The Future of Democracy in the Face of Climate Change Paper Five
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The Future of Democracy in the Face of Climate Change Paper Five How might democracy and participatory decision-making have evolved to cope with the challenges of climate change by the years 2050 and 2100? Halina Ward January 2012 Foundation for Democracy and Sustainable Development Floor One 51 Southwark Street London SE1 1RU Tel: +44 20 7234 0975 www.fdsd.org ©Foundation for Democracy and Sustainable Development, Foundation for the Future, Halina Ward “*D+emocracy is not a static paradise, achieved once and for ever, but rather a never-ending social process. It needs permanent rethinking, commitment and active involvement from all citizens to safeguard its virtues.” Bernd Hamm1 “Whatever form it takes, the democracy of our successors will not and cannot be the democracy of our predecessors.” Robert Dahl2 “*I+f we start at the level of emissions expected from the Copenhagen Accord pledges in 2020 and then follow the range of these pathways through to 2100, we find that they imply a temperature increase of between 2.5 to 5⁰C before the end of the century... The lower bound is the case in which emissions are fairly stringently controlled after 2020, and the upper in which they are more weakly controlled. In other words, emission levels in 2020 implied by current pledges do not seem to be consistent with 2⁰C or 1.5⁰C temperature limits. To stay within these limits, emission levels would have to be lower in 2020 and then be followed by considerable reductions.” UNEP3 “If global warming is to be limited to a maximum of 2⁰C above preindustrial values, global emissions need to peak between 2015 and 2020 and then decline rapidly. To stabilize climate, a decarbonized society – with near-zero emissions of CO2 and other long-lived greenhouse gases – needs to be reached well within this century. More specifically, the average annual per-capita emissions will have to shrink to well under 1 metric ton CO2 by 2050. This is 80-95% below the per-capita emissions in developed countries in 2000.” Copenhagen Diagnosis, 20094 “Over the past 50 years, humans have changed ecosystems more rapidly and extensively than in any comparable period of time in human history, largely to meet rapidly growing demands for food, fresh water, timber, fiber and fuel”. Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, 20055 2 ©Foundation for Democracy and Sustainable Development, Foundation for the Future, Halina Ward About the author and acknowledgements Halina Ward is Director of the Foundation for Democracy and Sustainable Development (FDSD: www.fdsd.org). FDSD is a charity which works to identify ideas and innovative practices that can equip democracy to deliver sustainable development. Many thanks to Ian Christie for generously sharing his ideas and suggestions throughout, and to former FDSD intern Emma Woods for her contributions to Section 3, and to Kathie Fishwick for ideas on how democracy might respond to climate crisis. Joe Short, FDSD’s media and communications manager, developed Figures 1-5. The ‘rationed democracy’ scenario was co-written by Halina Ward and Joe Short, initially as a contribution to a TEDxyouth@thames event on intergenerational justice and future generations in November 2011, where the scenario was delivered from the future by Minister for Future Generations Septima Tulisa.6 I am also very grateful to a number of FDSD’s friends who provided feedback on the scenarios framework and ideas on the scenarios at and following a workshop in November 2011. They were Ian Christie, Andrew Curry, Gary Kass, John Lotherington, Tim O’Riordan, Kate Raworth, Catarina Tully, Perry Walker, and Andrea Westall. Guy Yeomans also kindly provided advice on methodological approaches to scenarios development, and Hilary Sutcliffe on emergent technologies. This paper forms Paper Five of the Foundation for Democracy and Sustainable Development’s project on the Future of Democracy in the Face of Climate Change. The project aims to develop scenarios for the future of democracy and participatory decision-making in the face of climate change to 2050 and 2100. The project is funded by FDSD with the additional support of a Future of Humanity grant from the Foundation For the Future (www.futurefoundation.org). Any mistakes or omissions are mine. Related Papers on Democracy and Climate Change from FDSD Paper One: Democracy and Climate Change: Why and What Matters, Halina Ward: http://www.fdsd.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/Democracy-and-climate-change-why-and- what-matters-rev1.pdf Paper Two: What is Democracy? Halina Ward and Anandini Yoganathan: http://www.fdsd.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/Paper-Two-what-is-democracy.pdf Paper Three: The Futures of Sustainable Development and of Democracy, Halina Ward with Emma Woods: http://www.fdsd.