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.

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)

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.

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. 

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 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. 

The discussion was based on Professor Jackson’s central argument that building a new economic model fit for a low carbon world is ‘the most urgent task of our times’.

There was some discussion at the event about the extent to which getting to this economy ’fit for purpose’ depends on the state of our democracy.

In his book, Professor Jackson argues that “..we must ask searching questions about the balance of the institutions that characterize modern society. Do they promote competition or cooperation? Do they reward self-servicing behaviour or people who sacrifice their own gain to serve others? What signals do government, schools, the media, religious and community institutions send out to people? Which behaviours are supported by public investments and infrastructures and which are discouraged?“

Democracy itself has to be part of this enquiry. Indeed, a level-headed discussion on how to ensure that democracy is ‘fit for purpose’ in terms of its ability to deliver sustainable development needs to be given greater prominence in the discussion on progress to low carbon futures.

Looking at transformation of the economy without looking in tandem at democratic adaptation doesn’t make sense.

Any conversation on getting to an economy ‘fit for purpose’ will falter and fall unless some of the wider challenges of democratic decision-making for sustainable development are addressed.

It’s becoming increasingly apparent that the obstacles to economic transformation for sustainable development don’t lie only with economic actors such as businesses or with the pressures of international competition – but with the preferences of individual voters themselves.

For example, elected representatives can find it uncomfortable to move significantly ahead of the  curve of public opinion on environmental issues. David Miliband’s recently reported lamentations on public apathy about climate change in the run-up to the Copenhagen Climate Summit reflect a growing debate about the relatioship between political leadership and public opinion on climate change.

Yet there are also some issues in the UK (capital punishment the most obvious) where considerations of morality or human decency allow politicians to pay less attention to opinion polls or public opinion.

Some groundbreaking if controversial environmental policy measures (London’s Congestion Charge is one example) have been implemented on the basis of clear election promises, with public consultation focusing on implementation rather than the principle of introducing  a measure.

A report on the history of the London Congestion charge explains that “The campaign for Mayor of London began in 1999 with four main candidates from each of the main political parties and an independent, Ken Livingstone. Of these candidates three made election promises to introduce a congestion charging scheme in Central London. Although this was a brave decision because congestion charging could be seen as a notoriously difficult policy to sell to voters, at the same time it demonstrated the high level of political commitment to the policy. However, for Ken Livingstone, this political gamble paid off and in May 2000 he was elected as Mayor of London.“

It would be very wrong to take these examples as special pleading for ‘less engagement with the public’ on environmental policy to facilitate implementation of controversial policy proposals. Far from it. For there is also evidence that when people are given full facts and a chance to deliberate before arriving at conclusions, they express greater support for action on issues like climate change than some recent opinion polls might otherwise suggest. 

A significant part of the problem – to the extent that opinion polls show that people may in effect prefer economic growth over sustainable development – may lie with how members of the public are invited to engage with formal democratic processes, and with how elected representatives themselves view the balance between visionary leadership, consultation, direct democracy (for example through referenda), and public participation of various kinds.

If we take seriously the challenge of pursuing an ‘economy fit for purpose’, we must also work out how to arrive at a ‘democracy fit for purpose’.

The Consumer Citizenship Network describes a ‘consumer citizen’ as “an individual who makes choices based on ethical, social, economic and ecological considerations. The consumer citizen actively contributes to the maintenance of just and sustainable development by caring and acting responsibly on family, national and global levels”.

Alternatively, in a 2006 paper, Martin Powell, Shane Doheny and Ian Greene describe another approach in which the citizen is understood as a consumer of public services. They suggest, citing Harris – 1999, that the ‘consumer citizen’ is “a subject created by the New Right to form some kind of equivalence between the active citizen in the community and the citizen in receipt of social services.”

Neither of these approaches are particularly broad. But the idea of ‘consumer citizenship’ could go much further, to encompass the entire continuum of our action as citizens and our actions as consumers. An alternative framing of the essential idea might then go along the following lines:

• In democracies that in principle aspire to be highly market-oriented (such as that of the UK), many environmental and social challenges are understood as ‘market failures’ that demand market-based solutions. In this characterisation, we consumers – people and citizens who happen also to be market actors – are handed huge responsibility to signal our concerns directly to ‘the market’.

