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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Professor Tim O’Riordan’s commentary on democracy, climate change and and sustainability is a contribution to discussions under FDSD’s project on the future of democracy in the face of climate change.

In the wake of UK Chancellor George Osborne’s 2011 Autumn statement, the commentary is an attack on signs of  incompatibility between democracy and climate stability.

Professor O’Riordan argues that democracy as we know it may be breaking down; with a ‘local democracy of community engagement and exaltation’ its possible successor.

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Dr Bronwyn Hayward, FDSD trustee and Senior Lecturer in Political Science at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand, talks about the impact of New Zealand’s devastating Christchurch earthquake on democracy, and its  implications for ‘resilient citizenship’.

Bronwyn explores what makes for ‘resilient citizenship’ and ‘resilient democracies’, in a talk which will be relevant for anyone interested in reflecting on how best to equip democracy to cope with major natural disasters.

Most recently, the coalition government’ s Red Tape Challenge makes utterly laughable its aspiration to be ‘the greenest government ever’; its reassurance that sustainable development will be mainstreamed across government; and the forgotten second pillar of the coalition’s government alongside the Big Society: a ‘new horizon’ to eliminate political short-termism.

It’s long, so I’ve also posted the text of this blog post as a pdf file.

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I’ve been brewing this post for a little while. It’s a sort of score-card, one year in, on the extent of the coalition government’s commitment to sustainable development delivered through vibrant democratic practice.

Sadly, like a laughable Eurovision entry, the ‘nearly-nul-points’ verdicts keep rolling in.

Among the most damning analyses was a report published earlier this month written for Friends of the Earth by Jonathon Porritt, undisputably among the elders of the UK environment and sustainable development movement.

In a detailed analysis, drawing on a compilation of 77 commitments made by the Coalition partners both within and outside government, there are precious few rays of light. The report slams the Coalition government’s record in delivering against its own objectives; let alone those of any genuinely groundbreaking commitment to sustainable development.  

As new Prime Minister, David Cameron promised the ‘greenest government ever’. (Did he ever feel, as he uttered those words, the icy hand of Robin Cook and the New Labour  government’s ‘ethical foreign policy’?). Today, those fine words have served to fuel the derision of environmentalists across the UK, for all Environment Secretary Caroline Spelman’s insistence that the rhetoric has real foundations.

Some of the low-lights for me in my work over the past year here at FDSD follow.

Embedding sustainable development

Two months or so after the General election, the Coalition government made clear that the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution and the independent government sustainable development watchdog the Sustainable Development Commission would provide some of the fuel for its bonfire of the Quangos.  

With the incineration of these institutional underpinnings for sustainable development and ‘green government’ in the UK, many environment and sustainable development advocates had cause to fret from an early stage.

Other early signs of the extent of the commitment by the ‘greenest government ever’ to sustainable development could be found (for those who have a high tolerance level for dull documents) in DEFRA’s November 2010  ‘Business Plan’. That document, all logframes and matrices, used the two words ‘sustainable development’ next to one another precisely…  once… in a reference to DEFRA’s goal of embedding sustainable development in other government departments. (Actually that’s not quite true: it’s also there in the DEFRA organogram; and the word ‘sustainability’ is also mentioned a few times. But still…).

The House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee (EAC) – a cross-party select committee mechanism for scrutinising the government’s approach to environment and sustainable development – opened its work in the new Parliamentary session with an inquiry into Embedding Sustainable Development Across Government after the Secretary of State’s announcement on the future of the Sustainable Development Commission.

A series of evidence sessions followed. FDSD submitted written evidence together with WWF-UK’s legal team and Barrister Peter Roderick, and WWF-UK’s Carol Day and I also gave evidence at one of the oral evidence sessions.

During one evidence session, Environment Secretary Caroline Spelman and DEFRA Director-General Mike Anderson were so feebly questioned that I found myself wishing, as I watched my laptop screen, that there was a sofa nearby that I could dive behind as I yelled ‘noooooh – look behiiiind you’ pantomime-style at Parliament TV and the MPs on the Committee.

The Environmental Audit Committee’s eventual report was moderate; conservative even; very far from strident. And yet it pointed in effect to what everyone in the UK sustainable development community knows to be true: that DEFRA, the environment ministry, is too weak to provide the right home for an effort to embed sustainable development across government.

The EAC warned that DEFRA “is not the best place from which to drive improved sustainable development performance across Government”. Instead, said the EAC, a Minister for Sustainable Development should be appointed within the Cabinet Office to drive action on sustainable development across government, and with close support from Treasury. In a joint press release, FDSD and WWF-UK endorsed the call; effectively to put sustainable development at the heart of where the real power lies in government. The Environmental Audit Committee also recommended a new Cabinet Committee with terms of reference addressing sustainable development. That too was a very welcome suggestion.

For a little while, progress towards the demise of the watchdog Sustainable Development Commission became a way of marking UK sustainable development policy time.

And then Caroline Spelman went on to a notable (if mealy-mouthed) u-turn on forests sell-off in the face of an effective rainbow-hued campaign. With Hunter wellies, Doc Martens; sensible cushion-soles and old plimsolls among the favoured campaign footwear, government plans to transfer (and in part sell off) the nation’s forest assets to private and community ownership floundered. 

Ms Spelman apparently later passed off the forest u-turn as an indication that this is a ‘listening’ government.

And then, a month before the Sustainable Development Commission closed shop, on 28^th February 2010, DEFRA provided us with another indicator of its approach to  embedding sustainable development across government.

In a seven-page word-processed and colourless ‘Vision’ document (a document which one senior civil servant has since assured me need not be cause for worry because it’s already been forgotten about) DEFRA sets out its plans for ‘mainstreaming’ sustainable development.