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/Paper-Three-futures-of-SD-and- democracy.pdf Paper Four: Climate Change: An Overview of Science, Scenarios, Projected Impacts and Links to Democracy, Halina Ward, with additional inputs from Emma Woods and Anandini Yoganathan: 3 ©Foundation for Democracy and Sustainable Development, Foundation for the Future, Halina Ward http://www.fdsd.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/Climate-change-science-impacts-and-links-to- democracy-final.pdf Mobilising Democracy to Tackle Climate Change, conference report (including two stories from the future), Halina Ward: http://www.fdsd.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/Mobilising-democracy- to-tackle-climate-change-final-report.pdf Online Activism, Democracy and Climate Change, Sally Hill: http://www.fdsd.org/wordpress/wp- content/uploads/Online-activism-democracy-and-climate-change.pdf 4 ©Foundation for Democracy and Sustainable Development, Foundation for the Future, Halina Ward Contents Page number Foreword by Professor Tim O’Riordan 12 1. Introduction 14 What has gone before 14 The thing about climate change 15 Structure of this report 16 2. The challenges of democracy and the problem of time 19 Some problems with democracy 19 The case for democracy 23 How might democracy respond to climate change? 24 Democracy and crisis 24 Climate change and the ‘goods’ of democracy 28 What would be ‘good’? 30 ‘Good’ democracy 30 Is ‘good’ democracy different for adaptation and mitigation? 32 ‘Good’ climate outcomes 35 How long is ninety years? 36 Could some of the job be done by policy, law and institutions? 39 People versus technology-centred approaches to change 41 3. Towards scenarios 43 4. Drivers of change 64 Political 64 Global governance and geopolitical issues 64 5 ©Foundation for Democracy and Sustainable Development, Foundation for the Future, Halina Ward The drivers of change 64 Critical uncertainties 66 Implications for democracy and for climate change 67 Democratisation 67 Critical uncertainties 68 Implications for democracy and for climate change 68 Dominant geopolitical locus 69 Locus of state decision-making 70 Armed conflict 71 Style of state governance 72 Trust in elected representatives 73 Belief in the value of public participation 74 ‘Warmist’ civil society 76 Scientific evidence in relation to issues of societal concern 78 Style of democratic politics 79 Critical uncertainties 80 Public monitoring, transparency, accountability 80 Relationship between organised religion and the state 80 Economy 81 Economic growth and the global economy 81 Economic interdependence 87 Role of business 92 Environment 95 Planetary boundaries and ecosystem services 95 Energy demand and fossil fuel supply 98 Demand 98 Fossil Fuels 99 6 ©Foundation for Democracy and Sustainable Development, Foundation for the Future, Halina Ward Oil 99 Gas 100 Coal 100 Renewable energy 101 Energy and climate change 105 Society 107 Population and demographic shifts 107 Age structure 108 Urbanisation 110 Natural and man-made disasters 113 Values, lifestyles and behaviours 113 Religious adherents 117 Participatory decision-making and engagement in society 118 Public willingness to base public climate policy on scientific evidence 121 Technology 122 Technology and its cycles 122 Technological innovation for climate change mitigation and adaptation 125 Geoengineering 126 Technological innovation for democracy 131 Other technological innovation 132 Climate change impacts 133 Critical uncertainties 134 What we know and don’t know about climate change, democracy and governance for sustainable development 134 5. Scenarios on the future of democracy in the face of climate change 139 Introduction 139 7 ©Foundation for Democracy and Sustainable Development, Foundation for the Future, Halina Ward Rationed democracy 141 Septima’s story 141 Transition democracy 147 Frances’s story 149 Overview 149 Global governance 149 Geopolitics 150 The values shift 151 The state of national democracy 153 Community democracy 155 Technology for mitigation 156 How we live 157 The role of business 158 The future 159 Post-authoritarian democracy 160 Voice 1: an enthusiast’s story 162 Overview 162 The difficult early years 162 Global governance and comparative insights 163 Global developments in geopolitics and investment 165 Democracy at national level 166 Democracy at local level 167 Civil society and media 168 Transforming ‘old expertise’ 169 The future 169 Voice 2: a critic’s story 170 Technocratic democracy 171 8 ©Foundation for Democracy and Sustainable Development, Foundation for the Future, Halina Ward Dmitry’s story 173 Overview 173 Climate impacts 173 Resource nationalism 174 Russia, the US, India and China 174 Global governance 175 Early investment 176 Geoengineering and technofix solutions 177 On democracy and democratisation 178