Between environmental and ecological democracy: theory and practice at the democracy-environment nexus

ABSTRACT

Concepts of ecological and environmental democracy seek to reconcile two normative ideals: ensuring environmental sustainability while safeguarding democracy. These ideals are frequently conceived as being in conflict, as democracy is perceived as too slow and cumbersome to deliver the urgent large-scale collective action needed to tackle environmental problems. Theories addressing the democracy-environment nexus can be situated on a spectrum from theories of ecological democracy that are more critical of existing liberal democratic institutions to theories of environmental democracy that call for reforming rather than radically transforming or dismantling those institutions. This article reviews theoretical and empirical scholarship on the democracy-environment nexus. We find continued theoretical and empirical diversity in the field, as well as vibrant debates on democratising global environmental politics, local material practices, and non-human representation. We argue for stronger dialogue between environmental political theory and empirical, policy-oriented research on democracy and sustainability, as well as further exploration of complementarities between ecological and environmental democracy. We identify four main areas of challenge and opportunity for theory and practice: public participation and populism; technocracy and expertise; governance across scales; and ecological rights and limits.     

Deliberation and ecological democracy: from citizen to global system

ABSTRACT

Ecological democracy confronts a challenge of not only reconciling democracy and ecology, but doing so where human activities and their environmental consequences are increasingly global. Deliberative scholars dealing with these issues emphasise reflexive governance, involving the contestation of discourses, as part of the solution, mostly aimed at high-level institutions and intergovernmental cooperation. However, even at this level democracy demands responsiveness to the citizen. To this end, the paper explores citizen-level deliberation to inform possibilities for ecological democracy writ large, via a growing literature on deliberative governance and polycentrism. Different system levels are connected via ecologically reflexive capacity and the discursive conditions under which it is enhanced, including in small-scale minipublics. This understanding informs mechanisms for ‘scaling up’ deliberative quality to the wider public sphere via regulating the manipulation of public discourse. Minipublic deliberation, properly harnessed, can serve to decontaminate public debate of anti-reflexive strategic arguments and reshape public discourse. Such anti-reflexive strategies seek to shape the public will, specifically by de-emphasising ecology via intuitive arguments that short-cut public reasoning. Acting as discursive regulatory trustees, minipublics can improve reflexivity in the wider system via a nested polycentric approach that discursively connects citizens’ deliberation to the global system both horizontally and vertically.     

Democratising planetary boundaries: experts,social values and deliberative risk evaluation in Earth system governance

ABSTRACT

Recent debates about the concept of planetary boundaries recall longstanding concerns about whether ecological limits are compatible with ecological democracy. The planetary boundaries framework (originally set out in Rockström et al., 2009a, 2009b) defines values for key Earth-system processes such as climate change and biodiversity that aim to maintain a ‘safe’ distance from thresholds or levels that could endanger human wellbeing. Despite having a significant impact in policy debates, the framework has been criticised as implying an expert-driven approach to governing global environmental risks that lacks democratic legitimacy. Drawing on research on deliberative democracy and the role of science in democratic societies, we argue that planetary boundaries can be interpreted in ways that remain consistent with democratic decision-making. We show how an iterative, dialogical process to formulate planetary boundaries and negotiate ‘planetary targets’ could form the basis for a democratically legitimate division of labour among experts, citizens and policy-makers in evaluating and responding to Earth-system risks. Crucial to this division of evaluative labour is opening up space for deliberative contestation about the value judgments inherent in collective responses to Earth-system risks, while also safeguarding the ability of experts to issue warnings about what they consider to be unacceptable risks.     