European consumers (and many others) are encouraged by a sometimes bewildering range of information, advertising, labels and certificates to spend our money in ways that are judged ‘responsible’ or ‘ethical’ by others, or to place our own ethical demands on the record with retailers or suppliers.

In other areas, we are offered public incentives and opportunities to consume or take up opportunities for environmentally responsible behaviour on a voluntary basis, thereby contributing to public resolution of recognised challenges. One example might be a decision to take up subsidised opportunities for home insulation as part of a government’s overall approach to tackling climate change. 

•  However, there is also a set of environmental and social issues that are slated for public decision-making and participation where people are characterised principally as ‘citizens’ – or rather ‘community members’. A public consultation process around a planning decision on whether to allow a wind-farm to go ahead would be one example.

These examples are very far from exhaustive; but I offer them simply to illustrate the distinction between our actions as ‘consumers’ and as ‘citizens’ or ‘community members’.

 One interesting question then is this: what could be the potential value of reframing the continuum on which ‘consumer-citizenship’ happens, so that it’s about much more than responsible consumption, encompassing the entirety of peoples’ engagement with the public realm issues that make up sustainable development? What could ‘consumer-citizenship’ in this broad sense offer?

 On the home-page of this website, we include a quote from UK environmentalist Sara Parkin, who argues that climate change should be treated, not as market failure, but as a failure of democracy.

 What might happen if rather more environmental or social challenges were understood as failures of democracy rather than failures of the market?

 Perhaps democracy (and our responsibility to engage as citizens in progressive decision-making for environmental or social change), rather than the market (and our responsibility to consume ethically), would be on top in our mental imagery.

 No doubt this all sounds a little abstract for the time being. More practically, Consumer International’s Director of Operations Bjarne Pedersen and I have agreed to swap notes on the potential of ‘consumer-citizenship’. We’d like to come up with some ideas that can help us to position our respective areas of work; Bjarne’s on sustainable consumption, mine on democracy; so that we get more ‘sustainable development bang’ for our ‘consumer buck’ or our ‘public or citizen participation’.

 The emerging potential of ‘consumer-citizenship’ doesn’t stop at ethical or sustainable consumption or public service delivery. It’s also 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.

One answer is to point to existing examples of innovations designed to help parliaments to integrate long-term thinking into their decisions.

There are three examples and one idea that I want to highlight here.

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.

The Commission’s functions lay in four areas: providing opinions on bills, secondary legislation and regulation of concern to future generations; providing parliament with recommendations on any matter the head of the commission (called a Commissioner) considers to be of importance to future generations, and providing parliament with advice on matters of special interest regarding the future generations.

Former Deputy Commissioner Nira Lamay writes that “Our motto was that while the political world was busy with issues of defence and war, we would prepare for the “day after” peace, when future generations would have clean water to drink and clean air to breathe”.

According to a post by one blogger, Uzi Benziman, the demise of the Commission may have stemmed from the nature of its challenge to ‘business as usual’ politics: “[t]he institution ceased operating because the tenure of the first commissioner, retired judge Shlomo Shoham, ended, and influential people in the Knesset argued that the commission was unnecessary, ineffective and wasted public funds.

Regardless of whether there was merit to these arguments, the commission’s demise suggests that the Knesset could not bear its existence: The MKs are affected by day-to-day events and tangible interests, and a body that considers the broader horizon bothers them.”

The Finnish 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”.

The Committee’s brochure acknowledges that “since the problems of the future and above all its opportunities cannot be studied through traditional parliamentary procedures and work methods alone, the Committee has been given the specific task of also following and using the results of futures research. Indeed, the Committee can be said to be making policy on the future, because its goal is not research, but rather policy.”

The Committee was established in 1993 on a temporary basis and acquired permanent status in 2000. Its seventeen elected members are all parliamentarians. The Committee for the Future’s reports include several on the future of democracy which are invaluable resources in their field.