Sadly, DEFRA’s vision is unlikely to do much to inspire anyone – though that’s the one thing that a government committed to a Big Society working for sustainable development should be doing.

It’s hard to know where to start.

There’s a feeble statement of fact that sustainable development ‘recognises that the three pillars of the economy, society and the environment are interconnected’; a statement that contains nothing normative. But sustainable development is about integrating regard for economy, society and the environment so that we meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. And the Vision tells us that ‘stimulating economic growth and tackling the deficit’ are part of the overall approach to sustainable development.

Scratch the surface of some of the words in the Vision document and it’s hard to tell what lies beneath: ‘real measurable indicators’ are promised for example. The Vision tells us (as more recently has Caroline Spelman – in both cases without supporting evidence) that the government played a leading role at biodiversity talks in Nagoya – but why should we believe it?

Where is the evidence that, as the Vision statement suggests,  departmental business plans ‘demonstrate the importance given to long term SD by government as a whole’? The Vision commits DEFRA to review the business plans of other departments as part of its commitment to mainstream sustainable development across government. It’ll apparently thereby ensure ‘that environmental, social and economic impacts are taken into account as far as possible’. But this ex post impact assessment is very far from a commitment to drive sustainable development innovation and integration of environmental social and economic considerations.

Without an overall strategic framework (the sort that could be provided through a sustainable development white paper, for example), the government has no transparent basis for driving policy creativity or commitment – let alone accountability to the public in the muddle of coalition in a first past the post voting system. 

The Environmental Audit Committee report had recommended (Recommendation 13 if you’re interested) that “A new Sustainable Development Strategy should be developed to revitalise Government engagement on this essential foundation for all policy-making”.

But the government rejects entirely the idea of putting its approach to sustainable development on a clear and transparent strategic footing. Caroline Spelman has gone so far as to state quite clearly that the government does not intend to develop a new UK Sustainable Development Strategy.

When it comes to scrutiny of government action on sustainable development; the Vision says that ‘The Environmental Audit Committee will play a role in holding Government to account with a renewed commitment to scrutinise the appraisal of Government’s policies and our new overall approach’. Yet the Environmental Audit Committee’s report on Embedding Sustainable Development Across Government had said clearly that it “is not for Government.. to determine how Parliament might exercise its role of holding Government to account. We are not currently resourced to carry out the routine scrutiny work of the SDC and continue our separate role in scrutinising the Government’s sustainability performance”.

Far from a commitment to secure a new Minister for Sustainable Development within Cabinet, the Vision keeps responsibility for mainstreaming sustainable development across government firmly with DEFRA.

It’s certainly not bad that, as the Vision says, DEFRA’s Secretary of State will sit on key domestic policy Cabinet committees, including the economic affairs committee. But it’s no substitute for an institutional architecture that puts political commitment to sustainable development at the heart of government.

Around mid March 2011 the government’s response to the Environmental Audit Committee’s report on ‘embedding sustainable development across government’ was released. (Sadly the announcement was botched so there was little publicity). The government says:

“We do not agree that development of a new SD strategy is the right method for revitalising Government engagement on SD. The Government’s new SD vision and approach to fully embed SD throughout Government sets out our high level principles and strategy for the future. Our new approach has an emphasis on action, leadership from the top down and departments taking responsibility for their own performance in relation to SD. All of this is underpinned by our commitment to be open and transparent so that both public and parliament can scrutinise our progress”.

Guardian environment head Damian Carrington went along to see and report on Caroline Spelman and Cabinet Office heavyweight Oliver Letwin’s appearance before the Environmental Audit Committee  to discuss their response. In calling the government’s sustainability plan ‘hot air’, “I’m actually being kind”, Carrington said in a blog post immediately afterwards.

The Plan for Growth

Next came the March 2011 Budget and the government’s growth strategy. And in what was for me the space of a ten-day holiday away from regular email contact, quite a lot of things seemed suddenly to go, well, completely bonkers.

Earlier, in September 2010, the government had announced a one in one out rule; that “any new regulation brought in must be matched by one out of equivalent value”. (I still have no idea what methodologies will be applied to the ‘valuation’ exercise, but perhaps I just haven’t investigated deeply enough).

But there was much more than this to catch up on on my return from holiday. For a start, the March 2011 announcement that there was to be a three-year moratorium on all new domestic legislation – no matter what sort – applying to businesses employing fewer than ten employees (as if the number of employees was the proper cut-off for the appropriateness of action to address risks to workers’ lives; or human rights; or rights of redress…).

Then there was the government’s agreement that ‘sunset clauses’ would “now be mandatory for new regulation introduced by Whitehall departments, where there is a net burden (or cost) on business or civil society organisations”. So how might this idea work, when it comes to any new ‘important environmental protections’ that DEFRA assures us will not be compromised?

Then there was the most extraordinary statement on the government’s approach to sustainable development. In a statement purporting to set out a ‘presumption in favour of sustainable development’ within the planning system; itself part of a statement on ‘planning and the budget’; the Department of Communities and Local Government actually explained that what it planned to do to implement that presumption would amount to what would be potentially precisely the opposite: implementing a presumption in favour of economic growth and development.

Here’s the statement. Brace yourself. You may need to read it twice; pinch yourself; dive for that sofa.

“A new presumption in favour of sustainable development

This is a powerful new principle underpinning the planning system that will help to ensure that the default answer to development and growth is “yes” rather than “no”, except where this would clearly compromise the key sustainable development principles in national planning policy, including protecting the Green Belt and Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty. The presumption will give developers, communities and investors greater certainty about the types of applications that are likely to be approved, and will help to speed up the planning process and encourage growth…”

Incidentally – I learned later from an NGO colleague that the government might also consider it too difficult to define sustainable development in the Localism Bill; because sustainable development can mean all things to all people (the government in particular, it would appear).

