We’re happy to do so, in the hope that NGOs based in middle and low income countries will have project ideas that can make advances in getting democracy working for sustainable development.

——————————-

The United Nations Democracy Fund invites civil society organizations to apply for funding  

The United Nations Democracy Fund invites civil society organizations to apply for funding for projects to advance and support democracy. Project proposals may be submitted on-line between 16 November 2009 and 31 December 2009 at www.un.org/democracyfund, where applicants can also find guidelines, FAQs and lessons learned from previous rounds. Only on-line applications in either English or French will be accepted.

This is the Fourth Round of Funding to be launched by UNDEF, which was established by the UN Secretary-General in 2005 as a United Nations General Trust Fund. UNDEF funds projects that strengthen the voice of civil society and help ensure the participation of all groups in democratic processes.

The thematic categories for applications are:

       democratic dialogue and support for constitutional processes;

       civil society empowerment, including the empowerment of women;

       civic education and voter registration;

       citizen’s access to information;

       participation rights and the rule of law in support of civil society;

       transparency and integrity.

The selection process is expected to be highly rigorous and competitive, For the Third Round, fewer than 70 project proposals were selected out of more than 2,100 received.

UNDEF funding ranges from US $50,000 to US $500,000, with most projects in the mid-range.  It is anticipated that the vast majority of applicants and short-listed project proposals will emanate from local civil society organizations.

The first is a Guidance Note of the Secretary General on the United Nations Approach to Democracy. This has emerged out of consultations within the Inter-Agency Working Group on Democracy of the Executive Committee on Peace and Security, and sets out ‘the United Nations framework for democracy’.

The second document is an ‘advanced unedited copy’ Report of the Secretary General on climate change and its possible security implications. The summary of the latter identifies ‘democratic governance’ as one of the ‘threat minimizers’ which can help to lower the risks of climate-related insecurity. 

Our own open letter to Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, four days later on International Day of Democracy, unconsciously served to shine a spotlight on the links between these themes.

However difficult might be for the United Nations to work collectively on democracy given its diverse membership, it is good to see concrete signs of progress both in terms of elaborating an acceptable UN approach to democracy and democratisation at the national level, and in terms of its linkages to the most pressing sustainable development challenge of our time.

On the occasion of the second International Day of Democracy, FDSD Chair John Elkington and Director Halina Ward write to United Nations Secretary-General Mr Ban Ki-moon on the subject of equipping democracy for resilience in the face of climate change. They warn that unless the world’s nations take meaningful and decisive action to tackle climate change, democracy itself may be a casualty, and ask that in future years International Day of Democracy become an opportunity to reflect on the democratic challenge of climate change.

download
(266kb)

FOUNDATION FOR DEMOCRACY AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

PRESS RELEASE

Climate Policy could threaten democratic freedoms, warns NGO

EMBARGOED TO 00:01 GMT, 15th September 2009

In an open letter to United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon published on their new website today, the second International Day of Democracy, UK-based non-governmental organisation the Foundation for Democracy and Sustainable Development (FDSD) warn that unless governments step up immediate efforts to tackle climate change, the result could be significant incursions into future democratic freedoms.

As the UN and supporting organisations around the world celebrate democracy today, they know that there are some formidable environmental and natural resource challenges just around the corner—and that climate change is the biggest of them all.

FDSD Director Halina Ward says:

“There is a real risk that as the decision-making implications of huge social challenges like climate change begin to bite, politicians will be tempted to tighten the reins on our democratic rights and limit our access to public decision-making on difficult issues“.

“We need politicians to take really tough steps to tackle issues like climate change, but they have to find ways of doing so with public buy-in, support and active involvement. And the longer they wait to take decisive action, the more likely it is that our democratic freedoms could suffer as the cost of preventing the worst outcomes of climate change increases“.

