and two, China has already replicated. Other, and among…
