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 be very glad to hear from you.

I hope that the Government of the Socialist Republic will forgive this lengthy quote from the article, which can be found in full here.

“….The socio-economic development strategy 2001-2010, approved at the 9th Party Congress, reconfirmed “Rapid, effective and sustainable development and economic growth must go together with social progress and equality, and environment protection.” The 10th Party Congress continued to draw the lesson on rapid and sustainable development, the content of which was enriched with the demand for comprehensive human development and democracy, apart from socio-economic development and environment. The overall goal of the five-year plan 2006-2010 was “To strive for economic growth of rapid tempo, high quality and higher sustainability, attached to human development….

…To realize the stance on rapid and sustainable development, it is necessary to enforce orientations enshrined in the draft Strategy comprehensively, focusing on the following tasks….

Fifth, to bring into play people’s mastership, execute democracy, especially direct democracy, and build a society of openness and consensus.  ệt Nam’s development under the Party’s leadership. Democracy functions as the goal and the impulse too. All these three pillars must be strong enough and compatibly developed. Any weak pillar can block the movement of other pillars and affects the development.”

Democracy is a factor of sustainable development, as clearly stated by our Party at its 10th Congress in order to perfect and enrich the content of sustainable development. This comes from a vital point: Man is the target and also the subject of development. Human resource is a long-term competitive advantage and a decisive factor for the development of a country. By executing democracy, we will bring into play creativity of each and every individual, contributing to the country’s rapid and sustainable development. The higher democracy is, the greater social consensus becomes, and the more the aggregate strength of the whole-nation solidarity is solidified.

To promote democracy and make it a resource for development, it is necessary to secure two conditions: (1) offering chances for people to study, building up a study-based society for higher intellectual standards of people; and (2) ensuring people’s mastership through institutions which guarantee democracy in all fields of the social life and expand direct democracy. Democracy must be associated to discipline and rule.

It is possible to say that, law-ruled state, market economy with social welfare and security, and socialist democracy are three main pillars of Việt Nam’s development under the Party’s leadership. Democracy functions as the goal and the impulse too. All these three pillars must be strong enough and compatibly developed. Any weak pillar can block the movement of other pillars and affects the development.”.

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 Future Generations as possible inspiration. But the challenge of ‘intergenerational thinking’ is a systemic one.  

We wondered about what experiences; and what existing areas of policy, can trigger long-term thinking. For Ian, the spatial planning systems of democracies are an example of long-term thinking. And indeed, here in the UK, the principle of sustainable development underpins the entire planning system.  

In the past, since the establishment of the welfare state after the Second World War, there was an implicit social contract (a compact, perhaps) in the UK that citizens would accept an obligation to pay sufficient National Insurance to secure a basic state pension for all – now and in the future. But with a rapidly ageing population that may now be breaking down. And that breakdown may be accompanied by a risk of conflict between generations alive today as younger people turn on the Baby Boomers who put home ownership and much else beyond their reach.  (On that, see David Willett’s book “The Pinch” or reports of intergenerational conflict in Italy).

As we talked, we mulled over the UK’s Climate Act 2008 as another example of leadership in long-term thinking, well beyond the short-termism of a five-year electoral cycle.

The problem, of course, is that if bold steps are taken by politicians without broad public debate and explicit buy-in, they can be vulnerable to attack subsequently as governments change.  We need leadership plus long-term vision, but we need decision-making genuinely to be by the people too. The current government, which is desperately trying to sell the idea of a ‘Big Society’ as a basis for social cohesion in the face of massive public sector cuts, knows this.  

Far-reaching policy change calls for widespread deliberation and consent from the electorate. And yet when that consent is implicit, rather than explicit, it may provide a less stable foundation for intergenerationally-regarding policy.

At a Global Dashboard brainstorming session a couple of weeks ago, Alex Evans reminded me of the story of the huge oak beams in the great dining hall of New College Oxford. When at last they needed replacing several hundred years after the hall’s construction in the fourteenth century, it emerged that a stand of oak trees on the college lands had been carefully looked after by generations of foresters to provide replacement timbers.  

The New College story is particularly heartening because it emerges out of the UK, rather than as a too-easily-dismissed insight from some distant community living “romantically” close to nature in what is still referred to as ‘the developing world’.

In the UK, Kew Gardens’ Millennium Seed Bank is another great example of an institution that has been designed with the long-term in mind. The Bank now houses ten percent of the world’s flora, and almost the entirety of the UK’s native plant species. Yet around the world, botanic gardens that are a repository of ex situ genetic diversity are coming under threat from development or for simple lack of funding (see generally www.bgci.org).

These are just a few examples. There are many, many more from around the world that could be added. The challenge is systemically to find ways of enabling people around the world to express regard for the long-term in their decisions today; particularly those decisions that could mean using scarce non-renewable resources (fossil fuels among them) or that that irreversibly alter the options or reduce the opportunities available to future generations.  

In our work, we’re interested in looking at the kinds of institutional innovations that can equip democracy to deliver sustainable development. Intergenerational thinking is part of that. Some institutional innovation will almost certainly be needed in the realms of parliament or representative democracy. But we should not expect that we must find inspirations from existing systems of representative democracy alone.

Perhaps a cluster of ‘intergenerationally regarding’ initiatives and spaces could be joined together as a new tourist trail, or a suggested one-day teambuilding retreat for politicians or policy-makers? Their capacity to inspire could be part of efforts to equip democracy to deliver sustainable development.

Do get in touch if you’d like to take that idea forward.  

PRESS RELEASE

Civil society call for a ‘new politics of the future’

In an open letter dated 1^st 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 Parliament to consider the long-term interests of future generations in policy decisions.

ENDS

Notes to editors:

The following signatories to the letter are available for media interviews and comment:

 
Foundation for Democracy and Sustainable Development Director Halina Ward (email: press@fdsd.org; Tel: +44 (0)20 7022 1848; Skype: halinaward) Involve Director Simon Burall (simon@involve.org.uk; Tel: +44 (0) 20 7920 6470), and Capacity Global Director Maria Adebowale (email: maria@capacity.org.uk; Tel: +44 (0) 20 3117 0102). 