“We are calling on the UN to encourage its members to reflect deeply on how they can make democracy work to deliver effective actions on climate change. It’s no longer just a question of policy measures and institutions – democracy itself will have to adapt.“

Foundation for Democracy and Sustainable Development Chair John Elkington adds:

“Climate change is coming at our societies at an underestimated and accelerating rate—outpacing the capacity of democratic systems to respond. If democracies are to retain a commitment to inclusive decision-making, they must innovate fast.“

“The key question, as in times of war, is how to take the necessary decisions when they so often cut across the short-term interests of industries and citizens. That is where leadership—and vision—come in. And the challenge is made harder by the fact that the centre of gravity of the global economy is shifting towards Asia, where greenhouse emissions are rising fastest—and where the institutions of democracy are often weakest.“

ENDS

Note to editors:

FDSD’s Director Halina Ward, and Chair John Elkington are available for media interviews and comment. The full text of the open letter to the UN Secretary-General, embargoed until 00:01 GMT on 15th September 2009, follows.

Press enquiries: press@fdsd.org; Skype: halinaward; Telephone: +44 (0)20 7022 1848

Foundation for Democracy and Sustainable Development (www.fdsd.org) is the new name for The Environment Foundation, a UK-based charity founded in 1983. FDSD’s mission is to develop resources to equip democracy to deliver sustainable development.

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.

John Elkington, a world authority on corporate responsibility and sustainable development, is Chair of the board of trustees of FDSD. John is Founding Partner and Director of Volans. Volans, launched in April 2008, aims to find, explore, advise on and build innovative scalable solutions to the great global divides that overshadow the future. John also co-founded the consultancy and think-tank SustainAbility in 1987 and was its Chair from 1995-2005. He has authored or co-authored more than 17 books, the most recent of which, The Power of Unreasonable People: How Social Entrepreneurs Create Markets That Change the World, was published by Harvard Business School Press in 2008.

The International Day of Democracy was declared by United Nations General Assembly in 2007. The Day is meant both to celebrate democracy and to serve as a reminder that the need to promote and protect democracy is as urgent now as ever. September 15 2009 is the second International Day of Democracy.

COP15, the fifteenth meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and MOP5, the Fifth meeting of the parties to the Kyoto Protocol, will take place in Copenhagen from December 7-December 18 2009.

—————————————————

FULL TEXT OF THE OPEN LETTER: EMBARGOED UNTIL 00:01 GMT, 15TH SEPTEMBER 2009

H.E Ban Ki-moon Secretary-General United Nations
New York
NY 10017
USA

15th September 2009

Dear Mr Secretary-General

Equipping democracy for resilience in the face of climate change

We send warm greetings on the occasion of this International Day of Democracy, a day on which it is appropriate not only to celebrate the spread of democracy, but also to pause to consider what might lie ahead; to reflect on how this ‘least bad’ political system might need to adapt for the future: for democracy is the only system that has thus far proven capable of fully respecting the rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

There are many threats to democracy. Indeed, we are mindful of the fact that some analyses indicate that fewer than half of the world’s people live in democracies. But as members of the United Nations finalise preparations for this December’s COP15 UN Climate Change Conference, we write with a specific concern: unless the world’s nations take meaningful and decisive action to tackle climate change, democracy itself may be a casualty. For as the costs of mitigating and adapting to climate change rise, it will be increasingly difficult for governments to avoid taking steps that not only interfere with the personal freedoms of their citizens, but also risk alienating citizens, whether or not they vote.

We believe we must now take urgent steps to secure the resilience of our democracies in the face of the social and environmental challenge of climate change. Indeed this, Mr Secretary-General, is the task to which the Foundation for Democracy and Sustainable Development is committed.

You may be assured of our support for the International Day of Democracy. And we ask that you consider our respectful request that in future years the Day also become an opportunity for reflection on the democratic challenge of climate change; for this is at once one of the most significant failures of democracy to date, and one of the greatest challenges that the world’s democracies have ever faced together.

