There has already been a lot of work on community empowerment in relation to existing processes of local government (this is ‘inside-out’ thinking; mostly motivated by the need to reinvigorate existing processes of representative democracy).

‘Outside-in’ thinking would mean working with community groups that focus on sustainable development issues. It would mean a bottom-up process of thinking about how community organising could help democracy to work for sustainable development.

There are also wider questions about how community groups self-organise on issues related to sustainable development in the public sphere, and what happens when they choose not to engage with local government or to develop alternative approaches.

In the UK, the rapidly accelerating Transition Town movement is just one example of community self-organisation on sustainable development. Not only does it challenge economic growth models to which most democracies are committed, but it is rooted in community self-organisation: with the goal of fostering resilience in the face of climate change and peak oil.

The spread of the Transition Town movement offers insights into a potential seismic shift in the balance between civic self-organisation on key issues of public concern on the one hand and representative democracy that engages citizens on the other.

Elsewhere, the Sustainable Communities Act 2007 offers a potentially innovative pathway to community empowerment for sustainable development. And the establishment of a new ‘duty to involve’ local people which has been placed upon on local and regional authorities under the Local Government and Public Involvement in Health (LGPIH) Act 2007 may work to promote greater accountability on the part of elected representatives and public officials and foster greater public engagement.

But if these new opportunities are implemented in ways that simply replicate existing decision-making structures in local government, they may fail to realise their potential.

In the UK, major changes to the spatial planning system have also been proposed. These include the establishment of an appointed (not elected) Infrastructure Planning Commission to decide on major infrastructure proposals of national significance, and potentially the proposed delegation of some planning roles to Regional Development Authorities tasked with promoting economic development.

Changes like these might or might not enable faster take-up of building and infrastructure development that favours sustainable development; but they also reduce the role of elected representatives and community-level participation in controversial planning matters.

There are many examples of innovation in democratic decision-making for sustainable development, but many community groups have frustrating experiences of engagement with local level representative democracy on issues related to sustainable development.

Common complaints include that consultation is largely a box-ticking exercise that takes place too late or fails to involve interested citizens or groups; unprofessional behaviour on the part of officials or lazy thinking on the part of councillors. When such perceptions dominate within community groups, elected officials can start to be viewed as obstacles to social and environmental progress, rather than allies.

We want to find ways to foster reflection within local groups working at community level on issues related to sustainable development. Our goal is to help local groups consciously to strategise sustainable development activity in terms of its contribution to democracy.

If you are involved in a community group and you are interested in this idea, please feel free to contact us to explore whether we could work together.

Community-based activism on issues such as energy and food seems never to have been so vibrant as it now is in the UK. The phenomenal rise of the Transition Town movement and local ‘climate action networks’ around the country are just two examples.  

I’ve been meaning to write this post since the launch of the Hansard Society’s 2010 Audit of Political Engagement on 3rd March, because that shows a worrying counter-current. Consider the following extracts: (on pages 24-25 of the printed version of the Audit)

..there appears to have been a significant change in the public’s knowledge of local government over the past seven years. In the first Audit study [2004], 38% of the public claimed to have ‘a great deal’ or ‘a fair amount’ of knowledge about their local council. This figure had climbed to 47% in the fourth Audit report. But this year that figure has dropped back to just 40% claiming the same….

…it is perhaps not surprising that declining levels of perceived knowledge about local government are matched by equally declining levels of interest in local issues in recent years. Whereas those reporting to be ‘very interested’ in national issues has declined moderately  from 25% in the first Audit to 22% this year, in comparison 32% of the public claimed to be ‘very interested’ in local issues in Audit 1 but only 19% claim the same in this year’s report…

Signs of a general loss of interest in local issues linked to declining knowledge of local government should be extremely worrying: not only for David Cameron and his team, but also for anyone concerned with sustainable development.

As we start work on our project here at the Foundation for Democracy and Sustainable Development on ‘the future of democracy in the face of climate change‘, we’ll be reflecting on the big question: what next?

We’ll be looking, not just at the critically important coming twelve months, but beyond, to 2050 and 2100.

So in this blog post I highlight some of the ‘democracy and climate change’ themes that emerged in Copenhagen.

Public protest and climate change

One of the most headline-grabbing issues in Copenhagen concerned the methods used by Danish police to manage very largely peaceful protest.

