Governance

“Democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms which have been tried from time to time.”

Winston Churchill, Speech in the House of Commons, 11 November 1947

Introduction

To ensure we have a reliable trajectory towards a steady state existence on the planet, we need systems of governance which are fit for purpose in so far as they can create and maintain a framework for this momentous transition to take place. This new order and capability will have to tame the rapacious tendencies of free enterprise and kerb the misinformation potential of power-hungry candidates on the campaign trail. It will also have to win back confidence in the validity and fairness of the system itself.

We can look at all the forms of government which have been tried including democracy, meritocracy, oligarchy, autocracy etc but which typology is going to work best in delivering what is needed and be the least unpalatable? Can any useful tweaks be added to existing systems of governance? Churchill memorably defended democracy as the least flawed of what has been tried.  That may have been the case in the late 1940’s world order, where post-war states could look forward to the bounty of neo-liberal economic ‘miracles’ whilst ignoring the future consequences of over-consumption.  In our current state with over eight billion people sharing the diminishing resources and eco-system of Earth, politically unpopular things may need to be done to responsibly respond to the climate change emergency and eco-system collapse. Changes in the way we govern our human race must surely be looked at.

Above: The never-ending spiral of woe in the 2020’s is testament to the 70+ years of neoliberal growth-based economics and unmanaged human population growth – it’s all connected.

It is all connected

Climate change is a symptom but not necessarily the cause of why we have an existential crisis. The reason we have climate change is now indisputably mostly down to human impacts. Therefore, responsible governance at all levels is needed to steer, regulate and, if necessary, police our transition to a steady state existence supportable by the Earth’s eco-system services.

No matter what part of the world you live in, the pressures of over-consumption, over-population as well as the increasing effects of climate change will affect everyone – even in economies and climates which might feel relatively insulated from the gravest impacts. The more climate change, the less arable land and the more people who will be displaced. The more human impacts, the less resources and ecological sustaining capacity will be around to support us. It is all connected and inescapable. The impacts are now so obvious that it is becoming increasingly difficult for corporate and political misinformation campaigns to deny that human activity is the primary cause of eco-system collapse.

According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), an annual average of 21.5 million people have been forcibly displaced by weather-related events – such as floods, storms, wildfires and extreme temperatures – since 2008. These numbers are expected to surge in coming decades with forecasts from international thinktank the IEP predicting that 1.2 billion people could be displaced globally by 2050 due to climate change and natural disasters.[1]

Taming the free enterprise beast

In a way, the increasing degree of governance required is proportional to the higher the density is of human population. Additionally, the scarcer our remaining resources get and the less able the environment is to absorb our generated pollution and waste, the more organised we will have to be in metering out the equitable shares.

It is not so very long ago that the ‘wild west’ of the United States of America was a land untamed by the civilising laws of the pilgrim descendants and European settlers. By overpowering the first nations people that were already there, it was a landscape big enough to create one’s own economic system, pretty much make your own laws and ignore the environmental consequences. It is the idealistic basis of what many people hold dear when they think of American freedoms. To avoid outright anarchy, the more populated that ‘wild west’ landscape became, the more rigorous and controlling its laws and forms of governance had to become.

Businesses are often the first to realise that things need to radically change to be on a more sustainable footing but they are reluctant to do so if the playing field becomes uneven and tilted in favour of their competitors. That becomes tricky when it crosses borders. International cooperation must work rapidly to re-grade the economic setting for a steady state environmental existence to be achieved.

Above: Reward miles schemes are loyalty schemes but they are also drivers of overt planetary degradation where marketing polish helps underpin consumer air travel as a perfectly acceptable and guilt-free social norm.

The corporate world will defend its corner and in certain sectors, which maybe wholly incompatible with a steady state planetary existence, their motives to grow their business will conflict with our societal transition away from a fossil fuel-based economy. Take the aviation industry. So far there is sadly no viable truly low-carbon let alone zero-carbon form of air travel although many will hang its future on hydrogen fuel. Airlines and the wider travel industry are completely free to pitch for all the passenger traffic they can get. To keep customers loyal, they have been using reward miles or frequent flyer schemes. It is all done with a corporate marketing polish which makes air travel look like a completely reasonable guilt-free societal norm. The overall effect though is to encourage consumers to ever increase their ecological footprint.

