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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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.