The images of (mostly police) violence and mass detentions on the streets of Copenhagen run the risk of deterring many concerned citizens in Europe and North America from exercising their right to protest. That would be great pity, for it could stifle the birth of the kind of mass movement that politicians such as Ed Miliband say is needed  to support government leadership on climate change.

But those same images are just as likely to radicalise others, fuelling further scepticism over the political will of elected national leaders to take seriously the wishes of citizens who favour ambitious action to tackle climate change.

It’s clearly not just Danish police who worry about and cooperate on climate protest. There were plainclothes police officers at Harwich Port on Sunday to meet the ferry from the Danish port of Esbjerg; and there were dogs and lengthy searches on the overland border between Germany and Denmark when I travelled out on a coach organised by a UK-based action group.

Alliances between vulnerable countries and civil society

Another striking feature of the overall dynamics in Copenhagen was the strong links forged between global civil society present in Copenhagen and leaders of some of the most immediately vulnerable countries. The adulation and standing ovation given to President Nasheed of the Maldives when he spoke to a packed meeting at the ‘alternative’ climate venue, Klimaforum, and the chorus of tweeting that surrounded his public speeches during the conference, are a case in point.

Shifting negotiating dynamics

Then there were the visible shifts in the negotiating dynamics between the world’s richest countries and the so-called ‘emerging economies’ whose carbon emissions are set to rise rapidly as their economies grow. The EU was strikingly not one of the countries mentioned by President Obama when he announced in a press conference in the evening of 18th December that a base deal had been reached. It emerged that the core parties to the non-binding accord that was subsequently merely ‘noted’ by the UN were the US, Brazil, South Africa, India and China. 

Many of the world’s poorest countries remained politically marginalised in the official climate talks; but it was clear both that important shifts had taken place. New patterns of alliances are emerging within and out of the G77.

The decision of African group leader, Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, to stand with France to support the EU-backed maximum two degree temperature rise (making a regional 3-3.5 degree rise the suggested likely reality for Africa) together with a ‘quick-start’ finance package of USD 10 billion fell far short of prior African demands. It was greeted with consternation and charges of a sell-out by many Africans including the Sudanese chair of the G77/China group, Ambassador Lumumba Stanislaus Di-Aping as well as African civil society groups.

Business gets on with it

Meanwhile, an entirely different tone was evident in reports of business events in the city.  These were abuzz with talk about the positive green business opportunities generated by the climate change agenda, and the technical detail of measurement, accounting, green technology and much more.

In contrast, the interests of those businesses that stand to lose from tough climate mitigation actions were far less visible. Yet these made themselves felt in cautious speeches from some government officials and politicians and, most fundamentally, in the failure to reach intergovernmental agreement on emissions targets during the conference.

City mayors talk positive

City mayors from around the world met at an event organised by the City of Copenhagen during the official talks; the Copenhagen Climate Summit for Mayors. According to an informal email from one participant: “This looked and felt like a team! They listened to each other’s plans, they openly encouraged plagiarism and replication, they fostered support for each other in a way that was uncontrived, open and positive. They discussed technical fixes, finance and resources, education and engaging citizens: they discussed mitigation and adaptation, economic opportunity and necessity: and they recognised they need to be leaders of substantial cultural change.”.

Official talks mirror wider international development concerns

In contrast, other events, more closely linked to the themes under discussion in the official talks, replicated core concerns of the overall international development agenda. International donor agencies such as the UN Environment Programme, for example, lobbied for their organisations to be home to funds committed to help countries to adapt to climate change.

Intense discussions over how the funds should be managed; and about capacity-building and ‘good governance’ for climate adaptation in developing countries (long part of the jargon of the international development agenda) took place; and longstanding arguments about the lack of transparency in global negotiations linked closely to economic interests and about the huddles of influential states in so-called ‘green rooms’ were aired; and aired in ways that were not markedly different to an international trade negotiation. 

Divide between ‘bottom-up’ and ‘top-down’ solutions

But one point above others stands out: the huge political and psychological distance between the key issues and solutions debated during the official negotiations at the Bella Centre (where the formal talks took place), and the belief in bottom-up locally owned and self-managed solutions that characterised many of the ‘unofficial’ side meetings for civil society at the Klimaforum  space and in a variety of other meetings spaces around the city.

Indeed, with the slow pace of progress in intergovernmental talks, it has become apparent that much more emphasis will now likely be placed on local level innovation to deliver climate solutions.