Your Freedom, Crowdsourcing, and the Red Tape Challenge

At any rate, having missed out on all these things, I was only a day late in catching up with the launch, on April 7^th 2011, of the government’s Red Tape Challenge.

The idea of cutting red tape has a long and undistinguished history in the UK; undistinguished in that it is never a job that anyone has said is done.

Under Conservative Prime Minister John Major in the mid-1990s, there was a ‘deregulation unit’. Major memorably described tackling red tape as like trying to wrestle with a greasy pig.

The idea of slashing red tape never went out of fashion. Under Tony Blair, New Labour established a ‘red tape task force’. And Gordon Brown claimed to be the ‘enemy of red tape’.

Now, with dismal statistics on economic growth here in the UK, the Coalition government has pushed to the very top of the pendulum’s arc with its Red Tape Challenge.

The Red Tape Challenge is in some respects a successor to Nick Clegg’s failed ‘Your Freedom’ crowd-sourcing experiment; an experiment which folded after the government received more comments than it could cope with on the Your Freedom website. (The website, incidentally, is now partly archived so that it’s impossible to see what everyone said).

Your Freedom’s opening paragraphs included the following words “We want to restore Britain’s traditions of freedom and fairness, and free our society of unnecessary laws and regulations – both for individuals and businesses…. This site gives you the chance to tell us which laws and regulations you think we should get rid of”.

That something remarkably similar should re-emerge so quickly in the form of the Red Tape Challenge is itself surprising (though there are many possible explanations).

Like Your Freedom, the Red Tape Challenge is a web-based (so-called) ‘crowd-sourcing’ initiative. Economic sector by sector, the Red Tape Challenge invites comments on “which regulations are working and which are not; what should be scrapped, what should be saved and what should be simplified”.

In parallel, the initiative invites comments on six sets of ‘general regulations’.Among these, the ‘environment’ section of the Red Tape Challenge website  includes 278 separate pieces of environment law.

In the website’s own words: “here’s the most important bit – the default presumption will be that burdensome regulations will go. If Ministers want to keep them, they have to make a very good case for them to stay.”  Not only may Ministers have to waste their time, post cutbacks, potentially justifying anything anyone on the site says is burdensome; they also have to overcome a threshold presumption that if it’s considered burdensome by someone – anyone – it’s to be scrapped.

It’s now becoming close to impossible to keep track of what proposals are being made where and which policies, institutions, or laws, are up for incineration. For example, the Equality Act has been put forward for ‘crowd-sourced’ proposals for repeal in the Red Tape Challenge. But regulations made under the Equality Act are included in a separate more conventional consultation exercise –not the Red Tape Challenge. The Climate Change Act is included within the Red Tape Challenge. But it’s not listed under ‘carbon emissions’. Instead, it appears in a section on environmental permitting and information. 

Now I’m no e-democracy expert, but the Red Tape Challenge certainly appears to risk getting ‘crowd-sourcing’ all wrong. An old piece by Will Hutton shows why. Crowds are most ‘wise’, it seems, either when significant numbers of people make informed choices, or when the ‘wisdom’ emerges as a result of proper deliberation. 

Simply listing vast numbers of regulations doesn’t make for the sort of quantitative decision-making where wisdom is likely to emerge, either. Discussion about the pros and cons of regulation cannot in any meaningful sense be equated with the ‘guess the number of marbles in the jar’ stall at a summer fete.

There’s a long way to go in working out how to apply the idea of ‘crowdsourcing’ to government decision-making. And gambling almost the entirety of the nation’s body of environment, health and safety, employment and equalities legislation on an experiment is foolhardy in the extreme.

In contrast to the Red Tape Challenge fundamental assumption that if regulation is a burden – to anyone – it must go; the history of business innovation for sustainable development is replete with examples of innovation that is nurtured – or sometimes forced – by regulation. Perhaps the most celebrated example is the phase-out of ozone depleting substances, spurred on by the internationally agreed Montreal Protocol.

One business’s burdensome regulation is another’s signal to innovate. One enterprise’s burden is the source of a green growth for another.

The Red Tape Challenge consummately fails to recognise this, and that alone places it well behind the curve of those parts of the business community that exist to drive and serve the ‘green economy’ that the government has eagerly expresses its wish for.

If you will forgive the repetition in an already-long post: under Caroline Spelman’s stewardship, the greenest government ever, commited to mainstreaming sustainable development across government, has put 278 pieces of primary and secondary environment legislation up for crowd-sourced comment with a presumption that if they’re considered burdensome – possibly if they’re considered burdensome by anyone – they must in principle go.

It may only be accident that some pieces of legislation (the Clean Air Act and the Environmental Protection Act among them) have escaped listing; that it is not the entirety of the body of UK environment law that has been opened up to trading off against the government’s plan for short-term growth.

Over and over again on the environment regulation pages of the Red Tape Challenge website, respondents charge that the Coalition government is guilty of short-termism; that it has failed to take account of future generations; that it is putting short-term profit (and economic growth) before protection of the environment and sustainable development.

Campaign groups have also woken up to the risks. Despite a muddled explanation of what’s proposed, a petition by online campaign group 38 Degrees has gathered close to 50000 signatures. The RSPB invites its members to send a message to Vince Cable under the slogan ‘some cuts never heal’. The Woodland Trust is also among the groups encouraging their members to post messages in support of the existing body of environmental legislation.

