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 calls ‘future people’ should be given the nearest possible equivalent to a vote.

Given the practicalities (and the problem of numbers if future people were given a formal ‘vote’, since they would almost certainly outnumber those alive today – though by how much we cannot know), Rupert proposes instead a proxy veto; in other words the power to veto in whole or in part new legislation (or the repeal of existing legislation) that threatens ‘the basic needs and fundamental interests of future people’.

In addition, the Guardians might be empowered to force a review of any existing legislation that threatens the basic needs and ‘fundamental interests’ of future people; and potentially also the positive power to initiate legislation.

Rupert suggests that there might be a dozen Guardians. They would in principle be selected by lot from among the adult population, drawing on the electoral register; though possibly with a lower age limit than the current voting threshold. They might be selected for a term of between five and eight years. And they would be selected perhaps a year in advance, to give a period of year in which to ‘train up’ for the role. In their deliberations once in office the Guardians would be supported by a ‘high level and diverse support staff of administrators, facilitators and experts, including of course legal experts’.

This is far from an uncontroversial proposal.

My own unease stems from my understanding of democracy as being fundamentally about people who are alive today; from my conviction that the demos of any democracy should be drawn from those humans who are currently alive. Efforts to equip democracy to deliver sustainable development through regard for future generations would, then, focus on equipping a democracy of ‘present people with all their futures’ to make ‘future generations-regarding’ decisions.

Part of Rupert’s response to this objection is itself very attractive. For whilst the term ‘future people’ might be a ‘a bit weird’ as one commentator remarked this week; it allows Rupert to make one of his more powerful arguments: that we are all future people, because we all have futures, as people, that we have not yet experienced.

There is something quite compelling in the idea that we are all future people; but it leads me to want our system of democracy to find ways ensuring that we and our elected representatives express concern and proper regard for future generations, rather than offering future people a form of proxy representation by veto. 

I have very much enjoyed the discussion that Rupert’s proposal has triggered; particularly in the comments threads on a 4th January blog post by The Guardian’s Damian Carrington, on a strongly ‘anti’ blog post at The Telegraph, and also at a well-attended launch event earlier this week at the House of Commons, which was addressed by MPs Caroline Lucas, Jon Cruddas and Norman Baker, along with Alliance for Future Generations members Peter Roderick and Nicolo Wojewoda.

But I do not think that the metaphor of ‘enslaving’ future generations (as in Damian Carrington’s blog post)  is a happy one; and I’m concerned that the proposal is a hostage to charges of ‘ecofascism’ and worse (as in responses to Brendan O’Neill’s blog on the proposal on The Telegraph site). Neither word – ‘fascism’ nor ‘slavery’ – is one that should readily be associated with proposals to equip our system of democracy to become more ‘future generations-regarding’.

Warm congratulations to Rupert Read for opening out a discussion that is much-needed; and for doing so with a proposal that is sufficiently clear, and sufficiently radical, to stimulate imaginations and unearth closely held and often un-expressed beliefs about how, as people, we represent ourselves and make decisions.

It seems, indeed, that it’s a week for such ideas: the so-called ‘zero draft’ of an ‘outcome document’ for negotiation this year’s UN Conference on Sustainable Development was released this week. Among the proposals for negotiation over the coming months in a text titled ‘The Future We Want’ is this:

“57. We agree to further consider the establishment of an Ombudsperson, or High Commissioner for Future Generations, to promote sustainable development.“

The scene is set for discussion on how to give institutional weight to future generations to gather momentum over the coming months.

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 Fülöp was elected to this post and is mid-way through his 6-year term. He is one of four Parliamentary Ombudsmen in Hungary. Others deal with civil rights, data protection and freedom of information, and the rights of “national and ethnic minorities”.

The Commissioner investigates environmental complaints, acts as a policy advocate for sustainability issues and promotes research on the long term sustainability of human societies.

That’s one approach to bringing the needs for future generations into policy processes – with a focus on the environment and sustainable development. There are others too.

In Finland, parliament’s Committee for the Future is charged with carrying on an “active and initiative-generating dialogue with the Government on major future problems and means of solving them”.

In Israel, the Knesset passed legislation to enable the creation of a Commission for Future Generations, a non-political entity which operated from 2001 until 2006.

Around the world, nineteen constitutions refer directly to future generations (you can read more on page 22 of Peter Roderick’s report for FDSD and WWF-UK).

The World Future Council is campaigning for ‘future justice’ and calling for ombudspersons for future generations.

Here in the UK, the Welsh government appointed a Commissioner for Sustainable Futures earlier this year.

And some members of the Alliance for Future Generations, which FDSD is a founder member of, have been mulling over the idea of local guardians for future generations. Together, we’re also exploring proposals for a UN High Commissioner for Future Generations.

So what shall we do?

Do you think that we need institutions and policies to bring the needs of future generations into the heart of our democracy and policies?

If you do, what do you think is the best way to do it?

We’d love to hear from you with your ideas. Please add your ideas in the Comments box below to tell us what you think – and stay in touch!

Together, we might just be able to get our elected representatives to think differently about the future….

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 shows a high-level political commitment to sustainable development.”

On the Cabinet split:

“The fact that the Cabinet is unable to come to a shared position on the green economy shows clearly that the UK is suffering from a dangerous ‘policy subsidence’ on sustainable development issues.”

“If your commitment to sustainable development is based largely on rhetoric without proper strategic and institutional underpinning, it’s like building a house on sand — policy subsidence is the inevitable result. And that’s what we’re now seeing.”

 “The emerging green split at Cabinet level is just the latest symptom of a lack of strategic thinking on sustainable development.”

CONTACTS:

Halina Ward, Director, +44 (0) 7825 164996
Joe Short, Media and Communications, +44 (0) 7967 481693
press@fdsd.org

NOTES TO EDITORS

1. See http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/oct/26/chris-huhne-renewable-energy-critics and http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/green-living/osbornes-antigreen-agenda-splits-coalition-2375993.html
2. The EAC report is available at:
   http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/environmental-audit-committee/news/rio-20-report/
3. Evidence from the Foundation for Democracy and Sustainable Development is available at:
   http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201012/cmselect/cmenvaud/1026/1026vw08.htm
4. Specific parts of FDSD’s evidence referred to in the EAC’s report are listed below.
5. See http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15450273

FDSD’S EVIDENCE REFERRED TO IN THE EAC REPORT

It is clear that to energise Rio+20, two decades after the original Earth Summit, a new generation needs to be enthused about the need for action and the difference that they can make. As the Foundation for Democracy & Sustainable Development put it, civil society involvement in Rio+20 is needed for ‘sharing good practice and catalysing the next generation of political activism and social innovation for sustainable development’.[12]
(paragraph 7)

The Foundation for Democracy & Sustainable Development (FDSD) identified ‘signs of erosion in the overall global political commitment to sustainable development’.
(paragraph 14)

The poverty-reduction imperative, flowing from the Brundtland Commission giving the ‘over-riding priority’ to meeting the needs of the world’s poor, led to ‘an over-emphasis on economic growth’. Rio+20 might further that imbalance.[33]
(paragraph 15)

A common thread in the evidence we have taken is that a green economy should also be a fair economy.[72]
(paragraph 30)

The Foundation for Democracy & Sustainable Development (FDSD) highlighted that the North/South divide over the green economy has helped polarise discussion on technology transfer and financial assistance for developing countries.[84]
(paragraph 33)

FDSD want to see a UN High Commissioner for Future Generations created,[115]
(paragraph 43)

IIED, however, think that reform of governance at UN level is a ‘misplaced prioritisation’ because the ‘dominant governance capacity to deliver sustainable development lies at national level’.[117] FDSD made a similar point.[118]
(paragraph 43)

A further danger is that the current financial crisis will tempt countries to aim for a ‘slightly greened business as usual’.[146]
(paragraph 53)

In the international arena, the Environment Secretary has visited Brazil to discuss the Conference.[157] She also contributed to European Environment Council ‘conclusions’ agreed on 10 October,[158] which took on board the European Commission’s June 2011 paper on Rio+20. FDSD saw ‘wishful thinking’ in that earlier paper because it did not see slowing growth as a response to the need to protect the environment.[159]
(paragraph 56)

ENDS

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 word) through changes in tax incentives.

