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. 

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)

A conversation between Ian Christie, Vice-Chair of the Foundation for Democracy and Sustainable Development (FDSD), and János Zlinsky, new FDSD trustee, and Head of Strategy and Research with the Office of the Hungarian Parliamentary Commissioner for Future Generations.

Amid UK worries about the new government’s cuts to the Sustainable Development Commission, Hungary appears to be taking a different approach. As János Zlinsky discusses, democratic Hungary is attempting to attach greater importance to long-term issues through the establishment of a ‘green ombudsman’. This is a watchdog role, aimed at safeguarding the constitutional right of Hungarian citizens to a healthy environment. Could Hungary’s example pave the way for a widespread shift away from democratic short-term thinking? And how could the UK go about following suit?

A conversation between Ian Christie, Vice-Chair of the Foundation for Democracy and Sustainable Development (FDSD), and János Zlinsky, new FDSD trustee, and Head of Strategy and Research with the Office of the Hungarian Parliamentary Commissioner for Future Generations.

Amid UK worries about the Coalition government’s withdrawal of funding for independent watchdog the Sustainable Development Commission, Hungary appears to be taking a different approach. As János Zlinsky discusses, democratic Hungary is attempting to attach greater importance to long-term issues through the establishment of a ‘green ombudsman’. This too is a watchdog role, aimed at safeguarding the constitutional right of Hungarian citizens to a healthy environment. Could Hungary’s example pave the way for a widespread shift away from democratic short-term thinking? And how could the UK go about following suit?

FDSD Director Halina Ward and WWF-UK’s Carol Day recently debated the UK’s approach at the Environmental Audit Committee’s Inquiry into Embedding Sustainable Development Across Government. Their evidence built on ongoing research, jointly commissioned by FDSD and WWF-UK from lawyer Peter Roderick. Peter Roderick is investigating options for UK institutional innovations to take better account of the long-term, of environmental justice, and future generations. His research is scheduled for completion in early December.

Subsequently, in mid December a group of UK NGOs will meet to discuss further the UK’s approach to long-term thinking and the kinds of institutional innovations that could support it in the interests of future generations and sustainable development, and to explore future advocacy options in this area.

The discussion was based on Professor Jackson’s central argument that building a new economic model fit for a low carbon world is ‘the most urgent task of our times’.

There was some discussion at the event about the extent to which getting to this economy ’fit for purpose’ depends on the state of our democracy.

In his book, Professor Jackson argues that “..we must ask searching questions about the balance of the institutions that characterize modern society. Do they promote competition or cooperation? Do they reward self-servicing behaviour or people who sacrifice their own gain to serve others? What signals do government, schools, the media, religious and community institutions send out to people? Which behaviours are supported by public investments and infrastructures and which are discouraged?“

Democracy itself has to be part of this enquiry. Indeed, a level-headed discussion on how to ensure that democracy is ‘fit for purpose’ in terms of its ability to deliver sustainable development needs to be given greater prominence in the discussion on progress to low carbon futures.

Looking at transformation of the economy without looking in tandem at democratic adaptation doesn’t make sense.

Any conversation on getting to an economy ‘fit for purpose’ will falter and fall unless some of the wider challenges of democratic decision-making for sustainable development are addressed.

It’s becoming increasingly apparent that the obstacles to economic transformation for sustainable development don’t lie only with economic actors such as businesses or with the pressures of international competition – but with the preferences of individual voters themselves.

For example, elected representatives can find it uncomfortable to move significantly ahead of the  curve of public opinion on environmental issues. David Miliband’s recently reported lamentations on public apathy about climate change in the run-up to the Copenhagen Climate Summit reflect a growing debate about the relatioship between political leadership and public opinion on climate change.

Yet there are also some issues in the UK (capital punishment the most obvious) where considerations of morality or human decency allow politicians to pay less attention to opinion polls or public opinion.

Some groundbreaking if controversial environmental policy measures (London’s Congestion Charge is one example) have been implemented on the basis of clear election promises, with public consultation focusing on implementation rather than the principle of introducing  a measure.

A report on the history of the London Congestion charge explains that “The campaign for Mayor of London began in 1999 with four main candidates from each of the main political parties and an independent, Ken Livingstone. Of these candidates three made election promises to introduce a congestion charging scheme in Central London. Although this was a brave decision because congestion charging could be seen as a notoriously difficult policy to sell to voters, at the same time it demonstrated the high level of political commitment to the policy. However, for Ken Livingstone, this political gamble paid off and in May 2000 he was elected as Mayor of London.“

It would be very wrong to take these examples as special pleading for ‘less engagement with the public’ on environmental policy to facilitate implementation of controversial policy proposals. Far from it. For there is also evidence that when people are given full facts and a chance to deliberate before arriving at conclusions, they express greater support for action on issues like climate change than some recent opinion polls might otherwise suggest. 