The full text of the open letter to Prime Minister Cameron and Deputy Prime Minister Clegg and a list of signatories, embargoed until 00:01 BST on 1^st June 2010, follows.

 The following organisations’ Directors or Chief Executives have signed the open letter:

Capacity Global
Community Sector Coalition
DEA
Environmental Protection UK
Environmental Regulation and Information Centre (Eric) Ltd
Foundation for Democracy and Sustainable Development
Gaia Foundation
International Institute for Environment and Development
Involve
National Association for Voluntary and Community Action (NAVCA)
The Samosa

General media enquiries: press@fdsd.org; Skype: halinaward; Telephone: +44 (0)20 7022 1848

—————————————————————————————

Right Hon David Cameron MP and Right Hon Nick Clegg MP
c/o 10 Downing Street
London SW1A 2AA
 
1^st June 2010                     

OPEN LETTER

Dear Prime Minister Cameron and Deputy Prime Minister Clegg

Towards a new politics of the future

We write to endorse your concern to tackle ‘short-termism’ in the nation’s democracy and to urge you to go further; to initiate a new “politics of the future” in the UK.

As a group of researchers, advocates and campaigners for sustainable development, we well understand the importance of aligning short-term democratic decision-making with long-term benefits to society as a whole, and with consideration for the interests of future generations both in the UK and abroad.

We fear that short-termism in contemporary politics on issues including climate change, changing demographics, youth unemployment, and environmental and social injustice, could endanger not only our ability to achieve meaningful progress in these areas, but even democracy itself. For when social injustice and inequality become more pronounced and natural resources more scarce, the real risk is that democracy itself may be sacrificed as the need for action becomes more urgent.

You have the power to take simple and cost-effective steps now to guard against that risk. 

You would not be alone in taking steps consciously to ‘future-proof’ UK democratic processes. On the contrary, your Government would join a handful of progressive leaders around the world. In 2007, the Hungarian Parliament appointed the world’s first ‘Green Ombudsman’; a Parliamentary Commissioner for Future Generations. And in Finland, a cross-party parliamentary Committee for the Future has been operating since 1993, preparing statements and reports on ‘futures’ issues affecting Finland’s development, and responding to the Government’s annual  Report on the Future.

Here in the UK, we urge you immediately to commit to an annual, televised, ‘State of the Future’ speech and public debate, starting in 2010. That speech should describe how your Government has taken steps, and plans, to take account of long-term threats to our environment and our society, and to the interests of future generations.

Finally, we urge you to initiate an effort fully to investigate whether there are other innovations in the parliamentary and policy process that could better equip and encourage Members of Parliament to consider the long-term interests of future generations in policy decisions.  We would be delighted to work with you in such an endeavour.

We welcome your commitment to tackle short-termism in the nation’s governance, for political short-termism is one of the chief causes of unsustainable development. But we believe that that commitment must be backed by demonstrable institutional and procedural innovation.

In this era of new politics, Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister, we call on you to adopt a New Politics of the Future.

Yours sincerely

Maria Adebowale
Director, Capacity Global (www.capacity.org.uk)

Anwar Akhtar
Director, The Samosa (www.thesamosa.co.uk)

Simon Burall
Director, Involve (www.involve.org.uk)

Tony Colman, Councillor, UK
Alice Vincent, Assistant to the Management Board UK, Research Assistant Future Justice
World Future Council Foundation (www.worldfuturecouncil.org)

Kevin Curley
Chief Executive, National Association for Voluntary and Community Action (NAVCA) (www.navca.org.uk)

Begonia Filgueira
Solicitor and Director, Environmental Regulation and Information Centre (Eric) Ltd (www. eric-group.co.uk)

Lukas Köhler
MA student, University of London

Liz Hosken, Director

Carine Nadal, Legal Researcher

Sulemana Abudulai, Head of Strategic Partnerships

The Gaia Foundation (www.gaiafoundation.org)

Jen Lowthrop, Steering Group Chair
Sydney Fleming-Gale, Steering Group Member
Andrew Johnston, Steering Group Member
Sian Ryan, Steering Group Member
Climate Squad (www.globalactionplan.org.uk/climate-squad)

Philip Mulligan, Director
Environmental Protection UK (www.environmental-protection.org.uk)

C’llr. Dr Rupert Read
Green Party Councillor, and Reader in Philosophy at the University of East Anglia, Norwich

Matthew Scott, Director, Community Sector Coalition (www.communitysectorcoalition.org.uk)

Hetan Shah
Chief Executive, DEA (www.dea.org.uk)

Paul Spray
Director of Policy, Traidcraft (www.traidcraft.co.uk)

Dr Kaihsu Tai
Advisory Member, Green Economics Institute

Camilla Toulmin
Director, International Institute for Environment and Development (www.iied.org)

Halina Ward, Director
Ian Christie, Vice-Chair
John Lotherington, Trustee
Foundation for Democracy and Sustainable Development (www.fdsd.org)

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 period. There can be no more than 25% of the total ISO member voting body voting ‘no’ if the standard is to be adopted and published as an international guidance standard late in 2010.

It was good news all round in Copenhagen as more than 400 delegates from over 80 countries (dubbed ‘experts’ rather than ‘representatives’ in ISO parlance) agreed on a final draft of the international guidance standard.

This post isn’t about all the good things that were agreed: the agreement of the Chinese delegation to text that everyone could live with; the resolution of concerns from participants from Gulf and Arab states about the use of the term ‘sexual orientation’ (resolved in favour of the term ‘personal relationships’); or how the 1500 outstanding comments and 15 ‘Copenhagen Key Topics’ were satisfactorily resolved.

Instead, this post is about how the private standards-setting process of ISO 26000 has triggered heated debates, and lasting concerns, on the content of the so-called ‘precautionary approach’ and how it should be applied by organisations other than governments. And those debates and concerns raise some basic questions about how ISO’s private processes bump up against public policy and the international legal commitments of states. That, in turn, raises a whole host of issues about the state of global governance and the confused state of distinctions between ‘private’ and ‘public’ global governance.

There are two basic problems.