At a launch event for IF this afternoon at the House of Commons (hosted by Tessa Jowell), a group of Alliance for Future Generations members and IF friends mused that we need more intergenerational solidarity, linked to a concerted effort to head off the risk of intragenerational sniping between generations already living today (thanks to Colin Hines for ‘solidarity not sniping’).

So less of the ‘oldsters hoarding bedrooms’ that attracted some parts of the media; more of the ‘working together to secure adequate housing for present and future generations’.

Amen to that.

One significant problem is that there’s no consistency in how the government invokes the needs of ’future generations’. My observation, based on some quick and dirty google searches (the results of which now languish in a lengthy Word document), is that when they do so, it’s almost always in justification of taking cherished things, or landscapes, away from present generations:  access to reasonably priced higher education, for example.

Planning Minister Greg Clark has argued that the (awful) proposed (English) National Planning Policy Framework, with its presumption in favour of developers – sorry, development  (mis-titled ‘sustainable development’ in the document, though it’s no such thing) – is designed to ensure adequate housing for future generations whilst stimulating economic growth.

IF, invoking what amounts to intragenerational fairness (between generations already alive) rather than intergenerational fairness, point to another option: finding ways to enable more people to benefit from the existing housing stock, in ways that might just help older people to meet their own needs whilst meeting the needs of younger people too. Not that that offers an easy way out either.

Still, Mr Clark, please take note: IF has offered up an important contribution to the debate about planning reform in England.

Choices and trade-offs about intergenerational fairness (for trade-offs there are, though solidarity there must be) demand proper government strategy and policy frameworks anchored to solid institutional settings. A Commissioner for Future Generations perhaps; a Select Committee on Future Generations; intergenerational impact assessments; government and parliament equipped to deliver on a long-term vision.  

Much much more, in other words, than rhetorical appeals alone to undefined ‘future’ generations as public spending cuts widen unfairness in the present and sow the seeds of greater intergenerational injustice in the future.

Next post: why high fuel prices mean we have to prepare democracy to deliver sustainable development…

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 surprised, or not, at allegations of payments made to Metropolitan police officers in the course of the News of the World’s business.

Integrity is big news in the UK.

Beyond corrupt MPs fiddling their expenses, allegations of bent coppers taking cash for information, and private detectives hacking phones in search of tabloid news, there are signs that things could get much worse as cuts take effect. 

Last month, anti-corruption group Transparency International UK launched the snappily titled National Integrity System Assessment: United Kingdom; one of a series of more than twenty such country reports produced by Transparency International country chapters across Europe. I was a member of a research advisory group linked to the process.

The UK assessment is a far from sensationalist report produced by Professor Michael Macaulay and Dr Gary Hickey at the University of Teesside. It’s backward-looking – awarding scores across twelve pillars (governance institutions which include the media, political parties and the judiciary) based on an assessment of their performance between 2004 and 2011.

On print media for example, the report says that there are:

some perennial concerns which it is important to raise as red flags. A key concern is the integrity of certain parts of the print media, their intrusion into privacy and how they are held to account in practice. The press is subject to a form of voluntary self-regulation. Although this does ensure freedom from outside interference, possible consequences are difficulties in ensuring integrity when pursuing and reporting stories; the correction of errors and redressing the damage done as a result; and in holding the press to account for their behaviour. It is possible that current financial constraints may be contributing to a lowering of standards.

The legislature and political parties fare badly in the assessment, with concerns about the ethical culture of Parliament and issues related to party funding structures.

But for me, one of the most striking features of the National Integrity Assessment is the number of areas where the researchers felt it important to raise ‘red flags’ about what might be about to happen and which could, if it did, have a potentially significant effect on the scores.

On the police, for example:

Budget cuts could also have a detrimental effect on law enforcement agencies; particularly the police, who will very likely have reduced capacity to tackle internal corruption as well as to investigate corruption in other sectors.

A red flag goes up, too, on the possible effect of cuts on wider public sector integrity:

The overarching public sector mantra of “do more with less” may well also create perverse incentives to manipulate figures and performance management statistics

and again at the Coalition government’s decision to wind up the Audit Commission, which audits and inspects local government and NHS spending; and again at the Coalition’s proposal to repeal the current statutory code of conduct for local councillors:

The Decentralisation and Localism Bill will dismantle the entire local government integrity framework, including the statutory code of conduct, replacing it with whatever voluntary arrangements local authorities choose, or can afford.

Efforts to learn the lessons from the scandal of the News of the World need to extend well beyond the fourth estate and the police.

We need to reflect long and hard on the conditions that breed corruption – for they undermine democracy in ways that are very difficult to put right once they have taken root.

And we need to demand that steps are taken now to ensure that our current age of austerity does not become an age without integrity.

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 the government has mainstreamed ‘sustainable’ .

You’ll see what I mean shortly. Here are the ‘relevant words and phrases’ counts. In each case the number in brackets is the number of references.

There are a few I’ve not counted (including when the relevant phrase appears in a name – World Business Council for Sustainable Development, or UN Conference on Sustainable Development, for example). But you’ll get the general jist from what follows:

sustainable development(15)
sustainable growth(8)
sustainable economic growth(5)
environmentally sustainable goods and services (2);
sustainable protection of natural resources (1);
sustainable lifestyle (2);
sustainable behaviour (3);
sustainable, low-carbon (insert noun) (4);
sustainable agriculture (1);
sustainable operations (1);
sustainable procurement (1);
sustainable criteria (1);
sustainable transport (2);
sustainable diet (1);
sustainable environmental management(1);
sustainable and resilient business model(1);
sustainable timber fish and palm oil (respectively – 7 total);
sustainable wildlife-friendly gardening (1);
sustainable source(s) (2);
strong, sustainable and balanced growth (1);
sustainable management(4);
sustainable bio-energy(1);
sustainable footing(1);
sustainable supply(1);
unsustainable abstraction(2);
sustainable use (7);
sustainable future (1);
sustainable land use (1);
sustainable production (1);
sustainable approach (1)
sustainable natural services(1);
sustainable goods and services(2);
sustainable urban drainage(2);
sustainable economic prosperity(1)

34 separate ‘sustainables’. That’s a lot of ‘sustainable’. But is it ‘sustainable development’?

Draw your own conclusions.

I’d be interested to know what they are…

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 largely-elected upper house would better reflect a commitment to democracy. But in giving more thought to the composition of the House of Lords than what it might actually do, there’s a huge gap in the proposals.

