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Manifesto for change consultation

UPDATE: the consultation has now closed. Go to the new Democracy and Sustainability website to see who has signed up to the manifesto.  We have kept the original text below explaining the consultation process we followed in our journey to the manifesto

Help us shape the manifesto: your feedback and ideas needed

We’d like to know what you think should be included in the people’s manifesto for democracy and sustainable development.

If you’re not able to add your ideas at one of the consultation stalls we’ll be running (see www.fdsd.org/manifesto for news updates), you can tell us by answering the questions on this page.

Please fill in as much or as little as you’d like.

We’ve divided the questions into three areas:

  1. Principles
  2. Ideas that work for democracy and sustainable development, and
  3. Your manifesto – words or phrases that you’d like to see included

If there’s something else you’d like us to consider as we develop the manifesto, just send us an email via manifesto at fdsd dot org.

We’ll take everything into account, but your ideas need to reach us by the end of November 2012.

A. What’s the bottom line?
Principles for democracy and sustainable development

Principles set out the basic ideas that need to be respected to deliver change on the ground.

We’ve come up with six initial ideas on Principles for democracy and sustainable development.

We need your help to improve them, to add to them, and to work out which ones are useful and which aren’t.

Tell us if you agree with them or not in the spaces below. And if you have suggestions for alternatives, please add your suggestions in the spaces provided.

  1. Strengthen the foundations of democracy: by ensuring that a democracy designed to deliver sustainable development reflects the best of any flourishing democracy. This must include taking steps to enable thriving public participation, trusted and trustworthy politicians, wide rights of access to information and to justice, and respect for the rule of law.

    Suggest alternative text:

  2. Get beyond money: by finding ways to break the apparent bond between liberal democracy and mainstream economic growth models that support unsustainable production and consumption

    Suggest alternative text:

  3. Ensure that experts are on tap but not on top: by finding ways to nurture an active commitment to informed and participatory democratic decision-making whilst allowing expertise, and science, transparent space to offer insights and inform policy.

    Suggest alternative text:

  4. Tackle short-termism: by ensuring that the practice of democracy from the global to the local takes proper account of the long-term, and of the needs of future generations.

    Suggest alternative text:

  5. Ensure that people everywhere are important: by finding ways to ensure that national and local democracy and international decision-making serve the long-term collective public interest in sustainable development, not just the interests of people with a right to vote or the narrowly defined interests of individual states.

    Suggest alternative text:

  6. Be explicit about the joins: by finding ways to ensure that decision-making with implications for the distribution of ‘sustainable’ or ‘unsustainable’ development (for example the location of major infrastructure projects) is transparent and fair. Decision-making on distributional impacts of such decisions should be based on criteria that are publicly accessible, agreed following public consultation, and made widely available in advance.

    Suggest alternative text:

  7. Other principles that need to be included.

    If you think we’ve missed something out, please let us have your ideas on other principles that need to be included in the manifesto.

B. Ingredients for change: ideas that work for democracy and sustainable development

This is where it gets more difficult. To be really useful, a manifesto for democracy and sustainable development should set out a set of actions for the different sectors of society that together ensure a thriving democracy that works for sustainable development.

We’d like your ideas.

To help us collect the ingredients that we’ll need so that we can develop these actions for inclusion in the manifesto, please give us an example (more than one if you like!) of what works well in your country or community. Perhaps the example has wider potential to equip democracy to deliver sustainable development?

You might want to tell us about a public institution or a way of working that can overcome political short-termism. You might have come across a way of engaging people in public decision-making that allows for better balancing of expertise that keeps people at the centre; or it could be something else entirely.

We need to collect practical examples to show that the kinds of changes we’re envisaging are possible.

C. Your manifesto for democracy and sustainable development

Manifestos are public declarations of principles and intentions. They set out a platform for action.

Examples include the 1776 United States Declaration of Independence, Marx and Engels’ Communist Manifesto of 1848, or Italian poet Filippo Marinetti‘s 1909 Futurist Manifesto.

At international level, the 1946 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the 1992 Rio Declaration on Environment and Development are examples of manifestos of a different kind. They’re intergovernmentally agreed and have a degree of legal force, but as platforms for action they also set out the kinds of intentions that you’d expect to find in a good manifesto.

Are there words, sentiments, or grand (or less grand) phrases that you’d like to see included in a manifesto for democracy and sustainable development? If so, please let us know. The more clearly they can be used to guide action, the better.

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I’m happy for you to quote my ideas directly in the manifesto:

Please note: due to the large numbers of people we hope to consult, it might not be possible to acknowledge every individual contribution in the eventual manifesto document.

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