First, a number of government representatives came to the ISO 26000 negotiating process with worries about how the potential trade impacts of the standard could interact with their obligations under the World Trade Organization. For example, the World Trade Organization’s Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade requires WTO Members to use relevant international standards as a basis for national technical regulations. A technical regulation that is based on a relevant international standard and created to address a legitimate objective benefits from a ‘rebuttable presumption’ that it does not create an unnecessary obstacle to trade.

Second, some government participants have the additional concern that their position in these talks could potentially have an impact on their international legal obligations more widely, or that working group participants are effectively re-interpreting delicately balanced intergovernmental agreements. Non-governmental participants do not have to confront these issues.

In the final plenary session in Copenhagen yesterday, three participants from the so-called ‘government stakeholder group’; those participating on behalf of the governments of the United States, India and Canada; expressed their concerns with two references to the ‘precautionary approach’ in parts of the proposed new standard that set principles for organisations to apply in pursuit of social responsibility in the fields of environment and consumer issues respectively.

The positions of these three experts at the talks can in many respects be seen as an inevitable consequence of the current unjoined up link between ISO and public policy. They mean bringing the political positions of governments to a voluntary and private standard where, in contrast to intergovernmental or national policy processes, they are less likely to be negotiable. This in turn causes frustration on the part of many participants who are committed to the ISO principle of ‘consensus’ decision-making across experts, regardless of how representative they might be, or how accountable to others.

The draft social responsibility standard does not apply to governments in their capacity as policy-makers. But it addresses other kinds of ‘organisations’ of all sizes, wherever they might be found.

Yesterday, in a concluding plenary session of more than 400 participants from more than 80 countries, a representative of the US government made it clear that the US government has ‘sustained opposition’ to a key part of the 100-page text which asks organisations of all sizes to take a ‘precautionary approach’. Canada and India also expressed their concerns about the text. The three have differing views on the content of the precautionary approach and how it should be applied, at the level of principle, to organisations.

Whilst it is beyond the scope of this post to explain in any detail the precise sources of the different positions, a brief explanatory diversion is probably useful.

The precautionary approach has been developed in a series of international agreements since the 1990s. As an approach, it proposes that lack of full scientific certainty in the face of risks of serious or irreversible damage or harm to the environment or human health should not be an excuse for postponing cost-effect preventive measures. The precautionary approach has also been adapted for application by other kinds of organisations, including businesses

The idea of a ‘precautionary approach’ is a central part of international talks on the global issue of climate change; controversial in part because of the global distribution of costs and benefits of tackling climate change in line with precaution. Now, the precautionary approach has properly been included in the global guidance standard on social responsibility because it reflects the reality of good social responsibility practice in many organisations.

The concerns of the three governments whose policy positions might reasonably be assumed to lie behind the representations of the three experts are not critical to progress with the standard at this stage since voting is ultimately based on votes from standards bodies.

Governments take part in the standard-setting process along with other groups including consumers, trade unions, and non-governmental organisations in so-called ‘stakeholder groups’. However, their objections to the text are an indication of a potential mismatch between a) political positions that arise out of government policy on issues such as climate change, science-based policy, or the management of risks from genetically modified organisms in the Capitals of the three countries and b) the reality of good social responsibility practice in markets and economic sectors around the world.

As ISO’s involvement in key issues of public policy action such as human rights, environment and labour (all addressed in the draft standard) gets deeper and broader, the tensions will only get worse unless governments themselves find a way to deal with the wider implications of ISO under the WTO and in international law.

Holding back progress in the world’s largest and most inclusive social responsibility negotiation, as these and other government positions risked (but did not eventually end) doing, is not the right way forward to ensure progress with social responsibility around the world. ISO 26000 shows that not all stakeholders can properly be treated as ‘equal’ in a process that takes effect through markets, not government ratification, and that is built around the principle of consensus.

One part of the way forward should be for both ISO and governments to clarify how governments might be ‘different’ to other stakeholder representatives in future ISO talks with public policy reach.

The ISO 26000 process has internally been relatively ‘democratic’ as a hermetically sealed process; but it is one with an impact on other ‘democratic processes’ that are not yet reflexively recognised within the ISO process.

The second part of the way forward needs to be for governments to go to the WTO to find ways to reduce the impact of ISO on their ‘policy space’ at national and international levels.

The third, and potentially trickiest area for action is to find a way to ensure that, where appropriate or necessary, government participants are freed up to be able to participate genuinely as ‘experts’.

For those whose governments see them truly as representatives of governments, (irrespective of the  fiction that they participate as ‘individual experts’), there are real concerns that their positions and views in such talks potentially has an impact, through evolving international law, on the content of their governments’ international obligations as states. ISO 26000 cannot be treated as a process that is subject to the Chatham House Rule, as ISO itself would like, because for some participants the positions taken have implications for public policy and hence accountability of governments; a key element of democracy itself. 

We must hope that in the meantime ISO 26000 is adopted by ISO members over the summer, and that it begins to generate its promised positive impacts on the social responsibility practices of organisations and their contribution to sustainable development around the world.  

In a 29^th 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 and the state; however hard to sell David Cameron’s grand idea of ‘The Big Society’ might have been on doorsteps.

“We all consume.  And we always will”; Jon opens in his post, and goes on “There is a very important difference, though, between consumption and Consumerism.  If consumption is the act, Consumerism is the social system which exists when that act becomes defining of a society.  And it’s Consumerism that causes the problems.  Consumerism takes the act of consumption and turns it into the defining act of our role as social beings, rather than one expression of that role.  We all consume, but in a healthy society, we should also participate to an equally significant extent in social groups and relationships that are beyond consumption.  We should produce, and we should be citizens. But in a Consumerist society, these other roles fade into the background…” 

Jon suggests that: “With Consumerism, we no longer have real responsibility as citizens, because we become merely the Consumers of the political parties.  Our role in representative democracy as it stands in this country today is merely to be marketed to, and if we are sufficiently wooed, to choose the best value for ourselves as individuals.  We have no responsibility even to vote, and many – even most of us – do not.”

Arguably, our recent UK general election offers just the right sort of jolt. And if it’s not too trite, I might add that almost as never in living memory we’re now collectively sensitised, for good or for ill, to the range of possible immediate consequences of our votes as citizens; and deeply aware of the likely imminent restrictions on our ability to consume as the inevitable and looming cuts begin to bite.