We are keen to support the United Nations in taking the steps needed to equip our democracies, as systems of decision-making, to tackle the climate challenge. As citizens, we must empower our elected representatives to embrace longer-term objectives, even if that sometimes impacts upon short-term self-interests. In this task, we are confident that the United Nations will play a central role in catalysing the necessary interchanges and negotiations between nations and their citizens.

Yours sincerely

John Elkington (Chair) and Halina Ward (Director)

Foundation for Democracy and Sustainable Development
3rd Floor, Downstream Building, 1 London Bridge, London SE1 9BG, United Kingdom

The challenges of achieving democracy in relations between governments are well known.

In the United Nations, voting generally proceeds on the basis of ‘one country one vote’, not ‘one citizen one vote’. There is no ‘world parliament of citizens’ to provide a global constituency for international decision-making.

The United Nations Security Council with its limited membership, has a casting vote on many crucially important issues.

Smaller countries, or those with lower average per capita incomes or trade and investment flows, often complain that they are left out of key international decisions, particularly where international trade liberalisation is concerned.

Too often countries pursue national economic self-interest, not an enlightened global ethic, when they decide on negotiating positions in international negotiations. Climate change negotiations have sadly been a case in point.

In short, there is lots to be done to equip current systems of intergovernmental negotiations and institutions both to reflect democracy and to deliver sustainable development.

Multistakeholder Democracy and sustainable development

Alongside these challenges, sustainable development is strongly associated with a recognition that complex and many-headed environmental and social challenges cannot be resolved by governments, or citizens, or businesses, acting alone. And it is not only states who participate in negotiating the global governance rules that shape sustainable development. Non-governmental organisations and businesses are also important players.

These players bring skills and insights that can enhance expertise and bring decision-making closer to affected interests. But their participation in international negotiations also raises issues of transparency, representation, legitimacy and accountability. 

Larger non-governmental organisations and businesses may be better resourced and potentially have more impact in some international negotiations than the representatives of smaller or less well-resourced countries.

A variety of international partnerships and  multistakeholder initiatives have therefore sprung up to address environmental and social challenges that cross national boundaries. At the 2002 Johannesburg World Summit for Sustainable Development, these kinds of initiatives were actively promoted as so-called ‘Type II partnerships’.

International multistakeholder initiatives raise major questions about the proper mix between ‘representative democracy’ on the one hand, and on the other hand decision-making on public issues in which other stakeholders play a direct role in shaping policy.

Standards, democracy and sustainable development

We aim to explore, analyse links between representative democracy and other kinds of multistakeholder decision-making at international level.

Our starting point for analysis is a process which aims to develop a new International Guidance Standard on the Social Responsibility of organisations of all kinds.

The “ISO 26000″ process involves hundreds of people from over 75 countries, organised as individual experts in a total of six stakeholder categories. These include industry, non-governmental organisations, governments, trade unions and consumers.

ISO 26000 process is important from a ‘democracy and sustainable development’ perspective, because it covers many public policy areas, including human rights, labour and environment, where governments have already negotiated international frameworks.

International standards, such as those of ISO, are also given special status in global governance by rules of the World Trade Organization. These set out circumstances when WTO Members must use relevant international standards as a basis for their national product laws and regulations.

The ISO 26000 process has unfolded through a working group of the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO). The working group has been working since 2005 to develop the draft standard, which will be formally released for an initial vote by ISO’s member standards bodies in September 2009.

You can read more about some of the tensions between government-led public policy and multistakeholder consensus-based decision-making in ISO 26000 in a May 2009 article by Halina Ward for Ethical Corporation here. 

In September 2009, Halina will be attending a small retreat meeting of practitioners and non-governmental organisations in New York State. The meeting will consider the role of market-based social and environmental standards in addressing global sustainability challenges. The retreat is being convened by the Pacific Institute and ISEAL Alliance. 

For us, the meeting is an opportunity to reflect on the role that environmental and social standards play in shaping the relationship between democracy and sustainable development.