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.  

Give Your Vote is an offshoot from the campaign group Egality Now. The campaigners argue that:

“We think we can do better than a world where politicians from the strongest countries decide for everyone else.

The UK makes decisions about climate change, migration, poverty and war that directly affects millions around the world. There is no democratic means for those outside the UK to have a say in how these decisions are made.

Giving your vote is an act of solidarity with those who do not have a say in the decisions that affect them.

Decisions taken across borders should not mean decisions taken without accountability.

Give your vote is a call for a fairer and more equal world.”

Now I’ve often wished that I had a say in the election of the President of the US. And the campaign prompted me to think some more about my conflicted views on the importance of voting in a liberal democracy.

I admire the simplicity of the campaign message; and I’m pleased that the ‘partner’ countries have been chosen on grounds of their emblematic connection to some of the key challenges of sustainable development (Bangladesh to climate change; Afghanistan to human security and armed conflict; Ghana to poverty) . But in this coming UK general election, Give Your Vote encourages me to view my apparently legally unfettered ability to vote as a proxy for unenfranchised stakeholders as implicitly a more valuable choice than any other that I could exercise at the ballot box of my own free will.

Perhaps this doesn’t matter? After all, as the Hansard Society’s newly published 2010 Audit of Political Engagement points out, currently 25% of the public do not trust politicians at all and 62 “admit that they know ‘not very much’ or ‘nothing at all’ about the Westminster Parliament.

And yet… and yet… is there not a risk that promoting the idea that we can and should give our votes to deserving non-voters could further erode the regard in which collectively we hold representative democracy?

The Give Your Vote option isn’t about non-engagement though. Far from it.

Giving a vote calls for a high degree of pre-election public involvement on the part of the UK proxy. A look at the detail of the process makes this clear:

“Step 1. Finding out what the UK parties’ policies are on global issues

We are currently gathering questions from people in Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Ghana that they would like to put to the UK election candidates.

We will be putting the most popular questions directly to the main political parties, while also asking our UK participants to ask them at candidate hustings events.

For the month of April, people in Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Ghana will be able to text their questions directly through local FrontlineSMS-enabled hubs.

Step 2. Sending out the manifestos to Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Ghana and holding an election.

The questions and answers from the parties will be translated into local languages and be available online as well as broadcast on local radio and TV networks.

Global UK vote day will be held in Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Ghana five days before the UK election.

Participants in Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Ghana can vote by sending an SMS to a local number registering their preferred vote. There will also be one or two physical polling stations in each country.

Step 3 . Pairing up voters and vote-donors

We will do our best to pair people up individually. However, it’s more than likely we won’t have exactly the same number of people on both sides of this project. If necessary, we will calculate the proportions for each party, randomise who to send which result to, and fire out the emails/texts.

Step 4. Sending out the votes

On the eve of the UK election, participants in the UK will receive an SMS or email, indicating which party their partner in Afghanistan, Bangladesh or Ghana wishes them to vote for.

Step 5. Casting of the global vote

They then go to the polling booth, tick the relevant box and, if they wish, take a photo on their mobile phone to confirm the vote”.

My colleague Ian Christie recently argued in an email that “democracy is a social ritual as much as anything else – given the unlikelihood of your personal vote making any difference. If the social norms supporting this weaken, democracy has little to offer by way of benefit compared to [for example] consumerism…”

What could it mean to change the nature of the ritual in the way that Give Your Vote proposes?

For all that UK citizens complain about its health, we have a tendency to be rather complacent about the idea that we live in a democracy; however flawed. In contrast, people who know what it is to live in countries that are very far from democratic might take less for granted. For example, a close relative who grew up in Communist Poland sometimes reminds me that casting a vote in a general election is the supreme responsibility and expression of citizenship; one which must never be taken lightly. And indeed, 76% of the UK public believe that it is their ‘duty’ to vote.

When I once (I’m ashamed to write) forgot to vote in a particularly dull UK General Election, the first person I confessed to at work the following day was a dual-nationality UK/Zimbabwean citizen. With no discernable schadenfreude save for a slightly suspect glimmer in his eyes, he told me how he had once, at considerable time and some expense, temporarily given up and then reclaimed his UK citizenship to ensure that he could vote in a Zimbabwean election whose rules disenfranchised dual nationals.

But democracy is about much, much more than voting; a fact which many people fail to recognise. If the Give Your Vote campaign helps to highlight that fact by pointing to lack of fairness in global decision-making, perhaps I should stop being so precious about the idea that a few hundred or a few thousand pioneers are prepared to make a sacrifice to promote a more inclusive, more equitable, system of global democracy; a system of global democracy that is less rooted in outmoded ideas about the boundaries of the sovereign nation state and its citizens and more connected to the realities of Flawed Democracy’s impacts around the world.

Give Your Vote conclude their case for proxy voting with the argument that “with your help for the first time anywhere, ever, we will be taking democracy beyond borders”. Here, finally, they lose me; for I see clear signs of ‘democracy beyond borders’ in the countless transnational non-governmental decision-making processes that set expectations for behaviour in the public realm; the ‘global public policy networks’; the unusual partnerships and all the informal, multistakeholder setting of social or ethical norms that are a feature of our interconnected world. 

Give Your Vote is certainly thought-provoking. But the breadth of its vision of a fairer and more equal world has so far (so far…) delivered up a curiously narrow palette with which to paint the future of democracy across borders.

More prosaically.. there’s a lot to think about as I start work on Paper Three in our project on the Future of Democracy in the Face of Climate Change; which aims to review some of the existing literature on ‘the future of democracy’ and ‘the future of sustainable development governance’ respectively.

You can already download Papers One on ‘climate change and democracy: why and what matters’ and Paper Two on ‘what is democracy’.