Government departments have issued some responses to the initial wave of indignation about the Red Tape Challenge from environmentalists. First up, the Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC) moved on 20^th April to issue the reassuring statement that:

“The Climate Change Act is here to stay and is central to the coalition’s policies to cut emissions and incentivise investment in the green economy….[b]ut given the crucial role business has to play in the low carbon transition it’s only right that the government looks at how this can be done in as business friendly a way as possible and at least cost to consumers and business.”

But refraining from repealing primary legislation in its entirety is no guarantee of continual progress towards the achievement of its goals. The tension in DECC’s carefully-negotiated statement is obvious, three weeks on, from the row that has broken out across government departments (and between Lib Dem Ministers) on the adoption of new carbon budgets. There have been calls for David Cameron to intervene in the face of Vince Cable’s claims that the latest round of proposed carbon budgets recommended by the independent Climate Change Committee, and supported by Chris Huhne at DECC, excessively burden the UK economy.

With DECC’s clarification on the Red Tape Challenge issued, on 24^th April DEFRA published this double-speak statement on its website:

The myth: there have been reports in the media that important environmental regulations in legislation such as the Wildlife and Countryside Act, National Park Act, Clean Air Act and the Climate Change Act could be scrapped as part of the Government’s Red Tape Challenge.

The truth: Defra is committed to enhancing the natural environment and there are no plans to remove important environmental protections. The Red Tape Challenge is about examining and understanding the impact of regulation on the people, businesses, and communities it affects, to ensure that it is proportionate while delivering the desired outcomes.

This reader doesn’t find the ‘myth’ busted at all. DEFRA’s statement – one of 23 on an extraordinary ‘myth-busters’ section of its website – serves principally to sound even deeper alarm bells.

A reminder: the Cabinet Office, home of the Red Tape Challenge, says this: “here’s the most important bit – the default presumption will be that burdensome regulations will go. If Ministers want to keep them, they have to make a very good case for them to stay”.

The devil is in the detail, and here we have it: it’s ‘important environmental protections’ versus ‘burdensome regulations’. Neither DECC nor DEFRA provide any guidance on how trade-offs will be managed when it comes to the inevitable balancing act between competing Ministries. Caroline Spelman will no doubt be working hard behind closed doors (breakfast meetings, Cabinet Committees and so on) to ‘mainstream’ sustainable development. And yet the Cabinet Office’s ‘default presumption’ is so clearly stated that it is as if government faces no balancing acts.

The poverty of short-termism

There’s a deeply engrained short-termism in these assaults on sustainable development; in the Coalition’s persistent economic framing of environment and biodiversity; in the separation of environment and social justice.

Yet the Coalition government boldly announced that it means to adopt a ‘new horizon’ in politics. In a September 2010 speech, Nick Clegg declared that one of the guiding purposes of this government’s policy approach (along with decentralisation and the Big Society) would be a ‘horizon shift’: governance for the long-term; and therefore an end to political short-termism.  

I analysed Clegg’s speech from a sustainable development perspective in this post (extraordinary that the objective of the ‘New Horizon’ is to be ‘social mobility’). Three months earlier FDSD and many other individuals and organisations had called on the Coalition to adopt a ‘new politics of the future’.

As the short-term growth imperative reaches out to trump all that comes before it, there’s been precious little evidence of Clegg’s New Horizon so far when it comes to sustainable development.

The ‘greenest government ever’? A ‘new horizon’ in UK politics? Sustainable development ‘mainstreamed’ across government?

We now may be seeing the start of sustainable development policy subsidence on a grand scale. We will all be the poorer for it; and so will our democracy.

Political rhetoric can’t provide a basis for lasting transformation unless it has real foundations – in institutions, in skills and understanding, and in peoples’ belief, commitment and engagement. 

As a science graduate myself, I’ve always favoured scientific research for scientific research’s sake. Many of the natural sciences’ most pragmatic societal applications have been the outcome not of applied, but rather of pure, scientific research. An obvious example would be Faraday’s curiosity-driven experiments on electricity, which into the bargain led to the electric light replacing the candle in our everyday lives.

So far, so scientific.

Yet now with a new, very different hat on – as an intern here at the Foundation for Democracy and Sustainable Development – I’ve been forced to reassess my position. I have begun to look at science in terms of how it contributes to sustainable development – in the famous words of the Brundtland Commission, how well it allows us to meet ‘the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’  – as well as how democratic it is.

And the catalyst for this personal psychological overhaul? CERN (the European Organisation for Nuclear Research), and more specifically its most talked about investment in fundamental physics, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).

The LHC, for those unfamiliar with it, is a particle accelerator 100m below the Franco-Swiss border. It smashes together sub-atomic participles, known as ‘hadrons’, head-on and at high energy, in order to recreate the conditions just after the Big Bang. According to CERN’s website, it will ‘revolutionise our understanding, from the minuscule world deep within atoms to the vastness of the Universe’.

To me, the potential benefits that such an instrument could bring need no justification. But what of the costs?  With my ‘democracy and sustainable development’ hat on, these strike me as cause for concern.

The degree to which the LHC might compromise sustainable development cannot be reliably quantified; making grappling with this issue all the more problematic. What can be said, however, is that an experimental ‘glitch’ in research of this nature and energetic scale could result in the elimination of the world as we know it. Naturally, this would make the LHC the ultimate in unsustainable development: there would be no future generations whose needs could be met!

The fears aroused by the LHC’s potential for world elimination are varied. Yet recurrent areas of uncertainty and risk do seem to crop up time and time again: namely the production of strangelets and of black holes at colliders.