Forestry and environmental democracy: the problematic case of the South Wales Valleys

Academic arguments present a critique of representative democracy and suggest that enhanced participation of communities in the management, governance and regulation of their local environments is required. Similarly, theorists of environmental democracy suggest the possibility and desirability of community involvement. In this paper, we argue that theories of environmental democracy lack the explanatory power to address real-life relations between people and their environment. Drawing on empirical material from recent research in the forested communities of the former coalfields of the South Wales Valleys, we identify significant rigidities, inertia and barriers that stand in the way of community participation in environmental democracy. We do this by constructing a framework for critical analysis that postulates a connection between recent shifts towards post-productivism in British forestry policy and theories of environmental democracy. Our findings point to a dissonance between, on the one hand, post-productivist forestry policy and theoretical discourses of governance, participation and environmental democracy, and, on the other hand, the actual situation of people living in the communities of the Valleys forest in South Wales. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Whose voices count in biodiversity conservation? Ecological democracy in biodiversity offsetting,REDD+, and rewilding

ABSTRACT

Ecological democracy seeks environmentally sustainable ends through broad, active democratic participation. What happens when laws fostering participation in environmental decision-making and biodiversity preservation lead to differing results? What is best for biodiversity may not be what for local citizens believe is best. I examine conflicts and congruencies in the context of Biodiversity Offsetting, REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation), and the Rewilding movement. I ask questions that are legal (Who has what legal rights to speak for or against programs that enhance biodiversity?), epistemological (Whose expertise and knowledge matters when scientists and non-scientists don't agree?), axiological (Are some values objectively better, and why?), and normative (Whose opinions about biodiversity should count?). Many people have the right to participate in an ecological democracy: But when protecting biodiversity, who does and should have the right to be heard? I problematize the role that ‘local’ actors play in decision-making and describe the variegated role that experts – particularly biologists – play in ecological democracy when biodiversity preservation matters. To determine whose values and voices should be prioritized, I describe ‘deep equity,’ an axiological and normative groundwork for determining when biodiversity-promoting policies may be preferable even if affected citizens don't agree.     

From Resistance to Resilience: Media Discourses on Urban Flood Governance in Mexico

This article examines the continuities and changes in newspaper coverage of urban flood governance in Tabasco, southeastern Mexico, where highly destructive floods have made flood risks a socially sensitive and politically contested public issue. The analysis draws upon post-Foucauldian critical discourse analysis, paying special attention to different actors’ discursive strategies to further their agendas amid the shifting forms of environmental governance. We argue that in recent years, discourses that promote integrated flood governance, based on cultural adaptation and social resilience instead of technological control, have become prominent in the media presentation of flood governance. These discourses endorse neoliberal views of flood governance as an issue of public–private co-governance and civil self-responsibility while being reluctant to consider flood risk from the perspective of the uneven distribution of vulnerabilities or as an issue of human rights.     

当代中国环境治理的权利观

当代中国环境治理的权利观是指从权利的角度去考察、理解当代中国的环境治理,推进当代中国的生态文明建设事业。从这一角度来看,环境相关权利是当代中国环境治理的基本价值目标,也是重要的治理工具。所谓环境相关权利,是指环境治理有助于保障的环境权、生存权和发展权、生命权和健康权,以及在环境治理中可以运用到的知情、表达、参与、监督等权利。当代中国环境治理的权利观,在理论上符合生态文明建设的以人为本原则,符合国家治理体系和能力现代化的方针和取向,在实践上也能够揭示当代中国生态文明建设和环境治理的基本特征、精神实质和发展方向,既具有阐释性,也具有建构性。     

Understanding the impact of democratic logics on participatory resource decision-making in New Zealand

This paper claims that participatory approaches to water resource management in New Zealand are highly influenced by how institutional and community actors understand and practise democracy, including indigenous Māori rights under the Treaty of Waitangi. Drawing on case study analysis from a six-year research programme in which the aim was to evaluate existing and new methods for participatory decision-making, we highlight how different but co-existing democratic beliefs and practices, referred to as democratic logics can shape relationships between governance/decision-making bodies and affected communities. One particular case is examined in detail to illustrate how the various “logics” were strengthened, extended and challenged through participatory research methodologies. Our key message is that revealing and articulating existing democratic logics for participation can help promote and facilitate new participatory approaches, as well as increase robustness and community buy-in to local government decision-making.     