One important role played by the second chamber is to act as a partial counter-weight to the short-termism that can be built into Commons decision-making as a result of electoral cycles.

Providing for 15-year maximum terms for elected peers (as the Bill and White Paper do) is a sort of half-way house that doesn’t go far enough to ensure that the House of Lords is fully equipped to bring long-term thinking to parliament.

Lords reform needs to focus on substance as much as process.

15-year terms are relatively better for long-termism than 4 or 5-year terms (and relatively better for accountability than unelected life or hereditary peers). But whether they go far enough to instil a culture of long-termism (a clumsy term I know; but it’s the opposite of short-termism) is at best a moot point.

Whilst Peers are often comfortable looking to the past for inspiration, they need to be equipped to look to the future: to think and act on long-term perspectives; and to help to ensure that a sense for the needs of future generations of people and voters, not just the present, permeates our system of parliamentary democracy.

Now funnily enough… this sentiment is quite close to the agreed objective of a new Alliance for Future Generations which FDSD is quite involved in.

Members of the Alliance are individuals and organisations who have aligned themselves with the objective of ensuring “that long-termism and the needs of future generations are brought into the heart of UK democracy and policy processes, in order to safeguard the earth and secure intergenerational justice “.

More on the Alliance in a later post, but you can read an introduction here. 

If House of Lords reform can help to counter the short-termism of representative democracy, it will make a lasting contribution not only to deepening UK democracy, but also to equipping it to deliver sustainable development.

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.

————————————————

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 analyses was a report published earlier this month written for Friends of the Earth by Jonathon Porritt, undisputably among the elders of the UK environment and sustainable development movement.

In a detailed analysis, drawing on a compilation of 77 commitments made by the Coalition partners both within and outside government, there are precious few rays of light. The report slams the Coalition government’s record in delivering against its own objectives; let alone those of any genuinely groundbreaking commitment to sustainable development.  

As new Prime Minister, David Cameron promised the ‘greenest government ever’. (Did he ever feel, as he uttered those words, the icy hand of Robin Cook and the New Labour  government’s ‘ethical foreign policy’?). Today, those fine words have served to fuel the derision of environmentalists across the UK, for all Environment Secretary Caroline Spelman’s insistence that the rhetoric has real foundations.

Some of the low-lights for me in my work over the past year here at FDSD follow.

Embedding sustainable development

Two months or so after the General election, the Coalition government made clear that the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution and the independent government sustainable development watchdog the Sustainable Development Commission would provide some of the fuel for its bonfire of the Quangos.  

With the incineration of these institutional underpinnings for sustainable development and ‘green government’ in the UK, many environment and sustainable development advocates had cause to fret from an early stage.

Other early signs of the extent of the commitment by the ‘greenest government ever’ to sustainable development could be found (for those who have a high tolerance level for dull documents) in DEFRA’s November 2010  ‘Business Plan’. That document, all logframes and matrices, used the two words ‘sustainable development’ next to one another precisely…  once… in a reference to DEFRA’s goal of embedding sustainable development in other government departments. (Actually that’s not quite true: it’s also there in the DEFRA organogram; and the word ‘sustainability’ is also mentioned a few times. But still…).

The House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee (EAC) – a cross-party select committee mechanism for scrutinising the government’s approach to environment and sustainable development – opened its work in the new Parliamentary session with an inquiry into Embedding Sustainable Development Across Government after the Secretary of State’s announcement on the future of the Sustainable Development Commission.

A series of evidence sessions followed. FDSD submitted written evidence together with WWF-UK’s legal team and Barrister Peter Roderick, and WWF-UK’s Carol Day and I also gave evidence at one of the oral evidence sessions.

During one evidence session, Environment Secretary Caroline Spelman and DEFRA Director-General Mike Anderson were so feebly questioned that I found myself wishing, as I watched my laptop screen, that there was a sofa nearby that I could dive behind as I yelled ‘noooooh – look behiiiind you’ pantomime-style at Parliament TV and the MPs on the Committee.

The Environmental Audit Committee’s eventual report was moderate; conservative even; very far from strident. And yet it pointed in effect to what everyone in the UK sustainable development community knows to be true: that DEFRA, the environment ministry, is too weak to provide the right home for an effort to embed sustainable development across government.

The EAC warned that DEFRA “is not the best place from which to drive improved sustainable development performance across Government”. Instead, said the EAC, a Minister for Sustainable Development should be appointed within the Cabinet Office to drive action on sustainable development across government, and with close support from Treasury. In a joint press release, FDSD and WWF-UK endorsed the call; effectively to put sustainable development at the heart of where the real power lies in government. The Environmental Audit Committee also recommended a new Cabinet Committee with terms of reference addressing sustainable development. That too was a very welcome suggestion.

For a little while, progress towards the demise of the watchdog Sustainable Development Commission became a way of marking UK sustainable development policy time.

And then Caroline Spelman went on to a notable (if mealy-mouthed) u-turn on forests sell-off in the face of an effective rainbow-hued campaign. With Hunter wellies, Doc Martens; sensible cushion-soles and old plimsolls among the favoured campaign footwear, government plans to transfer (and in part sell off) the nation’s forest assets to private and community ownership floundered. 

Ms Spelman apparently later passed off the forest u-turn as an indication that this is a ‘listening’ government.

And then, a month before the Sustainable Development Commission closed shop, on 28^th February 2010, DEFRA provided us with another indicator of its approach to  embedding sustainable development across government.

In a seven-page word-processed and colourless ‘Vision’ document (a document which one senior civil servant has since assured me need not be cause for worry because it’s already been forgotten about) DEFRA sets out its plans for ‘mainstreaming’ sustainable development.

Sadly, DEFRA’s vision is unlikely to do much to inspire anyone – though that’s the one thing that a government committed to a Big Society working for sustainable development should be doing.

It’s hard to know where to start.

There’s a feeble statement of fact that sustainable development ‘recognises that the three pillars of the economy, society and the environment are interconnected’; a statement that contains nothing normative. But sustainable development is about integrating regard for economy, society and the environment so that we meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. And the Vision tells us that ‘stimulating economic growth and tackling the deficit’ are part of the overall approach to sustainable development.

Scratch the surface of some of the words in the Vision document and it’s hard to tell what lies beneath: ‘real measurable indicators’ are promised for example. The Vision tells us (as more recently has Caroline Spelman – in both cases without supporting evidence) that the government played a leading role at biodiversity talks in Nagoya – but why should we believe it?

Where is the evidence that, as the Vision statement suggests,  departmental business plans ‘demonstrate the importance given to long term SD by government as a whole’? The Vision commits DEFRA to review the business plans of other departments as part of its commitment to mainstream sustainable development across government. It’ll apparently thereby ensure ‘that environmental, social and economic impacts are taken into account as far as possible’. But this ex post impact assessment is very far from a commitment to drive sustainable development innovation and integration of environmental social and economic considerations.

Without an overall strategic framework (the sort that could be provided through a sustainable development white paper, for example), the government has no transparent basis for driving policy creativity or commitment – let alone accountability to the public in the muddle of coalition in a first past the post voting system. 

The Environmental Audit Committee report had recommended (Recommendation 13 if you’re interested) that “A new Sustainable Development Strategy should be developed to revitalise Government engagement on this essential foundation for all policy-making”.

But the government rejects entirely the idea of putting its approach to sustainable development on a clear and transparent strategic footing. Caroline Spelman has gone so far as to state quite clearly that the government does not intend to develop a new UK Sustainable Development Strategy.