To give a flavour of the vagaries of particle collision, CERN claims that the collisions it engineers are too hot to produce strangelets. Even so, not only have several CERN scientists published papers speculating on strangelet production, but there are also two large strangelet detectors at CERN itself. The message appears mixed.

As for black holes, a 1999 RHIC paper to the effect that colliders could not generate energy sufficient to fuel black hole creation, was followed by numerous physics papers touting new theory which predicted the creation of black holes at colliders. What’s more, the claim in a 2003 CERN paper that black holes, if created, would dissipate immediately via Hawking radiation, coincided with several papers challenging the fundamental theory underpinning Hawking radiation – a radiation which, incidentally, has never been seen experimentally.

Even if (as many conclusions seem to concede) the energies generated at colliders will not surpass those of the cosmic rays that constantly bombard our atmosphere to no ill effect, the fact remains that the LHC works on materials of which very little is known. Where is the precaution?

The well-known ‘precautionary approach’ proposes that a lack of complete scientific certainty in the face of risks of serious or irreversible damage to human or environmental health should not be an excuse for postponing cost-effective preventive measures. In the case of CERN, then, should the precautionary approach’s ‘preventive measures’ not be the cessation of all collider experiments?

Scientists are well-accustomed to dealing objectively with matters of risk; assigning numerical values to their estimates. The problem with LHC-associated risk, however, is that it dices with the future of the planet’s entire population of life-forms.

In science, asserting that you are 99.99% confident of something translates as very confident indeed. Yet apply that level of confidence to experimental research with the (arguable) potential to obliterate humanity, and the odds don’t seem so favourable. After all, 99.99% confidence of safety means 0.01% chance of disaster: a little much, to my mind, without a better safety review!

With a dubious sustainable development rating, then, does CERN fare any better in terms of democracy? First off, it is worth remembering that the existence of CERN and its LHC were never voted upon. This, of course, is just part and parcel of representative democracy: the international community wasn’t consulted on whether the US should have tested the atomic bomb in 1945 either. Under this model of democracy, the matter of whether or not people would vote for a particular issue, given the chance, is therefore merely academic.

So how could the realm of fundamental physics be made more democratic? One way could be through the establishment of a jury or focus group of representative citizens charged with the consideration of scientific risk. However, surely the very nature of fundamental physics precludes such an idea: how democratic could it be when it is so extraordinarily difficult to comprehend the nature of the risk assessment?

On the flipside, though, how democratic can scientific research be when its risk assessments are, by necessity, carried out by those with a vested interest in the research?

In conclusion, it seems that the challenge of making fundamental physics research at CERN both ‘pro sustainable development’ and democratic resides predominantly in the fact that physics at this level is a highly unknown beast. Unknown, yes; but perhaps not unknowable. Rather than suspend CERN-style experimentation on the grounds of a lack of knowledge, physicists would argue that we should strive to surpass current levels of knowledge by continuing to invest in the LHC and its ilk.

Those on the opposite bench might retort that we could learn just as much, and at considerably less risk, if analogous experiments were conducted in supercomputer simulations, as for much cosmological research.

Those on a more distant opposing bench might go so far as to say that fundamental physics research should be completely shelved, in favour of pragmatic science directly geared towards remedying our planet’s problems.

To my own mind, the solution is unclear. One problem, it seems, is not so much the risks entailed by collider experiments, but rather the lack of debate about those risks. And another relates to the precautionary principle. As interpreted above, this principle should lead to the termination of collider experimentation at CERN. Yet, from a different perspective, could there be an equally great risk in leaving this sort of fundamental scientific research on the shelf?

So frequently in science there is a tantalising trade-off between research which is truly interesting and potentially revolutionising on the one hand, and that which is safer yet less likely to represent scientific value on the other.

As to where the appropriate trade-off should lie, the jury is still out… or at least, would be if it existed. 

This paper forms Paper Four in FDSD’s project on The Future of Democracy in the Face of Climate Change, which aims to develop scenarios that can help to answer 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?’

In this final preliminary paper, we review the current state of climate science and some of its most closely associated tools and scenarios. We focus on the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), particularly its 2007 Fourth Assessment Report (AR4), as well as on later (post-AR4) analysis.

Beyond Paper Four, the next step will be to develop an initial set of draft scenarios on the future of democracy in the face of climate change for discussion, testing, and refining.

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This paper forms Paper Three in FDSD’s project on The Future of Democracy in the Face of Climate Change, which aims to develop scenarios that can help to answer 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?’

As we work towards scenarios on the future of democracy in the face of climate change to 2100, this paper reviews and offers preliminary comments on three broad existing bodies of work: those on ‘the future of sustainable development’, ‘the future of sustainable development governance’, and ‘the future of democracy’.

“Our leaders speak of tomorrow, while their dreams and those of their citizens, are shaped by the concepts, metaphors, logic and assumptions of yesterday” (Ruben Nelson)

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How has London’s famous Science Museum gone about communicating climate science to its visitors?

In our own work, Paper Four aims to uncover links between the current state of climate science on one hand, and democracy on the other. As with any area that is both scientifically and politically complex, the question arises as to how civil society – or more broadly, members of the public – can gain sufficient understanding of climate change to become meaningfully engaged in democratic discussions about it.

Museums, of course, play a central role in delivering and heightening the public’s understanding of science. So what contribution does the Science Museum’s new gallery make? Well, these were my personal impressions: plus points, gripes and queries…

The gallery was visually beautiful. With continents and oceans underfoot and a gauzy atmosphere overhead, it felt almost Gaia-like. But the intended direction around this Earth-as-organism was ambiguous.