It’s perhaps more useful, as I suggested in a post back in October last year, to view the links between consumption (Consumerism) and citizenship as a continuum rather than as inherently competing polar opposites. Indeed, in a 2003 paper for Renewal magazine, “Consuming ideals: sustainable consumption, behaviour change and active citizenship”, Ian Christie argues that “The sharp distinction between ‘consumer’ and ‘citizen’ makes sense as a shorthand for regret that neo-liberal policies over the past twenty-five years have led to an under-valuing of public goods and the public sector, and may have played some part in the decline of public engagement and trust in formal politics. But beyond that, a strong distinction between ‘consumer’ and ‘citizen’ is not especially helpful.”

 A more ‘blended’ approach could potentially encompass the entirety of peoples’ engagement with the public realm issues that make up sustainable development. But the potential of ‘blended consumer-citizenship’ would not stop at ethical or sustainable consumption or public service delivery. It could also be about scaling up the impacts of real people’s behaviour on sustainable development by finding new ways to align responsible consumption and citizen-led community action in the public realm.

The missing ingredient then – on the path to transformative action for sustainable development – might be a sense of connection between our acts as consumers, our attachment to Consumerism if you like, and the entirety of our (peoples’) engagement with the public realm issues that make up sustainable development.

It’ll take the skills of some of the marketers and advertisers who frequent The Conservation Economy, though, to help ensure that this sentiment doesn’t meet the same dismal doorstep reaction as Prime Minister Cameron’s Big Society. And it’ll take some real social and civic entrepreneurship to find meaningful ways to breathe life into it, so that it becomes more than pious sentiment; so that it becomes a way of thinking that is directly and closely connected to the times and spaces where we feel ourselves most actively citizens.

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 of the Hansard Society’s 2010 Audit of Political Engagement on 3rd March, because that shows a worrying counter-current. Consider the following extracts: (on pages 24-25 of the printed version of the Audit)

..there appears to have been a significant change in the public’s knowledge of local government over the past seven years. In the first Audit study [2004], 38% of the public claimed to have ‘a great deal’ or ‘a fair amount’ of knowledge about their local council. This figure had climbed to 47% in the fourth Audit report. But this year that figure has dropped back to just 40% claiming the same….

…it is perhaps not surprising that declining levels of perceived knowledge about local government are matched by equally declining levels of interest in local issues in recent years. Whereas those reporting to be ‘very interested’ in national issues has declined moderately  from 25% in the first Audit to 22% this year, in comparison 32% of the public claimed to be ‘very interested’ in local issues in Audit 1 but only 19% claim the same in this year’s report…

Signs of a general loss of interest in local issues linked to declining knowledge of local government should be extremely worrying: not only for David Cameron and his team, but also for anyone concerned with sustainable development.

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 vote is a call for a fairer and more equal world.”

Now I’ve often wished that I had a say in the election of the President of the US. And the campaign prompted me to think some more about my conflicted views on the importance of voting in a liberal democracy.

I admire the simplicity of the campaign message; and I’m pleased that the ‘partner’ countries have been chosen on grounds of their emblematic connection to some of the key challenges of sustainable development (Bangladesh to climate change; Afghanistan to human security and armed conflict; Ghana to poverty) . But in this coming UK general election, Give Your Vote encourages me to view my apparently legally unfettered ability to vote as a proxy for unenfranchised stakeholders as implicitly a more valuable choice than any other that I could exercise at the ballot box of my own free will.

Perhaps this doesn’t matter? After all, as the Hansard Society’s newly published 2010 Audit of Political Engagement points out, currently 25% of the public do not trust politicians at all and 62 “admit that they know ‘not very much’ or ‘nothing at all’ about the Westminster Parliament.

And yet… and yet… is there not a risk that promoting the idea that we can and should give our votes to deserving non-voters could further erode the regard in which collectively we hold representative democracy?

The Give Your Vote option isn’t about non-engagement though. Far from it.

Giving a vote calls for a high degree of pre-election public involvement on the part of the UK proxy. A look at the detail of the process makes this clear:

“Step 1. Finding out what the UK parties’ policies are on global issues

We are currently gathering questions from people in Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Ghana that they would like to put to the UK election candidates.

We will be putting the most popular questions directly to the main political parties, while also asking our UK participants to ask them at candidate hustings events.

For the month of April, people in Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Ghana will be able to text their questions directly through local FrontlineSMS-enabled hubs.

Step 2. Sending out the manifestos to Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Ghana and holding an election.

The questions and answers from the parties will be translated into local languages and be available online as well as broadcast on local radio and TV networks.

Global UK vote day will be held in Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Ghana five days before the UK election.

Participants in Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Ghana can vote by sending an SMS to a local number registering their preferred vote. There will also be one or two physical polling stations in each country.

Step 3 . Pairing up voters and vote-donors

We will do our best to pair people up individually. However, it’s more than likely we won’t have exactly the same number of people on both sides of this project. If necessary, we will calculate the proportions for each party, randomise who to send which result to, and fire out the emails/texts.

Step 4. Sending out the votes

On the eve of the UK election, participants in the UK will receive an SMS or email, indicating which party their partner in Afghanistan, Bangladesh or Ghana wishes them to vote for.

Step 5. Casting of the global vote

They then go to the polling booth, tick the relevant box and, if they wish, take a photo on their mobile phone to confirm the vote”.

My colleague Ian Christie recently argued in an email that “democracy is a social ritual as much as anything else – given the unlikelihood of your personal vote making any difference. If the social norms supporting this weaken, democracy has little to offer by way of benefit compared to [for example] consumerism…”

What could it mean to change the nature of the ritual in the way that Give Your Vote proposes?

For all that UK citizens complain about its health, we have a tendency to be rather complacent about the idea that we live in a democracy; however flawed. In contrast, people who know what it is to live in countries that are very far from democratic might take less for granted. For example, a close relative who grew up in Communist Poland sometimes reminds me that casting a vote in a general election is the supreme responsibility and expression of citizenship; one which must never be taken lightly. And indeed, 76% of the UK public believe that it is their ‘duty’ to vote.