When it comes to scrutiny of government action on sustainable development; the Vision says that ‘The Environmental Audit Committee will play a role in holding Government to account with a renewed commitment to scrutinise the appraisal of Government’s policies and our new overall approach’. Yet the Environmental Audit Committee’s report on Embedding Sustainable Development Across Government had said clearly that it “is not for Government.. to determine how Parliament might exercise its role of holding Government to account. We are not currently resourced to carry out the routine scrutiny work of the SDC and continue our separate role in scrutinising the Government’s sustainability performance”.

Far from a commitment to secure a new Minister for Sustainable Development within Cabinet, the Vision keeps responsibility for mainstreaming sustainable development across government firmly with DEFRA.

It’s certainly not bad that, as the Vision says, DEFRA’s Secretary of State will sit on key domestic policy Cabinet committees, including the economic affairs committee. But it’s no substitute for an institutional architecture that puts political commitment to sustainable development at the heart of government.

Around mid March 2011 the government’s response to the Environmental Audit Committee’s report on ‘embedding sustainable development across government’ was released. (Sadly the announcement was botched so there was little publicity). The government says:

“We do not agree that development of a new SD strategy is the right method for revitalising Government engagement on SD. The Government’s new SD vision and approach to fully embed SD throughout Government sets out our high level principles and strategy for the future. Our new approach has an emphasis on action, leadership from the top down and departments taking responsibility for their own performance in relation to SD. All of this is underpinned by our commitment to be open and transparent so that both public and parliament can scrutinise our progress”.

Guardian environment head Damian Carrington went along to see and report on Caroline Spelman and Cabinet Office heavyweight Oliver Letwin’s appearance before the Environmental Audit Committee  to discuss their response. In calling the government’s sustainability plan ‘hot air’, “I’m actually being kind”, Carrington said in a blog post immediately afterwards.

The Plan for Growth

Next came the March 2011 Budget and the government’s growth strategy. And in what was for me the space of a ten-day holiday away from regular email contact, quite a lot of things seemed suddenly to go, well, completely bonkers.

Earlier, in September 2010, the government had announced a one in one out rule; that “any new regulation brought in must be matched by one out of equivalent value”. (I still have no idea what methodologies will be applied to the ‘valuation’ exercise, but perhaps I just haven’t investigated deeply enough).

But there was much more than this to catch up on on my return from holiday. For a start, the March 2011 announcement that there was to be a three-year moratorium on all new domestic legislation – no matter what sort – applying to businesses employing fewer than ten employees (as if the number of employees was the proper cut-off for the appropriateness of action to address risks to workers’ lives; or human rights; or rights of redress…).

Then there was the government’s agreement that ‘sunset clauses’ would “now be mandatory for new regulation introduced by Whitehall departments, where there is a net burden (or cost) on business or civil society organisations”. So how might this idea work, when it comes to any new ‘important environmental protections’ that DEFRA assures us will not be compromised?

Then there was the most extraordinary statement on the government’s approach to sustainable development. In a statement purporting to set out a ‘presumption in favour of sustainable development’ within the planning system; itself part of a statement on ‘planning and the budget’; the Department of Communities and Local Government actually explained that what it planned to do to implement that presumption would amount to what would be potentially precisely the opposite: implementing a presumption in favour of economic growth and development.

Here’s the statement. Brace yourself. You may need to read it twice; pinch yourself; dive for that sofa.

“A new presumption in favour of sustainable development

This is a powerful new principle underpinning the planning system that will help to ensure that the default answer to development and growth is “yes” rather than “no”, except where this would clearly compromise the key sustainable development principles in national planning policy, including protecting the Green Belt and Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty. The presumption will give developers, communities and investors greater certainty about the types of applications that are likely to be approved, and will help to speed up the planning process and encourage growth…”

Incidentally – I learned later from an NGO colleague that the government might also consider it too difficult to define sustainable development in the Localism Bill; because sustainable development can mean all things to all people (the government in particular, it would appear).

Your Freedom, Crowdsourcing, and the Red Tape Challenge

At any rate, having missed out on all these things, I was only a day late in catching up with the launch, on April 7^th 2011, of the government’s Red Tape Challenge.

The idea of cutting red tape has a long and undistinguished history in the UK; undistinguished in that it is never a job that anyone has said is done.

Under Conservative Prime Minister John Major in the mid-1990s, there was a ‘deregulation unit’. Major memorably described tackling red tape as like trying to wrestle with a greasy pig.

The idea of slashing red tape never went out of fashion. Under Tony Blair, New Labour established a ‘red tape task force’. And Gordon Brown claimed to be the ‘enemy of red tape’.

Now, with dismal statistics on economic growth here in the UK, the Coalition government has pushed to the very top of the pendulum’s arc with its Red Tape Challenge.

The Red Tape Challenge is in some respects a successor to Nick Clegg’s failed ‘Your Freedom’ crowd-sourcing experiment; an experiment which folded after the government received more comments than it could cope with on the Your Freedom website. (The website, incidentally, is now partly archived so that it’s impossible to see what everyone said).

Your Freedom’s opening paragraphs included the following words “We want to restore Britain’s traditions of freedom and fairness, and free our society of unnecessary laws and regulations – both for individuals and businesses…. This site gives you the chance to tell us which laws and regulations you think we should get rid of”.

That something remarkably similar should re-emerge so quickly in the form of the Red Tape Challenge is itself surprising (though there are many possible explanations).

Like Your Freedom, the Red Tape Challenge is a web-based (so-called) ‘crowd-sourcing’ initiative. Economic sector by sector, the Red Tape Challenge invites comments on “which regulations are working and which are not; what should be scrapped, what should be saved and what should be simplified”.

In parallel, the initiative invites comments on six sets of ‘general regulations’.Among these, the ‘environment’ section of the Red Tape Challenge website  includes 278 separate pieces of environment law.

In the website’s own words: “here’s the most important bit – the default presumption will be that burdensome regulations will go. If Ministers want to keep them, they have to make a very good case for them to stay.”  Not only may Ministers have to waste their time, post cutbacks, potentially justifying anything anyone on the site says is burdensome; they also have to overcome a threshold presumption that if it’s considered burdensome by someone – anyone – it’s to be scrapped.

It’s now becoming close to impossible to keep track of what proposals are being made where and which policies, institutions, or laws, are up for incineration. For example, the Equality Act has been put forward for ‘crowd-sourced’ proposals for repeal in the Red Tape Challenge. But regulations made under the Equality Act are included in a separate more conventional consultation exercise –not the Red Tape Challenge. The Climate Change Act is included within the Red Tape Challenge. But it’s not listed under ‘carbon emissions’. Instead, it appears in a section on environmental permitting and information. 

Now I’m no e-democracy expert, but the Red Tape Challenge certainly appears to risk getting ‘crowd-sourcing’ all wrong. An old piece by Will Hutton shows why. Crowds are most ‘wise’, it seems, either when significant numbers of people make informed choices, or when the ‘wisdom’ emerges as a result of proper deliberation. 

Simply listing vast numbers of regulations doesn’t make for the sort of quantitative decision-making where wisdom is likely to emerge, either. Discussion about the pros and cons of regulation cannot in any meaningful sense be equated with the ‘guess the number of marbles in the jar’ stall at a summer fete.