Already in the UK, commentators are paying renewed attention to the groundswell of community-based activism that has sprung up over the last couple of years away from the formalities of ballot-box decision-making or the stifling bureaucratic decision-making of some town halls. 

This renewed call to ‘community-based local solutions’ is both valuable in practice and laudable as prescription; the more so when it builds community ties and hence the ability to remain resilient in the face of climate change.

And yet, a note of caution must here be sounded on two grounds. First, because it was noticeable in Copenhagen that the vision of ‘bottom-up’ decision-making that was articulated in many side events was not accompanied by a seamless vision of the role of national government; or of the much-vaunted national level ‘leadership’ that became a war-cry of campaigners during Copenhagen (e.g. in statements of the ‘politicians go to fancy dinners; leaders act’ sort).

Related to this is the real-world fact that any failure of global democracy resulting from negotiating inequality between nations is necessarily also a failure of national government.

In the run-up to the 2002 Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development, governments encouraged so-called ‘Type 2′ agreements to be tabled and to become a formal part of the Summit’s outcomes. These were essentially voluntary agreements or partnerships between different stakeholders to tackle different dimensions of sustainable development. But there was a backlash from some potential ‘Type 2 agreement’ signatories, who accused governments of passing the buck to non-governmental actors instead of getting on with reaching a deal themselves.

There must be a risk that the same will happen now on climate change: that governments will seek to bring citizen and business-led voluntary action into a bigger intergovernmental tent at the expense of much-needed national level leadership.

That is not in itself a bad thing, but must not become a substitute for effective action at the national and international government levels.

Second is the reality that politics is nowhere more personalised; nowhere more exposing, than at the local level. Any move formally to institutionalise a prioritisation of local level decision-making needs also be accompanied by efforts to tackle marginalisation and social exclusion in local level decision-making; to ensure that minority views are given due weight.

Localism must not become a banner under which marginalisation or ‘business as usual’ decision-making by vocal elites become entrenched in public policy.

The apparent distance between local and global level solutions – a canyon or a rift at best – was made all the deeper by the Copenhagen organisers’ unforgivable failure, over at the official Conference of the Parties at the Bella Centre on the outskirts of the city, adequately to make provision for non-governmental observers of the Conference (including this one, who lacked the stamina of some to stand in a freezing queue for 6-9 hours on the last day that non-governmental organisations without ‘secondary’ badges were allowed to exchange their pre-registration for entry badges to the venue. To add insult to injury, a later invitation to join an alternative venue for those Observers who had been excluded from the latter part of the event was itself only extended to those who had passed the initial hurdle).  

Civil society and climate change

It is now an established (and hard fought-for) maxim of environmental policy that environmental decisions – including at the international level – are best made with the full participation of  interested citizens.

At international level, this maxim (which goes further than any globally agreed text but nonetheless builds on Principle 10 of the Rio Declaration) has for some time supported participation of non-governmental organisations and civil society groups as observers in intergovernmental negotiations; briefing negotiators, adding technical expertise, and bringing transparency to otherwise obscure negotiations between civil servants as often as elected politicians.

This civil society participation has not been without its problems; there has on occasion been fear that the structures of non-governmental organisations around the world and the potential dominance of larger groups simply reflect wider imbalances of bargaining power between nations. But in the climate talks, there is a remarkable coincidence of interest between the calls of civil society for climate justice and ambitious emissions targets, and the headline interests of more vulnerable nations.

When the ejection of impressive news source Avaaz and of Friends of the Earth and Tcktcktck from the official talks coincided with the ‘Reclaim Power’ climate justice march on Wednesday 16th December, it appeared that an entire army of officials had just scored an own goal.

Battles that many NGOs considered fought and won may now need to be fought and won again.

Beyond Copenhagen, there is renewed pressure on civil society around the world to make its voice heard above the non-voting views of economic interests and politicians limited by short-term political priorities or (in some countries) crude opinion poll data. This is precisely the message that is emerging from the larger non-governmental organisations: “we don’t have a real deal, and we’re not done yet”, is the essential message.

To put it another way, ‘we’re all eco-warriors now’.

One thing is certain: action based on this insight will undoubtedly shape both the course of democracy, and the course of climate change, in the coming months and years. 

[A version of this post will also be cross-posted on the Local Democracy blog over at http://blog.localdemocracy.org.uk/]

The Sustainable Communities Act began life as a Private Members Bill which received cross-party support.