An interactive screen summarising the basic science of climate change (the greenhouse effect, greenhouse gases and the like) was both small and inconspicuously positioned. Easily bypassed, it has no doubt led many visitors to discover the ins and outs of ice core and stalagmite data which reveal the climate of the past, or perhaps the low-carbon technologies of the future, before getting to grips with the fundamentals of the Earth’s climate and energy systems.

The level of assumed audience knowledge varied between exhibits. I was delighted that, even with a background in environmental science, the gallery offered both previously unfamiliar scientific facts (such as the nature of covalent bond vibration in different atmospheric gases following the absorption of energy), and various nuggets of pub quiz trivia (did you know that leaving electrical appliances on standby is responsible for 1% of global greenhouse emissions?).

But I sensed that the complete novice may have felt somewhat adrift amid a host of separate exhibits lacking an easily navigable thread, and at times lacking novice-worthy explanations.

One piece of assumed knowledge, for instance, cropped up in an interactive screen’s statement that humans contribute to the greenhouse gases in our atmosphere by cutting down forests. An inventory of the multiple ways in which this directly and indirectly adds greenhouse gases to the atmosphere would have been unnecessarily dense and unwieldy. Yet at least some mention of the fact that fewer trees means less photosynthesis (a process which converts carbon dioxide into sugars which plants use), which means less carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, could have helpfully filled an assumed-not-to-be-there gap in some people’s knowledge.

A further niggling gripe concerned the gallery’s treatment of uncertainty. The introductory text at the gallery’s entrance stated that ‘Science doesn’t have ‘final answers’’. Yet beyond this token nod in the direction of uncertainty, this central undertone of climate science and the public debate about climate change – that there are considerable areas of remaining uncertainty – was, to my mind, left largely by the wayside.

One exhibit, at least – in fact, the most technologically impressive one – did allow the audience to flick through a book of climate change’s potential causes (e.g. human activities, the Sun, and El Niño).  But exhibits such as this, which cast a grey haze over the black-and-white frontage of science, were undoubtedly lacking. What’s more, the uncertainty surrounding climate change’s impacts, in particular, was barely afforded a mention.  

First and foremost, as you’d expect from the Science Museum, the Atmosphere gallery is a round-up of the science. It inhabits that politically neutral haven that science often aims for, venturing little more than a toe into the messy world of politics, individual and collective responsibility, and human behaviour – little more than a toe into the world of democracy.

That said, an entertaining set of survey questions for visitors did address some of the more subjective dimensions of climate change. A response to one of these questions – ‘Is it an individual’s responsibility to curb greenhouse gas emissions?’ – particularly amused Halina and me. TC, aged 30 responded: ‘everyone needs to take responsibility, that includes individuals, businesses and government. In the words of MJ, start with the man in the mirror…’.

80s throwbacks aside, the problematic upshot of the gallery’s hesitant look at the wider dimensions of climate change, beyond the science, is that both the range of uncertainty and the degree of debate surrounding our climate were not adequately conveyed. For instance, one interactive screen stated that scientists predict that temperatures could increase by 2-6°C if current emissions trends continue. What wasn’t explored, however, is what temperatures might end up doing if mitigation interventions had substantial effects on emissions trends.

Is that too much to expect of a science exhibition? Perhaps so. But perhaps the unwelcome effect of neglecting the potential for mitigation measures to have real impact – much like the IPCC’s SRES scenarios which assume no policy interventions (see Paper Four) – could be to make business-as-usual emissions trajectories a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Underplaying mitigation could also play into the hands of sceptics who argue that future climate projections consistently overstate the risks by erring on the side of zero mitigation.

One exhibit which did factor in climate change mitigation was a ‘cut the carbon’ game. In one simulation, the interactive exhibit invited players to begin emission reduction programmes immediately (in 2011). Despite two of us ‘playing’ to reduce emissions, we still failed to achieve acceptable levels of greenhouse gas levels in 2050. The overriding message seemed to be that even if we start now, it will be too little too late. Talk about doom and gloom!

Despite its idiosyncracies, the Science Museum’s Atmosphere gallery remains an ambitious and engaging take on one of the 21^st century’s most important scientific topics. Essentially it does what it says on the tin – ‘exploring climate science’ – but I’m left wondering how useful a public understanding of climate science is, in a democracy, without its associated social context.

As a starting point, I would recommend both the gallery, and a clockwise stroll around it. And do ignore the Science Museum’s advice that a visit will take about half an hour. We spent three hours there and could easily have spent longer.

Drawing on the Stern Review, he outlines the current state of the Earth’s climate, before addressing the scale and timing of mitigation necessary to stabilise greenhouse gases at 450 parts per million.

The biggest stumbling block to successful mitigation, he insists, is the human condition: people value smaller rewards soon over larger rewards later, and perceive the future as ontologically weak; unreal. Neither convincing scientific evidence, nor unprecedented levels of public awareness of climate change, will necessarily overcome our mitigation inertia, he warns.

Most interesting for our work on ‘the future of democracy in the face of climate change’ are Professor Guillaume’s closing remarks on the challenges for democracy. Even if climate change mitigation were to be achieved, he argues, there is no reason to expect it to drive democracy.

Enforced war-style rationing, for instance, could reduce not only our emissions, but also our civil liberties. Moreover, an immoderate reliance on technology to combat climate change could engender, as Professor Guillaume puts it, a ‘hubris-inspired radical technocracy’.

In sum, we need to find ways of tackling climate change without sacrificing democracy.   

Video courtesy of Ian Brown

An interview with Professor John Ruggie, Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General on Business and Human Rights, during a three-day event entitled ‘Democracy and Sustainability in Emerging Economies: India as a Case Study’. The event, which took place in New Delhi in February 2009, was organised by FDSD (at that time known as The Environment Foundation), in collaboration with the 21st Century Trust, Salzburg Global Seminar, Paul Hamlyn Foundation, and in association with TERI’s 2009 Delhi Sustainable Development Summit.