There’s a long way to go in working out how to apply the idea of ‘crowdsourcing’ to government decision-making. And gambling almost the entirety of the nation’s body of environment, health and safety, employment and equalities legislation on an experiment is foolhardy in the extreme.

In contrast to the Red Tape Challenge fundamental assumption that if regulation is a burden – to anyone – it must go; the history of business innovation for sustainable development is replete with examples of innovation that is nurtured – or sometimes forced – by regulation. Perhaps the most celebrated example is the phase-out of ozone depleting substances, spurred on by the internationally agreed Montreal Protocol.

One business’s burdensome regulation is another’s signal to innovate. One enterprise’s burden is the source of a green growth for another.

The Red Tape Challenge consummately fails to recognise this, and that alone places it well behind the curve of those parts of the business community that exist to drive and serve the ‘green economy’ that the government has eagerly expresses its wish for.

If you will forgive the repetition in an already-long post: under Caroline Spelman’s stewardship, the greenest government ever, commited to mainstreaming sustainable development across government, has put 278 pieces of primary and secondary environment legislation up for crowd-sourced comment with a presumption that if they’re considered burdensome – possibly if they’re considered burdensome by anyone – they must in principle go.

It may only be accident that some pieces of legislation (the Clean Air Act and the Environmental Protection Act among them) have escaped listing; that it is not the entirety of the body of UK environment law that has been opened up to trading off against the government’s plan for short-term growth.

Over and over again on the environment regulation pages of the Red Tape Challenge website, respondents charge that the Coalition government is guilty of short-termism; that it has failed to take account of future generations; that it is putting short-term profit (and economic growth) before protection of the environment and sustainable development.

Campaign groups have also woken up to the risks. Despite a muddled explanation of what’s proposed, a petition by online campaign group 38 Degrees has gathered close to 50000 signatures. The RSPB invites its members to send a message to Vince Cable under the slogan ‘some cuts never heal’. The Woodland Trust is also among the groups encouraging their members to post messages in support of the existing body of environmental legislation.

Government departments have issued some responses to the initial wave of indignation about the Red Tape Challenge from environmentalists. First up, the Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC) moved on 20^th April to issue the reassuring statement that:

“The Climate Change Act is here to stay and is central to the coalition’s policies to cut emissions and incentivise investment in the green economy….[b]ut given the crucial role business has to play in the low carbon transition it’s only right that the government looks at how this can be done in as business friendly a way as possible and at least cost to consumers and business.”

But refraining from repealing primary legislation in its entirety is no guarantee of continual progress towards the achievement of its goals. The tension in DECC’s carefully-negotiated statement is obvious, three weeks on, from the row that has broken out across government departments (and between Lib Dem Ministers) on the adoption of new carbon budgets. There have been calls for David Cameron to intervene in the face of Vince Cable’s claims that the latest round of proposed carbon budgets recommended by the independent Climate Change Committee, and supported by Chris Huhne at DECC, excessively burden the UK economy.

With DECC’s clarification on the Red Tape Challenge issued, on 24^th April DEFRA published this double-speak statement on its website:

The myth: there have been reports in the media that important environmental regulations in legislation such as the Wildlife and Countryside Act, National Park Act, Clean Air Act and the Climate Change Act could be scrapped as part of the Government’s Red Tape Challenge.

The truth: Defra is committed to enhancing the natural environment and there are no plans to remove important environmental protections. The Red Tape Challenge is about examining and understanding the impact of regulation on the people, businesses, and communities it affects, to ensure that it is proportionate while delivering the desired outcomes.

This reader doesn’t find the ‘myth’ busted at all. DEFRA’s statement – one of 23 on an extraordinary ‘myth-busters’ section of its website – serves principally to sound even deeper alarm bells.

A reminder: the Cabinet Office, home of the Red Tape Challenge, says this: “here’s the most important bit – the default presumption will be that burdensome regulations will go. If Ministers want to keep them, they have to make a very good case for them to stay”.

The devil is in the detail, and here we have it: it’s ‘important environmental protections’ versus ‘burdensome regulations’. Neither DECC nor DEFRA provide any guidance on how trade-offs will be managed when it comes to the inevitable balancing act between competing Ministries. Caroline Spelman will no doubt be working hard behind closed doors (breakfast meetings, Cabinet Committees and so on) to ‘mainstream’ sustainable development. And yet the Cabinet Office’s ‘default presumption’ is so clearly stated that it is as if government faces no balancing acts.

The poverty of short-termism

There’s a deeply engrained short-termism in these assaults on sustainable development; in the Coalition’s persistent economic framing of environment and biodiversity; in the separation of environment and social justice.

Yet the Coalition government boldly announced that it means to adopt a ‘new horizon’ in politics. In a September 2010 speech, Nick Clegg declared that one of the guiding purposes of this government’s policy approach (along with decentralisation and the Big Society) would be a ‘horizon shift’: governance for the long-term; and therefore an end to political short-termism.  

I analysed Clegg’s speech from a sustainable development perspective in this post (extraordinary that the objective of the ‘New Horizon’ is to be ‘social mobility’). Three months earlier FDSD and many other individuals and organisations had called on the Coalition to adopt a ‘new politics of the future’.

As the short-term growth imperative reaches out to trump all that comes before it, there’s been precious little evidence of Clegg’s New Horizon so far when it comes to sustainable development.

The ‘greenest government ever’? A ‘new horizon’ in UK politics? Sustainable development ‘mainstreamed’ across government?

We now may be seeing the start of sustainable development policy subsidence on a grand scale. We will all be the poorer for it; and so will our democracy.

Political rhetoric can’t provide a basis for lasting transformation unless it has real foundations – in institutions, in skills and understanding, and in peoples’ belief, commitment and engagement. 

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 was a role he was to play with vim and vigor until very recently—and the meetings at SustainAbility’s offices in Knightsbridge and then Bedford Row were a highlight of my working life.

I first met Geoffrey Chandler in 1986, when he was leading Industry Year, hosted by the Royal Society of Arts, which I had joined a few years earlier.  I was pretty small fry at the time, whereas he was like some sort of giant, glittering sailfish, swirling among the great and good with immense authority and a very idiosyncratic charm.

It strikes me that I joined the RSA’s Fellowship thanks to the encouragement of Max Nicholson, who had played a key role in the Society’s recent evolution—and with whom I had co-founded Environmental Data Services (ENDS) in 1978. 

The RSA, incidentally, also played a considerable early role in the evolution of The Environment Foundation, as a partner in the PATAS (Pollution Abatement Technology) Awards, which subsequently became the Better Awards for Industry (BEAFI), thereafter spawning both a Europe-wide version of BEAFI and the Queen’s Award for Environmental Achievement.

Much will be written about Geoffrey in the coming days and months, but let me try to capture a scintilla (as a Classics scholar, he would have liked that word—and instantly offered its derivation) of the essence of the man.

On my study shelf is a card he sent me quite some ago with six photographs of a butterfly emerging from its chrysalis.  It’s a Trinidad Emperor, the caption noting that its scientific name is Morpho peleides insularis, bred in the garden of 12 Prada Street, Port of Spain, Trinidad by you know who, and the images were taken by Geoffrey too.  The ink has faded to the point of virtual illegibility, because we had the card on a window ledge in the kitchen for several years, but the first line can just be deciphered: “Perhaps an early venture into sustainability.”