The Commons in Transition: Agrarian and Environmental Change in Central and Eastern Europe

This paper analyzes institutional dynamics surrounding common-pool resources in postsocialist Central and Eastern Europe. It is conceived in close conjunction with the case studies by Penov, Schleyer, and Wasilewski and Krukowski (this issue). The purpose of this paper is to frame the individual case inquiries, compare their findings, and relate those to broader agrarian and environmental changes in the region.The case studies report a broad shift in resource governance from the previously dominant legal and administrative state hierarchies towards markets. In addition, state power has moved from central towards local authorities. The waning and decentralization of state power has caused the emergence of significant gaps between property legislation and rights-in-practice, which have been particularly stark in fragmented political systems. The discrepancy between legal texts and rights-in-practice leads to the exclusion of wider interests in favor of individual interests in the management of common-pool resources, resulting in resource deterioration and dwindling resource stocks. Thus, the comparative assessment suggests a tentative framework for understanding the effects of postsocialist transformations on governance of the commons and environmental change in Central and Eastern Europe. Its findings indicate an additional dimension to the diversity and distributive conflicts characterizing postsocialist privatization: the distribution of various rights to a resource among different actors. The findings also suggest the need for postsocialist states to take an active role in the governance of common-pool resources, particularly in the enforcement of legal rights. Note: This version was published online in June 2005 with the cover date of August 2004.     

Virgil, Vigilance, and Voice: Agrifood Ethics in an Age of Globalization

Some 2000 years ago, Virgil wroteThe Georgics, a political tract on Romanagriculture in the form of a poem. Today, as aresult of rising global trade in food andagricultural products, growing economicconcentration, the merging of food andpharmacy, chronic obesity in the midst ofhunger, and new disease and pest vectors, weare in need of a new Georgics that addressesthe two key issues of our time: vigilance andvoice. On the one hand, vigilance must becentral to a new Georgics. Enforceablestandards for food safety, food quality,environmental protection, worker health andsafety, sanitary and phytosanitaryrequirements, animal welfare, and appellationsmust be addressed. On the other hand, a newGeorgics must increase the range of persons whohave voice in the democratic governance of anew global agrifood system. New organizationsand institutions will be needed to accomplishthis task.     

Assessing local discourses on water in a South African newspaper

Academic understandings of environmental discourses are primarily based on global and national accounts, despite widespread acceptance of the local as an essential site of environmental action. Local water issues have been studied in a number of ways, including interviews and ethnographies that show the impacts of water scarcity, examine the role of mediating technologies, and provide diverse perspectives on governance. An overarching impression of key narratives and concerns at local scales, however, is lacking. In this paper, we examine water coverage in The Sowetan, a South African newspaper known for its distinctive voice, as a (albeit imperfect) proxy for local discourse. We identify key themes, location and scale, trigger events, actors, authors, and provide initial insights into the problem frames used in these texts. Our findings show distinct differences from the results of environmental media analyses at other scales, including strong individual citizen voices, emphasis on the politics of water, and rare use of language that accords with global environmental discourses; this also differs from results based on interviews and ethnographies at the local scale. Our findings raise important questions about the resonance of global discourse with local views and practices and how local discourses are produced, and suggest a need to more carefully examine the myriad ways of talking about justice and the environment at different scales and through different methodologies.     