When I once (I’m ashamed to write) forgot to vote in a particularly dull UK General Election, the first person I confessed to at work the following day was a dual-nationality UK/Zimbabwean citizen. With no discernable schadenfreude save for a slightly suspect glimmer in his eyes, he told me how he had once, at considerable time and some expense, temporarily given up and then reclaimed his UK citizenship to ensure that he could vote in a Zimbabwean election whose rules disenfranchised dual nationals.

But democracy is about much, much more than voting; a fact which many people fail to recognise. If the Give Your Vote campaign helps to highlight that fact by pointing to lack of fairness in global decision-making, perhaps I should stop being so precious about the idea that a few hundred or a few thousand pioneers are prepared to make a sacrifice to promote a more inclusive, more equitable, system of global democracy; a system of global democracy that is less rooted in outmoded ideas about the boundaries of the sovereign nation state and its citizens and more connected to the realities of Flawed Democracy’s impacts around the world.

Give Your Vote conclude their case for proxy voting with the argument that “with your help for the first time anywhere, ever, we will be taking democracy beyond borders”. Here, finally, they lose me; for I see clear signs of ‘democracy beyond borders’ in the countless transnational non-governmental decision-making processes that set expectations for behaviour in the public realm; the ‘global public policy networks’; the unusual partnerships and all the informal, multistakeholder setting of social or ethical norms that are a feature of our interconnected world. 

Give Your Vote is certainly thought-provoking. But the breadth of its vision of a fairer and more equal world has so far (so far…) delivered up a curiously narrow palette with which to paint the future of democracy across borders.

More prosaically.. there’s a lot to think about as I start work on Paper Three in our project on the Future of Democracy in the Face of Climate Change; which aims to review some of the existing literature on ‘the future of democracy’ and ‘the future of sustainable development governance’ respectively.

You can already download Papers One on ‘climate change and democracy: why and what matters’ and Paper Two on ‘what is democracy’.

Oh – and this time, I’m fairly certain I’ll remember to vote.

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, you can also now download Halina Ward’s new paper Democracy and climate change: why and what matters.

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 (25^th 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 (25^th February) to an invited audience of lawyers, non-governmental organisations, academics and civil servants, Dr Fülöp will focus on lessons learned from his first year and a half in office:

“Since it began its work, my office has received more than 1000 complaints; most of them concerning local and regional environmental problems. I and my staff have participated in legislative consultations on over 50 draft legal acts. And we have taken part in or organised more than 200 conferences, stakeholder or scientific meetings.

 We have found that these activities place the office of the Parliamentary Commissioner for Future Generations in a unique position to map Hungary’s most topical environmental problems.”

FDSD Director Halina Ward, who has co-organised tonight’s event, adds:

 “We all know that electoral cycles can drive short-term thinking at the expense of long-term vision. And short-termism can hamper the efforts of our elected leaders to take bold steps to protect the environment and secure a high quality of life for future generations.

 Hungary’s Green Ombudsman approach is one way to help secure that elusive mix of political leadership, expertise, citizen responsibility and grass-roots mobilisation on the key environmental and social issues of our time. We need to think about what we can take from that, and what more might be needed here in the UK.”

 Peter Kellett, Chair of UKELA, also a co-organiser of the event, says:

 “There are still major challenges in environmental regulation and enforcement here in the UK. We have in many ways been progressive in designing and championing environmental laws and in enabling their enforcement through the Courts, but we have much to learn from our neighbours.

 I am delighted that UKELA members have this opportunity to reflect on insights from a major Central European country, Hungary, whose constitution guarantees the right of its citizens to a clean and healthy environment“

 ENDS

 Note to editors:

The Green Ombudsman Dr Sándor Fülöp, and FDSD Director Halina Ward are available for media interviews and comment. Press enquiries: press@fdsd.org. Telephone: +44 (0)7825 164996.

In May 2008 the Hungarian Parliament elected environment lawyer, academic and former public prosecutor Dr Sándor Fülöp to become Hungary’s first Parliamentary Commissioner for Future Generations for a six-year term. The Commissioner for Future Generations is one of four Parliamentary Ombudsmen, with others addressing civil rights, data protection and freedom of information, and the rights of ‘national and ethnic minorities,’ respectively.

The UK already has an Information Commissioner (dealing with data protection and freedom of information) and four Children’s Commissioners (working to promote the views and best interests of all children and young people). But there is no direct equivalent of the Commissioner for Future Generations.

The Foundation for Democracy and Sustainable Development (www.fdsd.org) is a UK-based charity founded in 1983. FDSD’s mission is to develop resources to equip democracy to deliver sustainable development.

The UK Environmental Law Association (www.ukela.org.uk) aims to make the law work for a better environment and to improve understanding and awareness of environmental law.

Dr Sándor Fülöp has degrees in law and in psychology. Between 1984 and 1991 he has worked as a public prosecutor at the Metropolitan and the National Chief Prosecutor’s Office. He also served, until his election as Commissioner, as the director of Hungary’s principal non-profit environmental law firm: the Environmental Management and Law Association (EMLA). In this capacity, Dr Fülöp participated in the drafting of the 1998 UN ECE Convention on Access to Information, Access to Decision-making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters (the Aarhus Convention). Between 2002 and 2008 he was a member of its Compliance Committee. Dr Fülöp has also been a university lecturer in environmental law since 1997

Halina Ward is Director of the Foundation for Democracy and Sustainable Development. Before joining FDSD, she was Director of the Business and Sustainable Development Programme at the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) in London. She has also worked as a Senior Fellow at the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House) and as a solicitor practising commercial environment law.

Peter Kellett chairs the UK Environmental Law Association.  He works in the Environment Agency for a team that seeks to improve environmental regulation. 

For some, reflecting on that, the Chinese regime starts to acquire glamour.  Memories of Tienanmen are growing dim, the vitality of China is palpable throughout the world and startling to those who have witnessed directly the development of the Chinese littoral.  Even though China has played fast and loose with regard to climate change; seizing the heights of legitimacy in demanding that the first moves to constrain carbon in the atmosphere be made by those historically developed nations which put most of it there, but then Chinese deal-making helping to undermine the forces at Copenhagen which aimed to do just that. 

That is the key question for the 21st century.