His father was a doctor—and he often insisted, whatever the area we happened to be focusing on, that the relevant professions needed their own version of the Hippocratic Oath, which encourages doctors to do no harm.  Imagine if the engineers of the Deepwater Horizon platform or the Fukushima nuclear plant had operated to that code.

Every conversation you had with him, you would learn something—or many things—new.  There was often an unexpected twist, though.

Once I asked him whether in his years with Churchill’s Special Operations Executive (SOE) he had met that ultimate travel writer Patrick Leigh Fermor?  As best I remember Geoffrey’s reply, he said, “The last time I saw Paddy was in Alexandria towards the end of the war, when he and I were loading a Jeep onto a caique, athwartships.” 

How he relished that ‘athwartships’, and it was just as well that I had been brought up in Cyprus—and so knew that a caique was a Greek fishing boat.  “The Jeep was full of gold coins,” he explained, “to pay off the partisans.” I can’t now remember whether they were off to Crete or Yugoslavia, but he was the sort of man who would have fit right in (he wouldn’t have liked that phrase) with shepherds and brigands as well as the lords and ladies. 

One of the habitats I best remember him in was St George’s House, within the walls of Windsor Castle, where we held most of the Foundation’s Consultations—and where he was something of a regular.  Chairing one of the events, I called upon him to speak, noting that there was something of the coelacanth to him, something stirring from the deepest levels of history, a reference he both understood and appreciated.

Many years previously, in 1976, Geoffrey had laid one of the key foundation stones in our field, by leading the work—as a long-time Director at Shell—of that company’s first Statement of General Business Principles.  His own version of the Hippocratic Oath.

In addition to the Foundation, it was also my privilege to work with Geoffrey at SustainAbility and at the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre, whose website has a tribute to Geoffrey from Lord Joffe.

The older you get, the more people you lose, but every so often there is a moment when a great passing makes you stop, think and take stock.  Shortly after the news came through I got a call from Jane Nelson, another long-standing Environment Foundation Trustee, who was being driven into some range of American mountains.  Many different memories came to our mind, but it will be fascinating, too, to see how others remember him.  For if he was nothing else, Geoffrey was an intensely multi-faceted man, someone who totally merited the oft-abused label Renaissance Man.

Still, none of us can possibly have had the true measure of Geoffrey that his wife Lucy and their daughters did—and it is to them we now send our love and best wishes, together with our thanks for sharing so much of this extraordinary man with the rest of us.

John Elkington, 8 April 2011

Some facts of Geoffrey’s life, via Amnesty, where he launched the Business Group—which he chaired, if memory serves, for 10 years

During World War II Geoffrey’s war service included working with the Greek resistance in German-occupied Greece.  After the war and after graduating from Cambridge University, he began his career as a journalist for the BBC and Financial Times.  He subsequently spent 22 years with the Royal Dutch/Shell Group.  Geoffrey was a Director of Shell Petroleum, Shell Petroleum NV and Shell International. He initiated Shell’s first Statement of General Business Principles in 1976. His years with Shell were internationally-focused, including work on West Africa and in the Caribbean (based in Trinidad).

In 1978 Sir Geoffrey was appointed by Prime Minister Callaghan to be Director General of the UK National Economic Development Office, a position he held for five years. Geoffrey was Director of Industry Year 1986, leader of the subsequent campaign “Industry Matters”, and Chair of the National Council of Voluntary Organisations from 1989 to 1996.  He has written books on Greece and Trinidad and numerous articles on corporate responsibility and human rights.

Besides human rights and business, Sir Geoffrey had diverse interests, including music, the study of butterflies and gardening.

—————————————

I saw Geoffrey’s impact some years before I met him. As a corporate accountability researcher at Chatham House, I noted the great respect with which his interventions, many of them open letters, were considered and debated to shape the business and human rights agenda in the UK and beyond. An intervention from Sir Geoffrey simply could not be ignored and I too grew to look forward to reading his judgment of the key business and human rights issues of the day.

Like another sadly departed mentor, Richard Sandbrook, Geoffrey was impatient with those NGOs that had little time for engagement with businesses. And his interventions were somehow all the more powerful for that – for he was scrupulous in dealing out the truth as he saw it without, of course, fear or favour.

I was nervous and slightly in awe at the prospect of working alongside Geoffrey when, several years later, The Environment Foundation’s trustees asked me to join them on the board. I needn’t have worried, for Geoffrey was enormously welcoming and entirely approachable, and as a trustee his contributions to our deliberations had an acuity that I often found reassuring.

Geoffrey supported the shift to our new incarnation as FDSD, and I felt immensely privileged that even after retiring as a trustee he occasionally dropped me an email to offer encouragement or enquire how I was getting on. He and Lucy, his wife, were also kind enough to host two Environment Foundation/FDSD retreats at their home in Newdigate. The second of these (where many of the photos of trustees on this website were taken) took place a few months after I joined as Director. After our retreat ended, Geoffrey drove three of us to the station, including John (Elkington), new video camera in hand. From his back-seat vantage point John mischievously taped Geoffrey chatting about butterflies to new trustee Kate Burningham in the front seat.

I last saw Geoffrey in July 2010, once more in Newdigate. Ian Christie and I spent half a day with him and Lucy over a long lazy lunch. We had hoped to talk to Geoffrey on tape about democracy so that we could post his thoughts to our website; but that day it seemed like a wholly inappropriate idea and the tape recorder stayed in my pocket.

Lucy and Geoffrey were preparing then for a move away from their clearing in the woods and the house that Geoffrey’s father had built. They exchanged woods, garden and fields for a new house in the village a month or so later. As we sat in the glorious garden, it was very hard not to feel the weight of the decision that Lucy and Geoffrey had made; but they insisted that we must not feel sad and they looked forward to creating a new garden together.

It seems particularly fitting that some of the ideas we all exchanged over that lunch that day have now found life within a new UK Alliance for Future Generations – a rapidly growing group of individuals and organisations working to bring long-termism and the needs of future generations to the heart of UK policy processes and democracy in order to safeguard the earth and secure intergenerational justice. I am very sorry that I was not able to tell Geoffrey about the Alliance for Future Generations in person. But I fully expect that we will be able to seek his guidance in spirit. 

Halina Ward, 10th April 2011

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 us to meet ‘the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’  – as well as how democratic it is.

And the catalyst for this personal psychological overhaul? CERN (the European Organisation for Nuclear Research), and more specifically its most talked about investment in fundamental physics, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).

The LHC, for those unfamiliar with it, is a particle accelerator 100m below the Franco-Swiss border. It smashes together sub-atomic participles, known as ‘hadrons’, head-on and at high energy, in order to recreate the conditions just after the Big Bang. According to CERN’s website, it will ‘revolutionise our understanding, from the minuscule world deep within atoms to the vastness of the Universe’.

To me, the potential benefits that such an instrument could bring need no justification. But what of the costs?  With my ‘democracy and sustainable development’ hat on, these strike me as cause for concern.

The degree to which the LHC might compromise sustainable development cannot be reliably quantified; making grappling with this issue all the more problematic. What can be said, however, is that an experimental ‘glitch’ in research of this nature and energetic scale could result in the elimination of the world as we know it. Naturally, this would make the LHC the ultimate in unsustainable development: there would be no future generations whose needs could be met!

The fears aroused by the LHC’s potential for world elimination are varied. Yet recurrent areas of uncertainty and risk do seem to crop up time and time again: namely the production of strangelets and of black holes at colliders.

