Halina Ward
This paper is the final report in FDSD’s major two-year research project on The Future of Democracy in the Face of Climate Change.
The paper draws on Papers One to Four to find answers to the question: ‘how might democracy and participatory decision-making have evolved to cope with the challenges of climate change by the years 2050 and 2100?’
Four scenarios are set out in the final part of the report, sounding the voices of five people speaking from the year 2050: ‘rationed democracy’; ‘transition democracy’; ‘post-authoritarian democracy’, and ‘technocratic democracy’.
The paper opens with a Foreword by Professor Tim O’Riordan.
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A reflection by Niall Ferguson in today’s Financial Times on the historical significance of the past decade struck me as particularly apt and insightful. He explores the reasons behind the astonishing – and accelerating – shift to the east in the world’s economic (and, ultimately, political) centre of gravity. In the process, he asks what it was that gave the West its “ascendancy”, through the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Enlightenment and the ensuing race around the world, as far as the Antipodes?
His answer is that the West benefited from six “killer apps”. These were: “the capitalist enterprise, the scientific method, a legal and political system based on private property rights and individual freedom, traditional imperialism, the consumer society and what Weber…