The Act is designed to promote the sustainability of local communities. The basic idea is that local authorities who have opted into the Act make proposals which they consider could contribute to promoting the sustainability of local communities. The radical part is that proposals may include a request for a transfer of existing functions from one person (or entity) to another. In this way, the Act provides a vehicle for community groups, via local authorities, to lobby central government for reallocation of powers.

Before making proposals, local authorities are required to establish or recognise a panel of representatives of local persons and consult and try to reach agreement with panel members about proposals to be selected. Selected proposals are then put forward to a ‘Selector’, whose job is to decide on which shortlisted proposals from local authorities will make it onto the Secretary of State’s action list. The Secretary of State is the ultimate decision-maker under the Act, but is obliged to try to reach agreement with the Selector on proposals to take forward.

The deadline for a first set of proposals to be submitted to the Selector was 31^st July 2009.

The Local Government Association (an association of local authorities), has been designated as the Selector for purposes of the legislation. It has already indicated where some of its interests lie, publishing “a selection of some of the changes we are currently pressing for and which we believe will benefit local government and sustainability” in advance of the selection process”.

In some respects, the legislation is deeply radical, as well as enormously broad in scope. But the approach that it takes to ‘sustainable development’ is conservative. As the Act explains (in Section 1), “references to promoting the sustainability of local communities, in relation to a local authority, are references to encouraging the improvement of the economic, social or environmental well-being of the authority’s area, or part of its area”.

This is hardly an integrated approach to decision-making across the economic, environmental and social spheres. Hardly sustainable development in fact. And this is skewed vision of sustainability is reflected in some of the proposals that have been put foward to the Selector. For example, one proposal from Birmingham is to introduce Accelerated Development Zones (ADZs) whereby local authorities borrow money to invest in infrastructure so that the area becomes more attractive to investors and businesses. No doubt perfectly acceptable under the Act. But it is hard to equate this proposal, taken at face value, with anything more than straightforward economic development.

One essential characteristic of sustainable development is its integrated approach to decision-making across environmental, social and economic spheres. For example, Agenda 21, the blueprint for sustainable development which emerged from the 1992 Rio Earth Summit (the UN Conference for Environment and Development) adopts this text  as one of its objectives: “to improve or restructure the decision-making process so that consideration of socio-economic and environmental issues is fully integrated and a broader range of public participation assured”.

In contrast, the Sustainable Communities Act 2007 consummately fails to promote integrated decision-making.

Not every ‘pro sustainable development’ decision needs to address all three ‘bottom lines’ of environment, economy and social justice. But decisions that claim ‘sustainability’ or ‘sustainable development’ as their goal should at least be based on conscious consideration of the three and their relationship.

So the Sustainable Communities Act misappropriates the language of sustainability for actions that may not have much connection to sustainable development.

For the time being, the Act fails to provide room for ‘big ideas’ that come directly from local citizens without the backing of local authorities. This seems surprising given that there is no need for proposals to be inherently linked to a particular geographical area; but perhaps it is as far as was achievable in setting formal structures of ‘direct democracy’ for sustainable development at the time of the Act’s adoption. Still, it is unlikely to be the last word as proposed amendments (highlighted further below) show.

The range of proposals that have been put forward from local authorities ot the Selector is extraordinarily broad. And there are certainly some radical proposals on local authorities’ lists – including one from Ryedale, to require all shops and supermarkets to clearly label where food has come from to promote more buying of local produce, or another from York that only air compressed cars should be allowed in the City Centre.

The next real test of the Act lies with the Local Government Association’s selection of shortlisted proposals through its Selector Panel. That is due to take place at Selector Panel meetings in October and November.

The LGA’s choices as Selector, and ultimately those of the Secretary of State, could support or undermine the development of integrated approaches to sustainable development at local level. Their decisions could inspire greater community engagement in the future, or cut off an experiment in progress.

Proposals to have already been tabled in the form of a Sustainable Communities Act Amendment Bill, which is due to receive its second reading on 16th October. The amendments would, if adopted, expand the ‘direct democracy’ potential of the Act, since they incorporate a clause prompting a referendum if the local authority does not want to participate in the act and 5% of electors sign a petition to use the Act. The proposed amendments also envisage a rolling programme of proposals from the Selector to the Secretary of State and provide for Parish Councils to be included within the scope of the Act.

Sadly, the problematic approach to ‘sustainability’ is not addressed.

[NB: this post also appears on http://blog.localdemocracy.org.uk/]