To give a flavour of the vagaries of particle collision, CERN claims that the collisions it engineers are too hot to produce strangelets. Even so, not only have several CERN scientists published papers speculating on strangelet production, but there are also two large strangelet detectors at CERN itself. The message appears mixed.

As for black holes, a 1999 RHIC paper to the effect that colliders could not generate energy sufficient to fuel black hole creation, was followed by numerous physics papers touting new theory which predicted the creation of black holes at colliders. What’s more, the claim in a 2003 CERN paper that black holes, if created, would dissipate immediately via Hawking radiation, coincided with several papers challenging the fundamental theory underpinning Hawking radiation – a radiation which, incidentally, has never been seen experimentally.

Even if (as many conclusions seem to concede) the energies generated at colliders will not surpass those of the cosmic rays that constantly bombard our atmosphere to no ill effect, the fact remains that the LHC works on materials of which very little is known. Where is the precaution?

The well-known ‘precautionary approach’ proposes that a lack of complete scientific certainty in the face of risks of serious or irreversible damage to human or environmental health should not be an excuse for postponing cost-effective preventive measures. In the case of CERN, then, should the precautionary approach’s ‘preventive measures’ not be the cessation of all collider experiments?

Scientists are well-accustomed to dealing objectively with matters of risk; assigning numerical values to their estimates. The problem with LHC-associated risk, however, is that it dices with the future of the planet’s entire population of life-forms.

In science, asserting that you are 99.99% confident of something translates as very confident indeed. Yet apply that level of confidence to experimental research with the (arguable) potential to obliterate humanity, and the odds don’t seem so favourable. After all, 99.99% confidence of safety means 0.01% chance of disaster: a little much, to my mind, without a better safety review!

With a dubious sustainable development rating, then, does CERN fare any better in terms of democracy? First off, it is worth remembering that the existence of CERN and its LHC were never voted upon. This, of course, is just part and parcel of representative democracy: the international community wasn’t consulted on whether the US should have tested the atomic bomb in 1945 either. Under this model of democracy, the matter of whether or not people would vote for a particular issue, given the chance, is therefore merely academic.

So how could the realm of fundamental physics be made more democratic? One way could be through the establishment of a jury or focus group of representative citizens charged with the consideration of scientific risk. However, surely the very nature of fundamental physics precludes such an idea: how democratic could it be when it is so extraordinarily difficult to comprehend the nature of the risk assessment?

On the flipside, though, how democratic can scientific research be when its risk assessments are, by necessity, carried out by those with a vested interest in the research?

In conclusion, it seems that the challenge of making fundamental physics research at CERN both ‘pro sustainable development’ and democratic resides predominantly in the fact that physics at this level is a highly unknown beast. Unknown, yes; but perhaps not unknowable. Rather than suspend CERN-style experimentation on the grounds of a lack of knowledge, physicists would argue that we should strive to surpass current levels of knowledge by continuing to invest in the LHC and its ilk.

Those on the opposite bench might retort that we could learn just as much, and at considerably less risk, if analogous experiments were conducted in supercomputer simulations, as for much cosmological research.

Those on a more distant opposing bench might go so far as to say that fundamental physics research should be completely shelved, in favour of pragmatic science directly geared towards remedying our planet’s problems.

To my own mind, the solution is unclear. One problem, it seems, is not so much the risks entailed by collider experiments, but rather the lack of debate about those risks. And another relates to the precautionary principle. As interpreted above, this principle should lead to the termination of collider experimentation at CERN. Yet, from a different perspective, could there be an equally great risk in leaving this sort of fundamental scientific research on the shelf?

So frequently in science there is a tantalising trade-off between research which is truly interesting and potentially revolutionising on the one hand, and that which is safer yet less likely to represent scientific value on the other.

As to where the appropriate trade-off should lie, the jury is still out… or at least, would be if it existed. 

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 what contribution does the Science Museum’s new gallery make? Well, these were my personal impressions: plus points, gripes and queries…

The gallery was visually beautiful. With continents and oceans underfoot and a gauzy atmosphere overhead, it felt almost Gaia-like. But the intended direction around this Earth-as-organism was ambiguous.

An interactive screen summarising the basic science of climate change (the greenhouse effect, greenhouse gases and the like) was both small and inconspicuously positioned. Easily bypassed, it has no doubt led many visitors to discover the ins and outs of ice core and stalagmite data which reveal the climate of the past, or perhaps the low-carbon technologies of the future, before getting to grips with the fundamentals of the Earth’s climate and energy systems.

The level of assumed audience knowledge varied between exhibits. I was delighted that, even with a background in environmental science, the gallery offered both previously unfamiliar scientific facts (such as the nature of covalent bond vibration in different atmospheric gases following the absorption of energy), and various nuggets of pub quiz trivia (did you know that leaving electrical appliances on standby is responsible for 1% of global greenhouse emissions?).

But I sensed that the complete novice may have felt somewhat adrift amid a host of separate exhibits lacking an easily navigable thread, and at times lacking novice-worthy explanations.

One piece of assumed knowledge, for instance, cropped up in an interactive screen’s statement that humans contribute to the greenhouse gases in our atmosphere by cutting down forests. An inventory of the multiple ways in which this directly and indirectly adds greenhouse gases to the atmosphere would have been unnecessarily dense and unwieldy. Yet at least some mention of the fact that fewer trees means less photosynthesis (a process which converts carbon dioxide into sugars which plants use), which means less carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, could have helpfully filled an assumed-not-to-be-there gap in some people’s knowledge.

A further niggling gripe concerned the gallery’s treatment of uncertainty. The introductory text at the gallery’s entrance stated that ‘Science doesn’t have ‘final answers’’. Yet beyond this token nod in the direction of uncertainty, this central undertone of climate science and the public debate about climate change – that there are considerable areas of remaining uncertainty – was, to my mind, left largely by the wayside.

One exhibit, at least – in fact, the most technologically impressive one – did allow the audience to flick through a book of climate change’s potential causes (e.g. human activities, the Sun, and El Niño).  But exhibits such as this, which cast a grey haze over the black-and-white frontage of science, were undoubtedly lacking. What’s more, the uncertainty surrounding climate change’s impacts, in particular, was barely afforded a mention.  

First and foremost, as you’d expect from the Science Museum, the Atmosphere gallery is a round-up of the science. It inhabits that politically neutral haven that science often aims for, venturing little more than a toe into the messy world of politics, individual and collective responsibility, and human behaviour – little more than a toe into the world of democracy.

That said, an entertaining set of survey questions for visitors did address some of the more subjective dimensions of climate change. A response to one of these questions – ‘Is it an individual’s responsibility to curb greenhouse gas emissions?’ – particularly amused Halina and me. TC, aged 30 responded: ‘everyone needs to take responsibility, that includes individuals, businesses and government. In the words of MJ, start with the man in the mirror…’.

80s throwbacks aside, the problematic upshot of the gallery’s hesitant look at the wider dimensions of climate change, beyond the science, is that both the range of uncertainty and the degree of debate surrounding our climate were not adequately conveyed. For instance, one interactive screen stated that scientists predict that temperatures could increase by 2-6°C if current emissions trends continue. What wasn’t explored, however, is what temperatures might end up doing if mitigation interventions had substantial effects on emissions trends.