Another of the Committee for the Future’s responsibilities is to prepare Parliament’s response to the Government’s Report on the Future during each electoral period. The theme of the futures report covering the parliamentary term 2007–2011 is climate and energy, putting the Committee on track to make a further contribution to strengthening democratic processes for sustainable development.

Most recently in Hungary, Parliament decided in 2007 to establish a new independent watchdog function; the Parliamentary Commissioner for Future Generations (also known as the ‘green ombudsman’), whose role is to safeguard the constitutional right of Hungarian citizens to a healthy environment.

The independent Commissioner, who is elected by Parliament but is not a parliamentarian, is one of four Parliamentary Ombudsmen. Others deal with civil rights, data protection and freedom of information, and the rights of national and ethnic minorities.

There are three pillars in the Commissioner’s work: investigating complaints relating to a broad range of environmental issues; acting as a policy advocate for sustainability issues across all relevant fields of national and local legislation and public policy; and undertaking or promoting research projects targeting the long term sustainability of human societies.

In the UK, independent watchdog the Sustainable Development Commission (SDC) works to put sustainable development at the heart of government policy. The SDC has shortlisted the notion of a ‘Congress for the Future’ as one of nineteen ‘breakthrough ideas’ for sustainable development selected following an open competition.

A recent SDC report introduces the idea of a Congress for the Future in the following way:

“Imagine… the UK with long-term thinking enshrined at the heart of our democratic processes, raising awareness, creating political space, and generating action on the biggest issues of our time. The Congress for the Future is a way of giving adequate attention to the long-term in what has become an overwhelmingly short-term political world. It will act as a counterweight to that short-termism and to the media-inspired ‘something must be done’ quick fixes. Without such a mechanism, is there any way that we can use sustainable development to tackle issues like prosperity, peak oil or climate change?”

The basic idea, says Sustainable Development Commissioner Lindsey Colbourne, “is to create a special Congress, convened by Parliament every year, to help build broad agreement and provide direction on long-term questions. One or more issues in need of public debate will be put before each Congress, either by the Government of the day or by MPs in response to public petition. Randomly-selected citizens and stakeholders will then engage with the issues in an informed, deliberative process, supported by a secretariat to monitor progress”.

Very different approaches, but each concerned to ensure long-term thinking within the democratic process. The fact that there have already been real innovations in this area is encouraging: we don’t need to start from scratch.

Further inspiration is available in a report from Harvard Law School’s International Human Rights Clinic. It’s called Models for Protecting the Environment for Future Generations, and it was published in October 2008.

Earlier this year, I went to a Climate Camp meeting in London. In the wake of the London G20 protests, I was interested to learn more about Climate Camp, but also casting about for inspiration for work on “direct action, democracy and sustainable development”. Please comment if you have ideas on that.

I asked one of the climate campers what we could usefully do as a small organisation, and the response was roughly this: “Publicise our work. The way we make decisions is completely democratic; we work by consensus, and we’re an example of democracy in action”.

In July, Liam Taylor of the Camp for Climate Action offered a similar sentiment in his talk to participants at a Radical Democracy session organised at the Compass conference.  The talk, Democracy Lived – the example of Climate Camp, has been published on OpenDemocracy. 

As someone who is often asked to “define what you mean by democracy” in conversations with people who demand precise answers, I found this part particularly powerful:

“I think we should worry less about the intricacies of voting systems and more about creating meaningful democratic experiences. And if you’re trying to find those experiences in the formal institutions of state, I’m afraid you’re looking in the wrong place. The word ‘democracy’ does not refer to a set of institutions; it refers to a process, a movement. Every day – in our jobs, in our homes, in our communities – we travel through uneven landscapes of power. For me, democracy exists at those liminal moments when landscapes of power are in some way transformed by the collective action of ordinary people. That happens within Climate Camp. I’ve felt it happen, too, in other places, such as assemblies I’ve attended organized by London Citizens“.

Liam Taylor ended:

“Let’s see democracy as journey, not destination; let’s stop worrying about where we end up, and start thinking about where we begin. I think that at Climate Camp we have a very strong sense that the project of revivifying democracy does not begin with a constitutional convention; it does not begin with electoral reform; it does not begin with citizen’s juries, or people’s peers, or independent MPs, or any of the other ideas you get coming out of the political and media elite. It begins with ordinary people, like you and me, taking action on something we believe in, and transforming society by first transforming ourselves. Because democracy is not something which is given, it is not something which is created from above – it is something which is won“.