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 State of the World 2010 report, just out and widely reported in places like CNN and Scientific American, is titled “from Consumerism to Sustainability” and echoes the Citizen Renaissance call for an end to consumerism. The report says “Many of the environmental and social problems we face today are symptoms of a deeper systemic failing: a dominant cultural paradigm that encourages living in ways that are often directly counter to the realities of a finite planet.”

But surely the idea of green behaviour change is nothing new? We seem to hear continually from governments how if we will only change our light bulbs everything will be ok. But seeking merely to consume differently or ‘greener’ won’t make the grade.

George Monbiot has written that  “Our power comes from acting as citizens – demanding political change – not acting as consumers.”

Confronted as we are by the Scylla and Charybdis of Climate Change and Peak Oil and with, at best static levels of wellbeing, change is badly needed. But micro-level policy and incremental tweaks of business-as-usual will not suffice.

As Professor Tim Jackson of the Government’s Sustainable Development Commission has shown, to reach a peak level of 450 parts per million CO2 in the atmosphere by 2050, bring 9 billion people out of poverty and keep to our current growth rates, the carbon content of economic output would need to be reduced to just 2% of the best currently achieved anywhere in the EU.

Clearly this is an impossible task. And those figures are based on a 450ppm target which is now agreed to be far too high if we are to hope to remain below 2 degrees global warming. Many suggest 350 ppm would be the highest safe limit for 2050 peak.

 
In ground-breaking work, WWF’s Dr Tom Crompton has shown that, apart from being entirely inadequate in scale of response, green consumerism and appeals to shallow, short-term individualistic extrinsic values also undermine a more sophisticated appeal to citizen-centric intrinsic values which could bring about sustainability and the flourishing of all. 

Copenhagen serves as both a historic watershed and a powerful metaphor for the failure of our current systems. Entrenched political positions, inertia and vested interests mean that we must now re-focus hope and enlightenment on ourselves. We the citizens will need to lead the way.

Johann Hari’s article in The Independent in late 2009 offers a stark and powerful warning: “buried deep in our subconscious, there still lays the belief that our political leaders are collective Daddies and Mummies who will – in the last instance – guarantee our safety.” That illusion is now surely ending. Leadership has been – and will continue to be – democratised and trust earned on multiple levels from multiple sources. We can no longer look to the top of an elitist pyramid of political authority, when the pyramid itself is crumbling. We, the citizens, have the power both to grant trust to those who earn it from us, and to pressurise those who fail us – and to remove our trust in them altogether.

Many of our politicians have failed also as citizens. Der Spiegel’s Christian Schwägerl  wrote, post-Copenhagen, that “Obama has neglected the single most important issue for an American president who likes to imagine himself as a world citizen, namely his country’s addiction to fossil fuels and the risks of unchecked climate change”. And yet it was Obama himself who ushered in, at his inauguration, “a new era of citizenship and responsibility”.

Here lies a dichotomy and contradiction that needs to be urgently addressed. The world needs Obama to deliver his vision into reality.

Citizenship and Responsibility are happy and vital bedfellows. Doyenne of the eco-activist movement Tamsin Omond commented in January 2010 that “Copenhagen failed because the politicians still don’t accept that climate change is the defining issue of our generation. What Copenhagen told me was to stop focusing on trying to change the politicians and start winning over the general population. The revolution will not happen unless everyone is invited.”

Now, in 2010, as we enter a new year and a new decade, more and more voices are joining up and calling for a shift away from individualistic consumerism to collective citizenship.

The message is echoing around the developed as well as the developing world, with a January 2010 article in the Times of India saying “Indian needs to avoid repeating the West’s mistakes. Only enlightened citizens can show the way towards a more viable economy by putting pressure on government, stressing India’s success should not be measured by GDP growth rates and spending habits alone. Nor should it aspire to become like the US or China.”

I strongly believe that 2010 will be remembered as the start of the Decade of the Citizen. New sets of citizen-values will come to the fore and help usher in a shift to a post-growth wellbeing economy wellbeing economy. The Transition Town movement is just one example of where this is already happening. My hope – and belief – that this will become a movement of scale and open to the many, not the few. Another organisation to watch is the now four million-strong www.avaaz.org citizens’ movement, which has declared 2010 ‘The Year of People Power.’

In late December 2009, Brian Davey echoed this call, saying (in response to the failures of Copenhagen) that “climate change calls for a mobilisation of the population that alters our structure of motivations. It requires an eco-informed citizenry. Eco-citizenship will have to be a lifestyle choice of large numbers of people – or humanity has very little chance of surviving”.

On the one hand this is a scary concept for many of us. Instead of waiting for big business or big government to ‘sort things out’ we have to get off our backsides and collectively become the catalyst and agents for change.

But it’s also a really empowering and exciting prospect for the new decade.

What to do? Well my advice would be to get together with your local community. Join a network of souls with like-minded, shared interests. Join a Transition group – or even better start your own for your street or your village. There is a mass of things going on out there, from which we can all learn.

The Citizen Renaissance message for 2010 is this: Be the change. Aspire not to have more but be more. Do more. Together.

The paper is called “Corporate Social Responsibility: What Next?”, and it looks at the likely impact of the current recession on the practice and shape of corporate social responsibility in years to come.

One blindingly obvious thing that occurred to me as I was writing the paper was that there is a deep mismatch between an insistence that businesses adopt a longer-term time horizon when thinking about ‘the business case’ for corporate social responsibility; and a lack of commensurate pressure on governments to think long-term. Yet it is after all governments, or public policy, which provide a large part of the enabling environment for corporate social responsibility (CSR).

Climate change is the policy agenda that could potentially bring both sets of perspectives together most powerfully. But governments at the Copenhagen Climate Summit failed to rise to the challenge.

If you will forgive the breach of blogging etiquette, I reproduce below a couple of relevant passages from (my own) paper. It was written some little while ago, well before the Copenhagen Climate Summit. You can also download it in full.