Is that too much to expect of a science exhibition? Perhaps so. But perhaps the unwelcome effect of neglecting the potential for mitigation measures to have real impact – much like the IPCC’s SRES scenarios which assume no policy interventions (see Paper Four) – could be to make business-as-usual emissions trajectories a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Underplaying mitigation could also play into the hands of sceptics who argue that future climate projections consistently overstate the risks by erring on the side of zero mitigation.

One exhibit which did factor in climate change mitigation was a ‘cut the carbon’ game. In one simulation, the interactive exhibit invited players to begin emission reduction programmes immediately (in 2011). Despite two of us ‘playing’ to reduce emissions, we still failed to achieve acceptable levels of greenhouse gas levels in 2050. The overriding message seemed to be that even if we start now, it will be too little too late. Talk about doom and gloom!

Despite its idiosyncracies, the Science Museum’s Atmosphere gallery remains an ambitious and engaging take on one of the 21^st century’s most important scientific topics. Essentially it does what it says on the tin – ‘exploring climate science’ – but I’m left wondering how useful a public understanding of climate science is, in a democracy, without its associated social context.

As a starting point, I would recommend both the gallery, and a clockwise stroll around it. And do ignore the Science Museum’s advice that a visit will take about half an hour. We spent three hours there and could easily have spent longer.

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 argues, there is no reason to expect it to drive democracy.

Enforced war-style rationing, for instance, could reduce not only our emissions, but also our civil liberties. Moreover, an immoderate reliance on technology to combat climate change could engender, as Professor Guillaume puts it, a ‘hubris-inspired radical technocracy’.

In sum, we need to find ways of tackling climate change without sacrificing democracy.   

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 poorly acquainted with the language of human rights, and can (deliberately or inadvertently) adversely affect both human rights and democracy. Moreover, when business causes the displacement of communities from their land and the disruption of sustainable livelihoods, it becomes an adversary of sustainable development too.

Professor Ruggie will deliver a speech in London on 11^th January on ‘The Construction of the UN ‘Protect, Respect and Remedy’ Framework for Business and Human Rights: The True Confessions of a Principled Pragmatist’.

The ‘Protect, Respect and Remedy’ framework forms the basis of a report which Professor Ruggie will present to the UN Human Rights Council in June 2011. The report will contain a set of Guiding Principles for the implementation of the ‘Protect, Respect and Remedy’ framework, aimed at encouraging companies, states and other stakeholders to address the impacts of business on human rights.

If human rights and democracy are two sides of the same coin, the report might also contain messages for those with an interest in the impact of business on democracy.

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 is not watered down.

Endorsing the Committee’s recommendation that a new Sustainable Development Strategy be developed to revitalise Government engagement, Halina Ward, Director of the Foundation for Democracy and Sustainable Development cautioned “it is nonsense to expect the Cabinet Office or any new Sustainable Development Minister to review the sustainable development implications of departmental policy proposals, plans and practices when the Government has no sustainable development strategy in place to provide a transparent benchmark for transparency or for accountability to the UK’s citizens”.

While the Cabinet Office, or a new Minister, can coordinate action across the Government, they cannot provide independent advice and scrutiny. Parliament must play a stronger role. WWF-UK and FDSD endorse the Committee’s view that the EAC is not properly resourced to carry out the routine scrutiny work previously carried out by independent watchdog the Sustainable Development Commission. Equally, it is clear that academics, NGOs and community groups are in a limited position to do so.

Carol Day, Solicitor at WWF-UK said: “We were appalled at the speed and ease with which the Coalition Government has been able to unravel bodies such as the Sustainable Development Commission and the Royal Commission for Environmental Pollution. We clearly need new mechanisms with real teeth that are less vulnerable to attack . A beefed up Cabinet Office with a new Minister in no way replaces the SDC as it will not provide independent advice and scrutiny – only new institutional measures outside of Government can do this.”

Speaking about an emerging Coalition of NGOs inspired by the Hungarian scrutiny model of a Parliamentary Commissioner for Future Generations, Halina Ward added: “Over the coming months, we’ll be working with a range of other NGOs in a new coalition to ensure long-termism and respect for future generations in the UK’s democracy so that we get the sustainable development that we desperately need. We see House of Lords reform as a first opportunity to secure the changes that are needed. Any proposals for reform of the Lords should be designed to ensure that concern for future generations is part of its remit.”

ENDS

Note to editors:

WWF-UK Solicitor Carol Day and FDSD Director Halina Ward are available for media interviews and comment.

WWF-UK press enquiries and interviews: cday@wwf.org.uk; telephone: +44 (0)7972 159847

FDSD press enquiries and interviews: press@fdsd.org; telephone: +44 (0)20 7022 1848; +44 (0)7825 164996

1. The Environmental Audit Committee (EAC) considers the extent to which the policies and programmes of government departments and non-departmental public bodies contribute to environmental protection and sustainable development, and it audits their performance against any sustainable development and environmental protection targets. The Committee’s report on ‘Embedding Sustainable Development Across Government’ is its First Report of Session 2010–11, HC 504. The text of the Report will be available on the Committee’s website from 00.01am approximately, on 10 January 2011: http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/environmental-audit-committee/publications/

2. The Coalition government has committed itself to being the “greenest ever” – to deliver a green and more responsible economy, fairness and the Big Society – whilst cutting the deficit, increasing efficiency and delivering structural reform to create better value for the tax payer. It has also committed to place two “animating purposes” at the heart of its term: bringing about a radical redistribution of power from central government to local communities and people; and governing for the long-term (see DPM Nick Clegg’s “Horizon Shift speech of 9th September 2010). See: http://www.libdems.org.uk/news_detail.aspx?title=Nick_Clegg_speech:_Horizon_shift&pPK=f8f7b543-d586-40e2-b4c9-e7be68970bf3

3. WWF-UK and FDSD were two of the four non-governmental organisations (NGOs) invited to give evidence to the Environmental Audit Committee on the basis of written submissions.

4. The powers of the Hungarian Parliamentary Commissioner for Future Generations include the following: investigation of complaints from members of the public; participation in the law-making process and in Hungary’s position in EU negotiations; intervention to prevent activities which are violating or which could violate the right to a healthy environment guaranteed in the constitution; and strategic research. More information on international initiatives can be obtained from WWF and FDSD and is based on a recent research report produced for the groups on this topic by barrister Peter Roderick.

WWF-UK (www.wwf.org) is one of the world’s leading independent environmental organisations, with established experience in the management and conservation of natural ecosystems world wide.

The Foundation for Democracy and Sustainable Development (www.fdsd.org ) is a UK-based charity which works to find ways of equipping democracy to deliver sustainable development.

Carol Day is a Solicitor in WWF-UK’s Legal Unit. She has worked for WWF for nearly twenty years, first as a campaigner on town and country planning issues and latterly as a lawyer. WWF’s Legal Unit term implements a programme of wide-ranging and strategic activities aimed at achieving targeted but fundamental improvements to the consideration of environmental law within the legal systems of England and Wales, the UK, Europe and the UNECE.

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.

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 Government. Their evidence built on ongoing research, jointly commissioned by FDSD and WWF-UK from lawyer Peter Roderick. Peter Roderick is investigating options for UK institutional innovations to take better account of the long-term, of environmental justice, and future generations. His research is scheduled for completion in early December.

Subsequently, in mid December a group of UK NGOs will meet to discuss further the UK’s approach to long-term thinking and the kinds of institutional innovations that could support it in the interests of future generations and sustainable development, and to explore future advocacy options in this area.