A significant part of the problem – to the extent that opinion polls show that people may in effect prefer economic growth over sustainable development – may lie with how members of the public are invited to engage with formal democratic processes, and with how elected representatives themselves view the balance between visionary leadership, consultation, direct democracy (for example through referenda), and public participation of various kinds.

If we take seriously the challenge of pursuing an ‘economy fit for purpose’, we must also work out how to arrive at a ‘democracy fit for purpose’.

One answer is to point to existing examples of innovations designed to help parliaments to integrate long-term thinking into their decisions.

There are three examples and one idea that I want to highlight here.

In Israel, the Knesset passed legislation to enable the creation of a Commission for Future Generations, a non-political entity which operated from 2001 until 2006.

The Commission’s functions lay in four areas: providing opinions on bills, secondary legislation and regulation of concern to future generations; providing parliament with recommendations on any matter the head of the commission (called a Commissioner) considers to be of importance to future generations, and providing parliament with advice on matters of special interest regarding the future generations.

Former Deputy Commissioner Nira Lamay writes that “Our motto was that while the political world was busy with issues of defence and war, we would prepare for the “day after” peace, when future generations would have clean water to drink and clean air to breathe”.

According to a post by one blogger, Uzi Benziman, the demise of the Commission may have stemmed from the nature of its challenge to ‘business as usual’ politics: “[t]he institution ceased operating because the tenure of the first commissioner, retired judge Shlomo Shoham, ended, and influential people in the Knesset argued that the commission was unnecessary, ineffective and wasted public funds.

Regardless of whether there was merit to these arguments, the commission’s demise suggests that the Knesset could not bear its existence: The MKs are affected by day-to-day events and tangible interests, and a body that considers the broader horizon bothers them.”

The Finnish parliament’s Committee for the Future is charged with carrying on an “active and initiative-generating dialogue with the Government on major future problems and means of solving them”.

The Committee’s brochure acknowledges that “since the problems of the future and above all its opportunities cannot be studied through traditional parliamentary procedures and work methods alone, the Committee has been given the specific task of also following and using the results of futures research. Indeed, the Committee can be said to be making policy on the future, because its goal is not research, but rather policy.”

The Committee was established in 1993 on a temporary basis and acquired permanent status in 2000. Its seventeen elected members are all parliamentarians. The Committee for the Future’s reports include several on the future of democracy which are invaluable resources in their field.

Another of the Committee for the Future’s responsibilities is to prepare Parliament’s response to the Government’s Report on the Future during each electoral period. The theme of the futures report covering the parliamentary term 2007–2011 is climate and energy, putting the Committee on track to make a further contribution to strengthening democratic processes for sustainable development.

Most recently in Hungary, Parliament decided in 2007 to establish a new independent watchdog function; the Parliamentary Commissioner for Future Generations (also known as the ‘green ombudsman’), whose role is to safeguard the constitutional right of Hungarian citizens to a healthy environment.

The independent Commissioner, who is elected by Parliament but is not a parliamentarian, is one of four Parliamentary Ombudsmen. Others deal with civil rights, data protection and freedom of information, and the rights of national and ethnic minorities.

There are three pillars in the Commissioner’s work: investigating complaints relating to a broad range of environmental issues; acting as a policy advocate for sustainability issues across all relevant fields of national and local legislation and public policy; and undertaking or promoting research projects targeting the long term sustainability of human societies.

In the UK, independent watchdog the Sustainable Development Commission (SDC) works to put sustainable development at the heart of government policy. The SDC has shortlisted the notion of a ‘Congress for the Future’ as one of nineteen ‘breakthrough ideas’ for sustainable development selected following an open competition.

A recent SDC report introduces the idea of a Congress for the Future in the following way:

“Imagine… the UK with long-term thinking enshrined at the heart of our democratic processes, raising awareness, creating political space, and generating action on the biggest issues of our time. The Congress for the Future is a way of giving adequate attention to the long-term in what has become an overwhelmingly short-term political world. It will act as a counterweight to that short-termism and to the media-inspired ‘something must be done’ quick fixes. Without such a mechanism, is there any way that we can use sustainable development to tackle issues like prosperity, peak oil or climate change?”

The basic idea, says Sustainable Development Commissioner Lindsey Colbourne, “is to create a special Congress, convened by Parliament every year, to help build broad agreement and provide direction on long-term questions. One or more issues in need of public debate will be put before each Congress, either by the Government of the day or by MPs in response to public petition. Randomly-selected citizens and stakeholders will then engage with the issues in an informed, deliberative process, supported by a secretariat to monitor progress”.

Very different approaches, but each concerned to ensure long-term thinking within the democratic process. The fact that there have already been real innovations in this area is encouraging: we don’t need to start from scratch.

Further inspiration is available in a report from Harvard Law School’s International Human Rights Clinic. It’s called Models for Protecting the Environment for Future Generations, and it was published in October 2008.