So another crucial role that governance could play is in assessing the environmental impact of an industry relative its societal worth. Is it a ‘must have’ or ‘nice to have’? This will mean our ‘free-market’ value system will need recalibrating.

So another crucial role that governance could play is in assessing the environmental impact of an industry relative its societal worth. Is it a ‘must have’ or ‘nice to have’? This will mean our ‘free-market’ value system will need recalibrating.

Start at the global scale

Above all else, global cooperation is imperative. All nations must come together and take real and responsible action. It is no use ‘global south’ blaming ‘global north’ and vice versa. Recent C.O.P. conferences are testament to this but unless, responsible action is taken, it could be interpreted as a bunch of nation states rather flippantly demonstrating for posterity that, “at least we tried”. What we mean by ‘responsible action’ is surely to transition away from growth-based economics to encompass ‘behaviour change’ and managed population decent as per the suggestions from the 1972 Limits to Growth study published by the Club of Rome.

Of course, we cannot seriously expect our western democracies to just give up on growth and say ‘goodbye’ to the unprecedented raising of living standards seen since the post-war world order was created. So far mainstream politics have strongly rebuffed de-growth and steady state economics. What has been happening for some decades now is the necessary actions being ignored and side stepped and red herring issues thrown up to obfuscate the debate. We already see world leaders turning around to their own electorate and blaming other sovereign states for inaction or not living within their remaining carbon budgets. Some governments who desire power over a responsible legacy will simply say to their voters, “Don’t listen to those climate scientists. What our economy needs is growth, I’ll make your living standards better. Vote for me.”

How can global cooperation around responsible action then be a realistic goal?

We are on a highway to climate hell with our foot on the accelerator. We need all hands-on deck for faster, bolder climate action. A window of opportunity remains open, but only a narrow shaft of light remains... We are getting dangerously close to the point of no return.

UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, Speech at the COP 27 conference, Egypt 7 Nov 2022

As part of the post-war world order, the United Nations was created, taking over from the League of Nations. Being a U.S.-centric construct, it has its detractors but it is certainly the most obvious and powerful of existing global forms of governance we have. It is an assembly now of over 190 member countries bound by a treaty dating from its formation in 1945 with numerous amendments but with limited legislative powers over sovereign states. It is like a guardian with a rabble of unruly children to look after but without the power to send any of them to the naughty step. It can however deliver a good telling-off. Indeed, U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres resorted to as much by addressing world leaders at the opening of the C.O.P. 27 conference in Egypt in November 2022, saying, “We can sign a climate solidarity pact, or a collective suicide pact… The global climate fight will be won or lost in this crucial decade – on our watch.”

In 2015, the UN launched its Sustainable Development Goals. This was a major step towards directing global action on addressing the human predicament on planet Earth. It consists of 17 goals:

GOAL 1: No Poverty

GOAL 2: Zero Hunger

GOAL 3: Good Health and Well-being

GOAL 4: Quality Education

GOAL 5: Gender Equality

GOAL 6: Clean Water and Sanitation

GOAL 7: Affordable and Clean Energy

GOAL 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth

GOAL 9: Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure

GOAL 10: Reduced Inequality

GOAL 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities

GOAL 12: Responsible Consumption and Production

GOAL 13: Climate Action

GOAL 14: Life Below Water

GOAL 15: Life on Land

GOAL 16: Peace and Justice Strong Institutions

GOAL 17: Partnerships to achieve the Goal

One suspects much lobbying was applied to its final wording and ordering. The order of numbering implies a hierarchy of prioritisation. It is notable that the first 12 goals are human-centric and action on climate change is demoted to Goal 13. The natural world does not get a mention until Goals 14 and 15 respectively. Still, it is a start and it is particularly encouraging to see that in Goal 12 the issue of Sustainable consumption and production is tackled.