Talking to FDSD Director Halina Ward, Professor Ruggie discusses how his work on business and human rights relates to democracy. Human rights and democracy are two sides of the same coin, he says; both describing the duty of governments to serve the needs and rights of the people. But business is poorly acquainted with the language of human rights, and can (deliberately or inadvertently) adversely affect both human rights and democracy. Moreover, when business causes the displacement of communities from their land and the disruption of sustainable livelihoods, it becomes an adversary of sustainable development too.

Video courtesy of Ian Brown

With the so-called ‘Ruggie process’ drawing to a conclusion, we are pleased to post an interview with Professor John Ruggie, Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General on Business and Human Rights. The interview was filmed in February 2009 during a three-day event on ‘Democracy and Sustainability in Emerging Economies: India as a Case Study’. The event, which took place in New Delhi, was organised by FDSD (at that time known as The Environment Foundation), in collaboration with the 21st Century Trust, Salzburg Global Seminar, Paul Hamlyn Foundation, and in association with TERI’s 2009 Delhi Sustainable Development Summit.

Talking to FDSD Director Halina Ward, Professor Ruggie discusses how his work on business and human rights relates to democracy. Human rights and democracy are two sides of the same coin, he says; both describing the duty of governments to serve the needs and rights of the people. But business is poorly acquainted with the language of human rights, and can (deliberately or inadvertently) adversely affect both human rights and democracy. Moreover, when business causes the displacement of communities from their land and the disruption of sustainable livelihoods, it becomes an adversary of sustainable development too.

Professor Ruggie will deliver a speech in London on 11^th January on ‘The Construction of the UN ‘Protect, Respect and Remedy’ Framework for Business and Human Rights: The True Confessions of a Principled Pragmatist’.

The ‘Protect, Respect and Remedy’ framework forms the basis of a report which Professor Ruggie will present to the UN Human Rights Council in June 2011. The report will contain a set of Guiding Principles for the implementation of the ‘Protect, Respect and Remedy’ framework, aimed at encouraging companies, states and other stakeholders to address the impacts of business on human rights.

If human rights and democracy are two sides of the same coin, the report might also contain messages for those with an interest in the impact of business on democracy.

WWF-UK,  FOUNDATION FOR DEMOCRACY AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

PRESS RELEASE

EMBARGOED TO 00:01 GMT, 10th January 2011

Non-governmental organisations call for stronger role for Parliament in sustainable development

Today’s report from the Environmental Audit Committee (1): “Embedding Sustainable Development across Government” confirms that sustainable development has not been fully embedded across Government because the political will to do so has not been maintained. However, it does not go far enough in calling for urgent institutional reform to make this the “greenest government ever” (2), say WWF-UK and FDSD (3).

WWF-UK and FDSD share the Committee’s concern that sustainable development will become sidelined unless it is part of the central change-making mechanisms of Government. The two organisations endorse the Environmental Audit Committee’s proposal that a Minister for Sustainable Development be appointed within the Cabinet Office to drive action on sustainable development across government. However, WWF-UK and FDSD warn that it is essential that DEFRA’s existing sustainable development expertise is not watered down.

Endorsing the Committee’s recommendation that a new Sustainable Development Strategy be developed to revitalise Government engagement, Halina Ward, Director of the Foundation for Democracy and Sustainable Development cautioned “it is nonsense to expect the Cabinet Office or any new Sustainable Development Minister to review the sustainable development implications of departmental policy proposals, plans and practices when the Government has no sustainable development strategy in place to provide a transparent benchmark for transparency or for accountability to the UK’s citizens”.

While the Cabinet Office, or a new Minister, can coordinate action across the Government, they cannot provide independent advice and scrutiny. Parliament must play a stronger role. WWF-UK and FDSD endorse the Committee’s view that the EAC is not properly resourced to carry out the routine scrutiny work previously carried out by independent watchdog the Sustainable Development Commission. Equally, it is clear that academics, NGOs and community groups are in a limited position to do so.

Carol Day, Solicitor at WWF-UK said: “We were appalled at the speed and ease with which the Coalition Government has been able to unravel bodies such as the Sustainable Development Commission and the Royal Commission for Environmental Pollution. We clearly need new mechanisms with real teeth that are less vulnerable to attack . A beefed up Cabinet Office with a new Minister in no way replaces the SDC as it will not provide independent advice and scrutiny – only new institutional measures outside of Government can do this.”

Speaking about an emerging Coalition of NGOs inspired by the Hungarian scrutiny model of a Parliamentary Commissioner for Future Generations, Halina Ward added: “Over the coming months, we’ll be working with a range of other NGOs in a new coalition to ensure long-termism and respect for future generations in the UK’s democracy so that we get the sustainable development that we desperately need. We see House of Lords reform as a first opportunity to secure the changes that are needed. Any proposals for reform of the Lords should be designed to ensure that concern for future generations is part of its remit.”

ENDS

Note to editors:

WWF-UK Solicitor Carol Day and FDSD Director Halina Ward are available for media interviews and comment.

