Themes

The Democracy and Sustainability Platform is based on eight themes which include the six Manifesto Principles. Each of them needs to be tackled to get democracy working for sustainability.
In the first place, we need to achieve widespread recognition around the world that democracy and sustainability are inseparable. Each needs the other. Each is weakened when the other isn’t strong.
People who care need to convince people around the world that there’s an urgent need to take action to make sure that democracy is properly designed to deliver sustainability.
We also need to get as many people and organisations as possible to work on how best to implement the six Principles of the Manifesto for Democracy and Sustainability:
- Sustainability needs flourishing democracy
- From the local to the global, the actual practice of democracy at every level urgently needs to overcome short-termism to take the long view
- Sustainability must be a central goal of governments everywhere. This theme is about the economy too. It’s democracy that needs to shape the economy, not the other way round
- Education throughout peoples’ lives needs to nurture the knowledge and values needed to strengthen democratic action for sustainability. It needs to link citizenship and sustainability
- The uses of knowledge in the practice of democracy must be inclusive
- There should nothing about us without us. That means that the interests of all people affected by public decisions need to be taken into account.
You can read more about each of these themes by following the links. There, you can find specially commissioned stories about some of the themes. You can read through ideas that were put forward during the consultation process to develop the Manifesto for Democracy and Sustainability. And you can add your ideas for action, whether you’ve signed up to be a member of the Platform or not.
We’ve added some nice quotes from (or proposed by) people who participated in the consultation process to develop the Manifesto for Democracy and Sustainability. The text which introduces each theme has been written by the coordinators of the Democracy and Sustainability Platform, and hasn’t been endorsed by the members.
The process of exchanging experiences on implementing the Manifesto and getting democracy to work better for sustainability will start in early 2014. Once it’s under way, you’ll also be able to read about what members of the Platform have done under each of the themes to implement their commitments to take action.