Sustainable consumption and production is about doing more and better with less. It is also about decoupling economic growth from environmental degradation, increasing resource efficiency and promoting sustainable lifestyles.

Source: https://www.unep.org/explore-topics/resource-efficiency/what-we-do/sustainable-consumption-and-production-policies

The U.N. set up the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 1988, providing regular assessments on the rate of climate change and its impacts and risks. It also assesses options for adaptation and mitigation. This is a truly global effort with scientists and experts contributing from all corners of the planet.

Since 1995, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has promoted action on climate change by holding annual U.N. climate change conferences. Formally this is known as the Conference of the Parties or C.O.P. for short. Additionally, the U.N. has held climate action summits.

However, the legacy of the U.N.’s global environmental cooperation work, stretches back much further. In June 1972 the U.N. Scientific Conference was held in Stockholm. Also known as the First Earth Summit, it adopted a declaration setting out the principles for preserving and enhancing the human environment and the issue of climate change was raised for the first time. Another significant milestone was the Montreal Protocol of 1988 which successfully tackled the control of ozone depleting gases following the discovery in 1987 of a rapidly expanding hole in the Earth’s atmosphere over the south pole. This is still seen as one of the greatest achievements of global environmental cooperation. The Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit in 1992 became famous for setting out Agenda 21 which specifically targeted the protection of the atmosphere. The conference also resulted in signing-up 158 states towards the establishment of the aforementioned UNFCCC.[2]

A cornerstone achievement of the C.O.P. summits is probably the 1997 Kyoto Protocol which effectively formed the legal framework for individual countries to reduce industrialised greenhouse gas emissions by at least 5% below 1990 levels between 2008 and 2012. Another major milestone is The Paris Agreement of 2015 which had the goal of limiting global warming to “well below 2, preferably 1.5 degrees below Celsius, compared to pre-industrial levels.”[3] It requires signature countries to a 5-year cycle of increasingly ambitious climate action.

So, the U.N. is the established global body of governance and is certainly trying hard to reach consensus on responsible climate action and good custodianship of the planet’s resources and eco-system. Its weakness lies in its inability to hold member states truly to account and its ambitions and decrees are subject to special interest lobbying. Can it morph into the regulatory framework that bold, responsible and rapid climate emergency response demands?

The transition between global and sovereign governance

As part of the M.I.T. programming of the World 3 computer model which derived the Limits to Growth Study of 1972, the researchers anticipated what they coined ‘decision delay’ into their projections. This has turned out to be particularly relevant to real world governance events in the fifty years since as evidenced by President Trump’s election pledge to withdraw from The Paris Agreement. In June 2017 he signed an executive order to commence that extrication. He cited that the Paris Agreement would “…undermine…” the U.S. economy and put the U.S. at a “…permanent disadvantage.”[4] One is left to wonder how much environmental damage and planet degradation ensued before Trump’s presidential successor, Joe Biden signed the U.S. back into the agreement with another executive order in January 2021. This example of decision delay is so important as we are already locked-in to tipping points of climate change, habitat depletion and species extinction. Every day lost really matters now.

To avoid this kind of ideological swinging and climate action derailment from happening in democracies, we need additional checks and balances brought in at the global and national level. Sanctions on a global stage with real teeth need to be there to deter reckless electioneering for the popular vote at the national level.

Is sustainability too grave and too complex for conventional democratic processes?

The established way the U.K. approaches its climate response is to have government advisors and scientists present their research and forecasts from their respective silos of interest and then the government of the day creates policy to respond in a way which best meets their manifesto pledges and political ideology. In extreme cases that would be to almost ignore the expert advice of existential threat completely in favour of ‘growth, growth, growth’ which was pretty much the case with the election pledge of Liz Truss in the summer of 2022 who (worryingly) courted the most votes from Conservative Party members.