WWF-UK press enquiries and interviews: cday@wwf.org.uk; telephone: +44 (0)7972 159847

FDSD press enquiries and interviews: press@fdsd.org; telephone: +44 (0)20 7022 1848; +44 (0)7825 164996

1. The Environmental Audit Committee (EAC) considers the extent to which the policies and programmes of government departments and non-departmental public bodies contribute to environmental protection and sustainable development, and it audits their performance against any sustainable development and environmental protection targets. The Committee’s report on ‘Embedding Sustainable Development Across Government’ is its First Report of Session 2010–11, HC 504. The text of the Report will be available on the Committee’s website from 00.01am approximately, on 10 January 2011: http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/environmental-audit-committee/publications/

2. The Coalition government has committed itself to being the “greenest ever” – to deliver a green and more responsible economy, fairness and the Big Society – whilst cutting the deficit, increasing efficiency and delivering structural reform to create better value for the tax payer. It has also committed to place two “animating purposes” at the heart of its term: bringing about a radical redistribution of power from central government to local communities and people; and governing for the long-term (see DPM Nick Clegg’s “Horizon Shift speech of 9th September 2010). See: http://www.libdems.org.uk/news_detail.aspx?title=Nick_Clegg_speech:_Horizon_shift&pPK=f8f7b543-d586-40e2-b4c9-e7be68970bf3

3. WWF-UK and FDSD were two of the four non-governmental organisations (NGOs) invited to give evidence to the Environmental Audit Committee on the basis of written submissions.

4. The powers of the Hungarian Parliamentary Commissioner for Future Generations include the following: investigation of complaints from members of the public; participation in the law-making process and in Hungary’s position in EU negotiations; intervention to prevent activities which are violating or which could violate the right to a healthy environment guaranteed in the constitution; and strategic research. More information on international initiatives can be obtained from WWF and FDSD and is based on a recent research report produced for the groups on this topic by barrister Peter Roderick.

WWF-UK (www.wwf.org) is one of the world’s leading independent environmental organisations, with established experience in the management and conservation of natural ecosystems world wide.

The Foundation for Democracy and Sustainable Development (www.fdsd.org ) is a UK-based charity which works to find ways of equipping democracy to deliver sustainable development.

Carol Day is a Solicitor in WWF-UK’s Legal Unit. She has worked for WWF for nearly twenty years, first as a campaigner on town and country planning issues and latterly as a lawyer. WWF’s Legal Unit term implements a programme of wide-ranging and strategic activities aimed at achieving targeted but fundamental improvements to the consideration of environmental law within the legal systems of England and Wales, the UK, Europe and the UNECE.

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.

“We take the long view in so many ways. We get educated. We have children. We build. We buy houses. We talk about “making a living”, a continuing, dynamic, creative process. We contribute to pension schemes. We imagine retirement. We hope for good health. We devise and take out insurance policies. We make wills. We value museums, libraries, gardens, beaches, and open and wild spaces. We fear death and want to continue living. Even our fairy stories take the long view: “and they lived happily ever after”. And laws and policies are aimed at supporting these kinds of ends, or should be, even if the means are passionately contested”.

Peter Roderick’s report for FDSD and WWF-UK outlines a range of options for UK legal and constitutional change to underpin ‘the longer view’ in the interests of sustainable development.

download report
(996kb)

download appendices
(749kb)

Naturally, Vietnam’s democracy is a socialist one, which makes the express commitment to link democracy to sustainable development somehow all the more interesting. Liberal democracies in other parts of the world might also reflect on this.

The particular emphasis on expanding ‘direct democracy’, linked as it is to a stern reference to ‘discipline and rule’, is intriguing.

I don’t know Vietnam well (having last visited in 1992, just a couple of months after the Rio Earth Summit). If anyone reading has reflections on the Vietnamese approach to linking democracy and sustainable development – particularly on what it could mean in practice and whether there are any lessons for other countries – I’d be very glad to hear from you.

I hope that the Government of the Socialist Republic will forgive this lengthy quote from the article, which can be found in full here.

“….The socio-economic development strategy 2001-2010, approved at the 9th Party Congress, reconfirmed “Rapid, effective and sustainable development and economic growth must go together with social progress and equality, and environment protection.” The 10th Party Congress continued to draw the lesson on rapid and sustainable development, the content of which was enriched with the demand for comprehensive human development and democracy, apart from socio-economic development and environment. The overall goal of the five-year plan 2006-2010 was “To strive for economic growth of rapid tempo, high quality and higher sustainability, attached to human development….

…To realize the stance on rapid and sustainable development, it is necessary to enforce orientations enshrined in the draft Strategy comprehensively, focusing on the following tasks….

Fifth, to bring into play people’s mastership, execute democracy, especially direct democracy, and build a society of openness and consensus.  ệt Nam’s development under the Party’s leadership. Democracy functions as the goal and the impulse too. All these three pillars must be strong enough and compatibly developed. Any weak pillar can block the movement of other pillars and affects the development.”

Democracy is a factor of sustainable development, as clearly stated by our Party at its 10th Congress in order to perfect and enrich the content of sustainable development. This comes from a vital point: Man is the target and also the subject of development. Human resource is a long-term competitive advantage and a decisive factor for the development of a country. By executing democracy, we will bring into play creativity of each and every individual, contributing to the country’s rapid and sustainable development. The higher democracy is, the greater social consensus becomes, and the more the aggregate strength of the whole-nation solidarity is solidified.

To promote democracy and make it a resource for development, it is necessary to secure two conditions: (1) offering chances for people to study, building up a study-based society for higher intellectual standards of people; and (2) ensuring people’s mastership through institutions which guarantee democracy in all fields of the social life and expand direct democracy. Democracy must be associated to discipline and rule.

It is possible to say that, law-ruled state, market economy with social welfare and security, and socialist democracy are three main pillars of Việt Nam’s development under the Party’s leadership. Democracy functions as the goal and the impulse too. All these three pillars must be strong enough and compatibly developed. Any weak pillar can block the movement of other pillars and affects the 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.