Re-politicising water governance: exploring water re-allocations in terms of justice

Contemporary socio-economic transformations in South Asia are creating increasingly serious water problems (scarcity, flooding, pollution) and conflicts. Conflicts over water distribution, water-derived benefits, and risks often play out along axes of social differentiation like caste, wealth, and gender. Those with least power, rights, and voice suffer lack of access, exclusion, dispossession, and further marginalisation, resulting in livelihood insecurity or increased vulnerability to risks. In this paper we propose analysing these problems as problems of justice – problems of distribution, recognition, and political participation. Drawing on wider environmental justice approaches, a specific water justice focus needs to include both the specific characteristics of water as a resource and the access, rights, and equity dimensions of its control. We argue that recognising water problems as problems of justice requires a re-politicisation of water, as mainstream approaches to water resources, water governance, and legislation tend to normalise or naturalise their – basically political – distributional assumptions and implications. An interdisciplinary approach that sees water as simultaneously natural (material) and social is important here. We illustrate these conceptual and theoretical suggestions with evidence from India.     

The channels of the effect of government expenditure on the environment: evidence using dynamic panel data

This paper explores the relationship between government spending and environmental quality using panel data for 94 countries for the period 1970–2008. We identify and estimate three distinct channels that comprise the total direct effect of government expenditure on air pollution, namely a marginal effect, an effect conditional on economic growth and an effect conditional on institutional quality. Since adjustment rate of emissions to their equilibrium level is slow due to technological and institutional reasons, we explicitly take into account dynamics by applying appropriate econometric methods. The results demonstrate that there is a significant alleviating direct effect of government expenditure on SO₂ and NO_x emissions, which increases with the level of economic growth and democracy. However, there is no evidence of a significant effect on pollutants with more global impact on the environment and human health, like N₂O and CO₂, implying that the adoption of international environmental treaties is required in this case.     

Sustainability in Practice

Sweden has led the way in Europe in environmental protection, ecologically based technological innovation and social democracy. As new economic and ethnographic realities impact upon it, it faces challenges to its policies and practices long familiar elsewhere in Europe. We report on a study for the Swedish Research Councils in which we examined the national framework and political strategy for sustainable development, and how the strategy is being implemented in Sweden's three major cities and two case-study municipalities. History and tradition, cultural homogeneity and a strong and shared sense between sectors of 'the public good', emerged as very important. Until recently, these have obviated the need for formal links between the environmental, social and economic agendas. They now appear inadequately developed at all levels of governance. Tensions in policy are being played out at the level of the municipality, to which power is highly devolved, and Local Agenda 21, interpreted as project rather than process, seems unequal to the task of integration. We suggest what lessons may be drawn from the Swedish experience if issues of power and trust, leadership and participatory vs representative democracy are to be resolved.     

Human Rights Against Land Grabbing? A Reflection on Norms,Policies, and Power

Large-scale transnational land acquisition of agricultural land in the global south by rich corporations or countries raises challenging normative questions. In this article, the author critically examines and advocates a human rights approach to these questions. Mutually reinforcing, policies, governance and practice promote equitable and secure land tenure that in turn, strengthens other human rights, such as to employment, livelihood and food. Human rights therefore provide standards for evaluating processes and outcomes of transnational land acquisitions and, thus, for determining whether they are ethically unacceptable land grabs. A variety of recent policy initiatives on the issue have evoked human rights, most centrally through the consultation and negotiation of the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests concluded in 2012. However, a case of transnational land appropriation illustrates weak host and investor state enforcement of human rights, leaving the parties to in interaction with local groups in charge of protecting human rights. Generally, we have so far seen limited direct application of human rights by states in their governance of transnational land acquisition. Normative responses to transnational land acquisition—codes of conduct, principles of responsible agricultural investment or voluntary guidelines—do not in themselves secure necessary action and change. Applying human rights approaches one must therefore also analyze the material conditions, power relations and political processes that determine whether and how women and men can secure the human rights accountability of the corporations and governments that promote large-scale, transnational land acquisition in the global south.