Oh – and this time, I’m fairly certain I’ll remember to vote.

In this paper written following an NGO Leaders meeting on democracy, environmental justice and sustainable development held in October 2009, participants reflect on an emerging agenda on democracy, environmental justice and sustainable development, and their potential role in shaping its course.

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Leading sustainability campaigner Charles Secrett sets out a possible pathway for achieving revolutionary change towards democracy, environmental justice and sustainable development.

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As Charles explains: “Currently, we have no visionary text explaining the intersect between (those heavy but crucial concepts) democracy, environmental justice and sustainable development.  The task now upon us, as chaos increasingly bites the world over, is to find a development path that can sustain and improve life, without chasing the chimera of perfect answers to all problems. 

With no convenient scripture to hand, is there another way to bring about the kind of revolution that is needed?   Can we find that transformative, non-violent route-map that can lift us out of the mess we have created and toward a more fulfilling society, moulded by the principles and practice of democracy, environmental justice and sustainable development?”

We invite your comments. Feel free to post thoughts via the Comments function on this blog post or by sending an email to Charles at the address given at the top of his paper. 

There was a moment, back in September 2001 (but only the days that followed the 11^th of the month), when people active in the environment and development movements thought we might, just possibly, be about to have our day.

The common ground for proponents of ‘sustainable development’, which links environment to development concerns, is that as nations and societies we need to develop in ways that take account of economy, environment, and society in an integrated way.

Motherhood and apple pie? Apparently not, because wherever you might be reading this, it’s fairly clear that we’ve failed to tackle poverty and inequality on the scale necessary to ensure that we are able to meet the needs of the present generation. And we are clearly compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs as collectively we deplete resources, grow the world’s population to levels that threaten our ability to feed ourselves, and alter the climate in ways that could prove profoundly harmful.

Like many others, the sustainable development movement was dazed (shocked and awed even) by the events of 9/11; and we were too weak for our shouts to rise above the din of invading forces in either Afghanistan or Iraq. And this despite the fact that many of us spent much of the next nine months or so following 9/11 engaged in preparations for the first ever World Summit on Sustainable Development, a once-in-a-decade milestone held in Johannnesburg in the summer of 2002.

Shout we did, though. Here, for example, are the words of the UK’s independent sustainable development watchdog, the Sustainable Development Commission, in a press release issued one year after 9/11:  “In many parts of the Middle East, the kind of ‘nothing to lose’ despair brought on by chronic poverty, a degraded environment and the oppression of human rights, provides an all too fertile seed bed for the cultivators of terror”.

However correct this might be, the sustainable development movement wasn’t helped by the real world fact that Osama Bin Laden, member of a prominent Saudi family, could not be said to have been materially underprivileged.

This was an inconvenient truth for many of us as we prepared our narrative about the sinister outcomes of marginalisation, and the need to direct the world to a more sustainable future. Bin Laden’s apparent wealth got in the way of stories that sought to link marginalisation, deprivation, and social injustice to the extremism of terror.

And this brings me to the links between democracy and sustainable development. For however tempting it might be to suggest that authoritarianism or even benign dictatorship could allow for more rapid progress on issues like climate change, the messy reality is that democracy, with all its flaws, is so far the best system devised for respecting the dignity and rights of all human beings and allowing the insights and skills of all to shape society.

But it’s also a system that will need to evolve rapidly to stay resilient in the face of the kinds of environmental and social challenges that are now emerging: climate change, population growth and resource scarcity, to name but a few.

To use a rather culturally specific metaphor, the core problem is that ‘turkeys don’t tend to vote for Christmas’. Current debate over climate change in the run-up to the Copenhagen Climate Summit shows that there are many people who believe that sustainable development makes a turkey of them. There is a perception that sustainable development compromises material wellbeing and therefore wider quality of life too.

And this brings me to diasporas. Diaspora financial remittances feed a great many feeble economies around the world. They can play an immensely important role in investment and rebuilding of communities, as in Afghanistan, where many ‘mainstream’ investors fear to tread.

Diasporas also act as political forces. Here in the UK, many activists were impressed and humbled by Sri Lankan Tamil protests, day in and day out, outside the Houses of Parliament during the Spring of 2009. Then there are the political roles played by Kurdish exiles, or Uighurs, or any number of disenfranchised or politically marginalised groups around the world. In 2008, Armenia, a country of 3 million or so with a diaspora of 6 million, created a Diaspora Ministry.

If there is something particular to diasporas in our interconnected world, what could be the role of diasporas in the pursuit of sustainable development in ‘mother countries’? How can the fact that diaspora citizens have feet in at least two nations be harnessed for development that is economically, environmentally and socially sustainable?  And how could this be done in ways that allow democracy – real democracy – to flourish and evolve?

The point of course isn’t to suggest that diasporas should interfere improperly in the internal policy processes of other countries (though some do); rather that any kind of democratic vision of a global community working towards sustainable development ought to contain a distinctive vision of the role of diasporas.

In Britain alone, for example, there are almost a million British Pakistanis. How to hitch that fact to the sustainable development of Pakistan in the current time of rapid urbanisation, political instability and human insecurity?

There is a question about the role of diasporas in the struggle for environmental and social justice and the fight against inequality lurking in the shadows of The Samosa (if you’ll excuse the imagery) and in its pieces on social injustice and on environmental issues.

So I want to suggest that it might be useful to work through and shape a contemporary sense for how the UK’s diaspora communities could help to drive sustainable development; retaining a distinctive cultural role and contributing to sustainable development here in the UK whilst contributing with legitimacy, responsibility, and accountability to the sustainable development of other countries with which they carry a strong connection.

Fine words – but quite a task.

I hope that the pages of The Samosa will provide a space from which such a conversation could take root and flourish.