But the point of this post is not so much to highlight Liam Taylor’s presentation, but to highlight another move in the direction of direct democracy of a climate change-engendered sort.

Climate Camp has empowered any person who chooses to feel so empowered to influence, quite directly, the direct action of other people, whether or not he or she chooses to join in.  And it doesn’t matter whether you’re registered to vote, or a citizen of the UK or anywhere else.

www.thegreatclimateswoop.org asks readers to:

“Join the Great Climate Swoop on the 17th & 18th October 2009 as we close down a coal-fired power station, democratically and together, to say enough is enough. All you have to do is pick which coal station we should close, and then turn up there with your friends on Saturday 17th October”.

When I first looked at the website, a couple of days after the voting had been launched, there were 268 votes in favour of targeting Ratcliffe on Soar, with 203 in favour of Drax. A little later the site’s transparency had reduced: it became possible only to see percentage outcomes of the votes, not how many votes have been cast. And by the time the end result was published, only the outcome was visible rather than the percentages or the numbers of voters (Ratcliffe on Soar was the target ultimately selected in the vote).

This is certainly a form majoritarian direct democracy. But is it fair? Shouldn’t we be able to see how many people voted?

There are also issues here about strategic and tactical choices normally made by campaigners rather than any external undefined ‘constituency’. What is the impact of a ‘Ratcliffe’ outcome on activists who might prefer to tackle the significantly higher carbon emissions of Drax (single largest emitter of CO2 in the UK) rather than those of Ratcliffe (Largest investor owned power company in the world)? Does respect for the ‘authority’ of the process mean protestors should head to Ratcliffe regardless?

What if Drax had come out on top but you felt that it was really important that you direct your limited time as an activist to tackle the globally bigger player? Accepting the authority and legitimacy of a decision taken by campaigners who you know and trust is one thing; but accepting the authority of anonymous computer voting as you head off to break the law for a cause seems quite another.

Applying direct democracy to this kind of strategic decision, and unpicking its implications, underscores the tactical and strategic choices that campaign groups make on a daily basis. Do you go for the company with the biggest brand, the one with the biggest impacts; the one that’s most likely to be ready to change (and so on)?

Reducing tactical choices to a simple and anonymous vote on a computer screen, where only the tally or the outcome are transparent and the hustings consist of the most basic facts, is simple. But is it something we really want more of? Were shareholders of Drax with a short-term vision of profit perhaps voting tactically behind their computer screens to ensure that their company’s power station wasn’t the one to be hit? Might they launch a competitor site perhaps, targeting windfarms or nuclear power?

By making democracy itself a core part of its credo, Climate Camp offers potential to dish up up some thought-provoking dishes. But how best to incorporate these within a vision of vibrant, resilient democracy in a climate-constrained world?

The Great Climate Swoop website includes some thoughts on the wider democratic significance of the online vote.

“The decision to vote for Drax or Ratcliffe is .. trivial. Not because the decision to publicly take mass direct action to shut down a coal-fired power station is not significant but because the two choices are relatively similar as in the end.

Both need to be shut down and as we couldn’t really decide which to do first we thought we’d leave it up to the randomness of an internet vote…The significant decision to shut down one of the two biggest coal-fired power stations in the UK was agreed by… consensus. That is to say consensus of the open and public group that is organising the event.

We didn’t ask everyone in the world if we should shut it down because it needs to be done anyway. Not to do so would be to undermine our prospects of a future worth living in. Do we usually ask others if we can defend ourselves from attack?

Governments and political parties hide behind what they laughably call ‘democracy’ to justify burning more and more coal, despite their knowledge that it will lead to catastrophic climate change and billions of ruined lives.”

Climate Camp’s online voting is fun; and it points to the need for democratic innovation in the face of climate change.  But the tactic doesn’t lead far enough; to the real and urgent need to find ways of enabling representative democracy to play its role in delivering effective climate policy.