     

Access rights for outdoor recreation in New Zealand: some lessons for open country in England and Wales

Access opportunities for outdoor recreation in New Zealand and England and Wales are classified according to their conformity with collective, citizenship or exclusion rights and their degrees of permanence. Alternative criteria for the apportionment of access rights are considered in the context of this classification. Different criteria for rights apportionment are found to be appropriate according to different circumstances in the context of pluralist provision. Policy developments in New Zealand are compared with those in England. After 150 years of a dominance of collective rights in New Zealand current policy is shifting provision towards exclusionary rights. In England, there is a policy shift in the other direction, towards collective rights. Lessons for the development of collective rights in England are drawn from the New Zealand experience in relation to styles of governance, public preferences, public cost, insurance liability and the potential of markets.     

Citizen or consumer? Reconsidering energy citizenship

ABSTRACT

The transition to more sustainable energy systems has set about redefining the social roles and responsibilities of citizens. Implicit in this are expectations around participation, though the precise contours of what this might mean remain open. Debates around the energy transition have been skewed towards a normative construct of what it means to be a ‘good citizen’, the parameters for which are shaped by predetermined visions of statist and/or market-driven determinations of the energy systems of the future. This article argues that concepts such as ‘energy citizen’ are co-opted to reflect popular neoliberal discourses, and ignore crucial questions of unequal agency and access to resources. Paradoxically, official discourses that push responsibility for the energy transition onto the ‘citizen-as-consumer’ effectively remove agency from citizens, leaving them largely disconnected and disempowered. Consequently, energy citizenship needs to be reconceptualised to incorporate more collective and inclusive contexts for action. Considering how much energy consumption occurs in (traditionally female) domestic spheres, do conventional notions of citizenship (especially with regards to its associated rights and duties) need to be recalibrated in order for the concept to be usefully applied to the energy transition?     

Environmental Impact Assessment Under the Mackenzie Valley Resource Management Act: Deliberative Democracy in Canada’s North?

We consider the extent to which the Mackenzie Valley Resource Management Act (MVRMA) provides an opportunity for deliberative democracy to emerge within the context of resource management in Canada's North. The focus is on the extent to which the tenets of deliberative democracy are exercised in the environmental assessment (EA) of the Snap Lake diamonds project. Data collection included semi-structured interviews with assessment participants, and a review of documentation surrounding the EA process, and the case study. Results combined four principles of deliberative democracy: generality, autonomy, power neutrality, and ideal role taking. The EA conducted under the MVRMA can serve as a deliberative process, as illustrated by opportunities for dialogue, access to different perspectives, and learning outcomes. However, many of these positive results occurred through nonmandated technical sessions. The absence of participant funding also limits the deliberative potential of the MVRMA.     

Nature of property rights and motivation for blue growth: An empirical evidence from the fisheries industry

If unauthorized resource use is prevented, managing marine resources by allocating property rights may match economic and environmental conservation incentives. However, because of the developing exploitation of marine resources and accompanying pollution, species' living conditions in Europe's waters are changing more quickly than before. By considering the roles of fisheries productivity, intellectual property rights, intellectual capital rights, market size, governance, and economic growth from 1990 to 2022, this paper aims to investigate the dynamic effect of property rights factors on the sustainability of the fisheries industry in 27 European countries. At higher quantiles, the findings showed a significant positive association between governance and fisheries sustainability adopting a new method, the MMQR with fixed effects, the Method of Moments Quantile Regression. In addition, in EU27 nations, the impact of intellectual property rights was favorable and statistically significant from the first to ninth quantiles. The findings show that the EU14 developed nations have more excellent governance and intellectual capital rights than the EU13 developing countries, significantly benefiting fisheries sustainability. In the same way that market size and economic growth condense fisheries sustainability in EU14 developed and EU13 developing countries, it has been discovered that intellectual property rights do the same across all quantiles, supporting the growth hypothesis for fisheries-producing countries. The findings specifically show that the beneficial solid impact of intellectual property rights, market size, and economic development on the sustainability of fisheries is more significant in EU13 developing nations than in EU14 developed countries. These results provide policymakers with helpful information for promoting property rights aspects in EU14 and EU13 nations via effective green technologies in the fisheries sector to meet sustainable development objectives.