“Increasing awareness of climate change has potential to bring an outbreak of longer-term thinking in OECD policy-making as well as more serious efforts to substantially decouple economic growth from intensive fossil fuel consumption. Whilst the obstacles are formidable, one consequence could be that emphasis on  falls away in favour of an increasing focus on the role of business as a vehicle for sustainable development…

…The financial crisis could help to spur more widespread longer-term thinking on the part of governments as they reflect on the extent to which lightly regulated capitalism itself may have been at fault. So too could government worries about the long-term potentially catastrophic impacts of climate change. But the risk, as with the potential impact of the economic recession on CSR more generally, is that quick fixes driven by short-term knee-jerk reactions may instead dominate – leaving CSR in ‘business as usual’ mode.

Governments in OECD countries must lead by example, showing businesses that long-term thinking for sustainable development is not only possible, but desirable for the overall good of society. The forthcoming 2009 Copenhagen Climate Summit will be a litmus test; potentially the single most significant action on the part of governments, symbolically and in fact, to generate the kinds of shifts that are needed for ‘unusual business’.

The current economic downturn brings the [business] governance challenge of CSR to the fore. Whether this will be addressed in a narrow way or through a renaissance in interest in the role of public policy in directing business endeavour poses the core question for the next stage in the relationship between business, development and society. Efforts on the part of CSR practitioners and public policy makers to tackle the governance challenge of CSR must themselves emulate the long-term thinking and time horizons that CSR advocates often demand of business.

‘Business as unusual’ must be the goal”.

If governments fail to rise to the challenge we cannot expect CSR to provide a major part of the solution to climate change adaptation and mitigation.

We can hope that some business leaders will continue to do just that; lead the business field; but the real pressure for transformation now must come from ordinary people.

At the risk of sounding glib, ordinary people must demand ‘government unusual’ to ensure that elected representatives value long-term sustainability over short-term economic growth. And elected representatives in turn must make clear demands for business to play a clearly defined and responsible role in the transition to a low carbon economy, and they must find ways of doing so without passing the buck or developing an unhealthy dependency on business leadership for environmental and social change.

This seems to be what some people mean, however unhappy the terminology (personally I dislike it with a vengeance), when they call for governments to tackle climate change on a Rooseveltian ‘war footing’.

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 these he includes imperialism, consumption and the work ethic, it is making headway on. “Only number three,” he notes, “the Western way of law and politics – shows little sign of emerging in the one-party state that is the People’s Republic.” But, he muses, “does China need dear old democracy to achieve enduring prosperity?”

Those two words, enduring and prosperity, put the question slap-bang into the heartland of the territory the Foundation for Democracy and Sustainable Development team is beginning to map out. Read Niall Ferguson’s fascinating article and ponder our collective future trajectories – as I did. Then join us, in 2010 and beyond, in the quest to find out how to marry the best of West and East in pursuit of democracy and sustainability.

As we start work on our project here at the Foundation for Democracy and Sustainable Development on ‘the future of democracy in the face of climate change‘, we’ll be reflecting on the big question: what next?

We’ll be looking, not just at the critically important coming twelve months, but beyond, to 2050 and 2100.

So in this blog post I highlight some of the ‘democracy and climate change’ themes that emerged in Copenhagen.

Public protest and climate change

One of the most headline-grabbing issues in Copenhagen concerned the methods used by Danish police to manage very largely peaceful protest.

The images of (mostly police) violence and mass detentions on the streets of Copenhagen run the risk of deterring many concerned citizens in Europe and North America from exercising their right to protest. That would be great pity, for it could stifle the birth of the kind of mass movement that politicians such as Ed Miliband say is needed  to support government leadership on climate change.

But those same images are just as likely to radicalise others, fuelling further scepticism over the political will of elected national leaders to take seriously the wishes of citizens who favour ambitious action to tackle climate change.

It’s clearly not just Danish police who worry about and cooperate on climate protest. There were plainclothes police officers at Harwich Port on Sunday to meet the ferry from the Danish port of Esbjerg; and there were dogs and lengthy searches on the overland border between Germany and Denmark when I travelled out on a coach organised by a UK-based action group.

Alliances between vulnerable countries and civil society

Another striking feature of the overall dynamics in Copenhagen was the strong links forged between global civil society present in Copenhagen and leaders of some of the most immediately vulnerable countries. The adulation and standing ovation given to President Nasheed of the Maldives when he spoke to a packed meeting at the ‘alternative’ climate venue, Klimaforum, and the chorus of tweeting that surrounded his public speeches during the conference, are a case in point.

Shifting negotiating dynamics

Then there were the visible shifts in the negotiating dynamics between the world’s richest countries and the so-called ‘emerging economies’ whose carbon emissions are set to rise rapidly as their economies grow. The EU was strikingly not one of the countries mentioned by President Obama when he announced in a press conference in the evening of 18th December that a base deal had been reached. It emerged that the core parties to the non-binding accord that was subsequently merely ‘noted’ by the UN were the US, Brazil, South Africa, India and China. 

Many of the world’s poorest countries remained politically marginalised in the official climate talks; but it was clear both that important shifts had taken place. New patterns of alliances are emerging within and out of the G77.

The decision of African group leader, Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, to stand with France to support the EU-backed maximum two degree temperature rise (making a regional 3-3.5 degree rise the suggested likely reality for Africa) together with a ‘quick-start’ finance package of USD 10 billion fell far short of prior African demands. It was greeted with consternation and charges of a sell-out by many Africans including the Sudanese chair of the G77/China group, Ambassador Lumumba Stanislaus Di-Aping as well as African civil society groups.

Business gets on with it

Meanwhile, an entirely different tone was evident in reports of business events in the city.  These were abuzz with talk about the positive green business opportunities generated by the climate change agenda, and the technical detail of measurement, accounting, green technology and much more.

In contrast, the interests of those businesses that stand to lose from tough climate mitigation actions were far less visible. Yet these made themselves felt in cautious speeches from some government officials and politicians and, most fundamentally, in the failure to reach intergovernmental agreement on emissions targets during the conference.

City mayors talk positive

City mayors from around the world met at an event organised by the City of Copenhagen during the official talks; the Copenhagen Climate Summit for Mayors. According to an informal email from one participant: “This looked and felt like a team! They listened to each other’s plans, they openly encouraged plagiarism and replication, they fostered support for each other in a way that was uncontrived, open and positive. They discussed technical fixes, finance and resources, education and engaging citizens: they discussed mitigation and adaptation, economic opportunity and necessity: and they recognised they need to be leaders of substantial cultural change.”.