The rise of the popularist movement and the demonising of the so-called ‘establishment’ suggests that the electorate too need to be more responsible with their vote, endeavour to understand better what it is they are voting for and what the wider implications might be. The U.K.’s Brexit referendum is a clear example of the where the electorate made a decision without fully understanding or believing the implications. Most voters were prepared to believe a flippant and misleading slogan on the side of a campaign bus rather than to listen to recognised economic experts. The arguments to leave the European Union were easy to make into simple catch phrases that easily engaged the discontented popular vote. The reasons for staying within the E.U. however were far more difficult to communicate and the messaging struggled to be heard above the Europhobic rhetoric. Just over half a decade in and Brexit is becoming a momentous example of democratic self-harming.

The truth is that matters such as Brexit or climate emergency response are exceptionally complicated and indeed grave. Is it not a bit much to expect everyday voters to be enough informed on the myriad of issues at stake to make sensible and balanced judgements about them, particularly through the something so crude as a referendum?

The new corrupting threats to democracy

Democracy is battling with new and distributing forms of misinformation in the digital/internet age. Misinformation is not a new concept. Rulers, especially conquering ones, have re-written their preferred versions of history for millennia. This new technology has hit society quickly, and our existing systems and processes are barely able to keep up. It affects the way society thinks and of course votes. It is undermining press freedom and is also being used to interfere directly in the process of voting itself to the point where mistrust in the system is rampant.

In countries which claim to have a ‘free press’, a game of cat and mouse has built-up whereby the press claim to hold the government of the day to account. With the threat of being branded, ‘fake news’ just a tweet away, it is getting harder for traditional journalists and conventional channels of press communication to be believed or even listened to. Their ability to hold politicians to account, even in ‘free-countries’ is becoming increasingly marginalised.

Another deepening flaw of most forms of governance (not just democracy) in a world with increasing disparities of wealth and power is that governance can veer closer and closer to autocratic or oligarchic tendencies. With this comes increasing levels of corruption and information control. How much of the truth is made available to the public with this form of governance will depend on how confident those in power are of revealing it. Putin’s Russia is a case in point. Russia would claim to be a democracy but most of the rest of the world would call it an oppressive autocratic regime.

Using information platforms on the internet, conspiracy theorising has been on the rise. The most famous of these is the QAnon posts which started in 2017 in the U.S. Seen as a far-right movement to smear politicians, government officials, celebrities and business tycoons, it stirred-up hate by linking targeted people to a global cabal involved in satanic child abuse. QAnon supporters later became involved in Donald Trump’s ‘Stop the Steal’ campaign and then the storming of the U.S. Capitol Building on 6 January 2021.[5] In December 2022, a right-wing plot was uncovered to takeover Germany’s Bundestag. Members of the extremist Reichsbürger [Citizens of the Reich] movement were said to be modelling their governance on the Second Reich established in 1871.[6] Contemporary polling in Germany suggests that as much as 20% of the population are open to conspiracy theories. This is cited as an accelerated phenomena following the Covid-19 restrictions.

Also in December 2022, EU officials were arrested under charges that they accepted bribes from Qatar in return for gaining influence. Roberta Metsola said that "open, free, democratic societies are under attack". [7]

Big business has long established a means of influencing government. Certainly, in the U.K. and the U.S. it is completely commonplace and above board for wealthy doners to sponsor election campaigns and donate towards the political parties they feel have the most chance of getting into power.

Whilst it spends heavily on directly lobbying government, commercial interests also look to affect public /voter opinion. One technique long-established is to buy column space in newspapers, often in the form of ‘advertorials’ and these are designed to look like the publication’s own output. The main purpose of these is to influence public opinion. Exxon, the Global Climate Coalition and the American Petroleum Institute, to name but a few, all did this as part of a mis-information campaign to spread doubt about the legitimacy of climate-change science, as was brilliantly revealed in the BBC’s documentary, Big Oil  v the World aired in July 2022.[8]

What lessons can be learned from China

China is even more conscious about information flows than Russia although it does not see itself as a democracy nor an autocracy. This once impoverished communist state which has older and very different value systems to the west, has evolved into a socialist meritocracy which openly encourages, somewhat bizarrely, free-enterprise activities that might normally be associated with a democratic state.

