Themes

The urgent need for action

The urgent need for action

Climate change, population growth, natural resource scarcity, rapid extinction of species – these intensifying challenges are among the most significant facing humanity.

Worse, there are real reasons to worry that democracy might itself suffer if pressures turn to crisis.

The fact is that democracy needs to be nurtured.

Environmental changes, and the natural disasters that they can be associated with, often create huge strains on people least able to adapt. Food security, climate change and resource scarcity are not simply environmental challenges – they are also, inherently, social challenges.

Past evidence is that threats severe enough to generate societal crisis can also mean that governments take measures that bypass normal democratic processes or erode civil liberties. Threats of terrorism, protests and coups, wars and food riots have often led to restrictions on freedom of expression or free media.

Even when disasters stem from nature’s own processes, democracy can be eroded.

Collectively, we need to act fast if we want our  democratic systems to adapt so that they work inclusively, accountably and fairly to respond to intensifying environmental pressures and the social changes that go with them.

There are real reasons to worry that democracy might itself suffer as pressures turn to crisis.

It’s up to all of us to ensure that this doesn’t happen.

Change won’t happen overnight. The need for action is urgent. And that’s where the Democracy and Sustainability Platform – and you – come in.

Together, if we take immediate action, we can create real life stories to transform the practices of democracy so that it takes us to sustainability.

Some of those stories are already being written, and are told in other pages of the Democracy and Sustainability Platform.

We can find them among the people of Greece in the face of financial crisis; in the story-telling traditions of Africa; the favelas of Rio; the activism of the citizens of earthquake-devastated Christchurch; and with Hungary’s Deputy Ombudsman for Future Generations and the Commissioner for Sustainable Futures in Wales.

Together, we can write new stories.

The Manifesto for Democracy and Sustainability has been developed to guide a global movement for change.

By taking part and by joining the Democracy and Sustainability Platform, you can help to create the change that is needed.