Official talks mirror wider international development concerns

In contrast, other events, more closely linked to the themes under discussion in the official talks, replicated core concerns of the overall international development agenda. International donor agencies such as the UN Environment Programme, for example, lobbied for their organisations to be home to funds committed to help countries to adapt to climate change.

Intense discussions over how the funds should be managed; and about capacity-building and ‘good governance’ for climate adaptation in developing countries (long part of the jargon of the international development agenda) took place; and longstanding arguments about the lack of transparency in global negotiations linked closely to economic interests and about the huddles of influential states in so-called ‘green rooms’ were aired; and aired in ways that were not markedly different to an international trade negotiation. 

Divide between ‘bottom-up’ and ‘top-down’ solutions

But one point above others stands out: the huge political and psychological distance between the key issues and solutions debated during the official negotiations at the Bella Centre (where the formal talks took place), and the belief in bottom-up locally owned and self-managed solutions that characterised many of the ‘unofficial’ side meetings for civil society at the Klimaforum  space and in a variety of other meetings spaces around the city.

Indeed, with the slow pace of progress in intergovernmental talks, it has become apparent that much more emphasis will now likely be placed on local level innovation to deliver climate solutions.

Already in the UK, commentators are paying renewed attention to the groundswell of community-based activism that has sprung up over the last couple of years away from the formalities of ballot-box decision-making or the stifling bureaucratic decision-making of some town halls. 

This renewed call to ‘community-based local solutions’ is both valuable in practice and laudable as prescription; the more so when it builds community ties and hence the ability to remain resilient in the face of climate change.

And yet, a note of caution must here be sounded on two grounds. First, because it was noticeable in Copenhagen that the vision of ‘bottom-up’ decision-making that was articulated in many side events was not accompanied by a seamless vision of the role of national government; or of the much-vaunted national level ‘leadership’ that became a war-cry of campaigners during Copenhagen (e.g. in statements of the ‘politicians go to fancy dinners; leaders act’ sort).

Related to this is the real-world fact that any failure of global democracy resulting from negotiating inequality between nations is necessarily also a failure of national government.

In the run-up to the 2002 Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development, governments encouraged so-called ‘Type 2′ agreements to be tabled and to become a formal part of the Summit’s outcomes. These were essentially voluntary agreements or partnerships between different stakeholders to tackle different dimensions of sustainable development. But there was a backlash from some potential ‘Type 2 agreement’ signatories, who accused governments of passing the buck to non-governmental actors instead of getting on with reaching a deal themselves.

There must be a risk that the same will happen now on climate change: that governments will seek to bring citizen and business-led voluntary action into a bigger intergovernmental tent at the expense of much-needed national level leadership.

That is not in itself a bad thing, but must not become a substitute for effective action at the national and international government levels.

Second is the reality that politics is nowhere more personalised; nowhere more exposing, than at the local level. Any move formally to institutionalise a prioritisation of local level decision-making needs also be accompanied by efforts to tackle marginalisation and social exclusion in local level decision-making; to ensure that minority views are given due weight.

Localism must not become a banner under which marginalisation or ‘business as usual’ decision-making by vocal elites become entrenched in public policy.

The apparent distance between local and global level solutions – a canyon or a rift at best – was made all the deeper by the Copenhagen organisers’ unforgivable failure, over at the official Conference of the Parties at the Bella Centre on the outskirts of the city, adequately to make provision for non-governmental observers of the Conference (including this one, who lacked the stamina of some to stand in a freezing queue for 6-9 hours on the last day that non-governmental organisations without ’secondary’ badges were allowed to exchange their pre-registration for entry badges to the venue. To add insult to injury, a later invitation to join an alternative venue for those Observers who had been excluded from the latter part of the event was itself only extended to those who had passed the initial hurdle).  

Civil society and climate change

It is now an established (and hard fought-for) maxim of environmental policy that environmental decisions – including at the international level – are best made with the full participation of  interested citizens.

At international level, this maxim (which goes further than any globally agreed text but nonetheless builds on Principle 10 of the Rio Declaration) has for some time supported participation of non-governmental organisations and civil society groups as observers in intergovernmental negotiations; briefing negotiators, adding technical expertise, and bringing transparency to otherwise obscure negotiations between civil servants as often as elected politicians.

This civil society participation has not been without its problems; there has on occasion been fear that the structures of non-governmental organisations around the world and the potential dominance of larger groups simply reflect wider imbalances of bargaining power between nations. But in the climate talks, there is a remarkable coincidence of interest between the calls of civil society for climate justice and ambitious emissions targets, and the headline interests of more vulnerable nations.

When the ejection of impressive news source Avaaz and of Friends of the Earth and Tcktcktck from the official talks coincided with the ‘Reclaim Power’ climate justice march on Wednesday 16th December, it appeared that an entire army of officials had just scored an own goal.

Battles that many NGOs considered fought and won may now need to be fought and won again.

Beyond Copenhagen, there is renewed pressure on civil society around the world to make its voice heard above the non-voting views of economic interests and politicians limited by short-term political priorities or (in some countries) crude opinion poll data. This is precisely the message that is emerging from the larger non-governmental organisations: “we don’t have a real deal, and we’re not done yet”, is the essential message.

To put it another way, ‘we’re all eco-warriors now’.

One thing is certain: action based on this insight will undoubtedly shape both the course of democracy, and the course of climate change, in the coming months and years. 

[A version of this post will also be cross-posted on the Local Democracy blog over at http://blog.localdemocracy.org.uk/]

As Charles explains: “Currently, we have no visionary text explaining the intersect between (those heavy but crucial concepts) democracy, environmental justice and sustainable development.  The task now upon us, as chaos increasingly bites the world over, is to find a development path that can sustain and improve life, without chasing the chimera of perfect answers to all problems. 

With no convenient scripture to hand, is there another way to bring about the kind of revolution that is needed?   Can we find that transformative, non-violent route-map that can lift us out of the mess we have created and toward a more fulfilling society, moulded by the principles and practice of democracy, environmental justice and sustainable development?”

We invite your comments. Feel free to post thoughts via the Comments function on this blog post or by sending an email to Charles at the address given at the top of his paper.