Western powers would see China more as an authoritarian government rather than a meritocracy along the lines of Confucian ideals. The Chinese would say their system works for them but to maintain it, the State sees fit to throttle free speech. Foreign information networks are banned in mainland China. For Chinese leaders, information is seen as dangerous.

That said, the Chinese state do seem to understand the need for responding urgently to climate change. By being the ‘world’s factory’ for well over two decades, China has become a super cash-rich power. It has afforded itself a far quicker technological transition towards a renewables-based economy than the west. It may still be building coal-burning power stations but it already outstrips the U.S., Japan and Australia for the percentage mix of renewable power generation within its electrical grid, according to Enerdata[9]. Unlike countries like the U.K. which have a tiny industrial base by comparison, China continues to manufacture much of the stuff the rest of the world consumes and for this it needs huge amounts of energy and resources. An oppressive regime it maybe, but with its form of authoritarian meritocracy it has determined to ensure that all its city taxis, buses and motorbikes are already running on non-fossil fuels. No democratic country has yet achieved that.

The Chinese would argue that their form of governance is a much better fit for steering economies away from over-depletion of the planet. While democracies try their best with four or five-year political cycles, the Chinese can set much longer-term strategies towards resource and food security, power generation and energy efficiency programmes. Returning to the climate agreements and the signatories of them, how does China know if the U.S. or another major economic player with a democracy is not going to excuse itself from the table again when things get tough with their electorate?

The European Union’s international, multilingual, political institution

What about the European Union? It has evolved from an assembly (akin to the U.N.) to a form of parliamentary democracy. Impressively it is an international, multilingual, political institution of currently 27 countries which has increasingly gained in responsibility and legislative clout as it works towards ever closer economic and political union. It is composed of directly elected representatives (M.E.P.s) by voters of member states with the remit of overseeing E.U. law-making. It is supported by a Secretariat which is in effect the E.U. civil service. Here the administration provides the technical assistance to the M.E.P.’s in delivering their work. In many respects it is an astonishing achievement to have so many countries in a region of the world which less than 100 years ago was witness to total war. In many respects it is a crowning testament to the post-war European peace effort.

The E.U. takes what the U.N. does as an organisation but goes further to operate in a more coordinated political fashion. Reaching accord on policy is fraught with many opposing national opinions. Decision delay and compromise are unavoidable outcomes. Some countries are more divergent from the core consensus than others and trickier projects are simply left on back-burners.

The hugeness and remoteness of the E.U. parliament is for many, particularly among Eurosceptics, a massive problem. It is supposed to operate in a democratic fashion but the impression at grass roots level is that its institutions, and the matters it deals with, are too remote to be properly engaged with by voters. It appears as an unaccountable regime dressed up to look like a democracy. On the other hand, it is an evolving project and in many ways it has the sort of coordinated governance required to deal with a trans-national climate emergency response.

Cross-party working groups

There have not been many mooted solutions to shaw-up the increasingly dodgy ground that democracies find themselves on. There are some vehicles of process which might help in this regard. One such candidate might be to make better use of cross-party working groups. We often hear about them being set-up to look at challenging policy issues that go beyond the concerns of party politics and into the realms of responsible societal governance. Their findings are not policy but advisory resumés of the context and possible ways forward. Unless we hear about their work in the press, the workings of such groups are largely outside of popular engagement.

As an amendment to sovereign constitutional processes, perhaps their use should be more formally recognised and promoted.

Thinktanks and policy institutes

Thank tanks have been around since the 19th Century, first emerging in the United Kingdom and then America and the rest of the world. They proliferated after the WWII and then again in the policy vacuum created after the Cold War and with the emergence of ‘globalisation’.[10] Sometimes they are ‘arm’s length’ entities of government but more often they are formed out of corporate interests. To give them extra kudos their financial backers might establish them in well regarded institutions of learning. Whilst they may come up with interesting research and policy suggestions, their roots are almost all associated with vested interests and perhaps not the neutral influence that is needed.

Citizen’s assemblies

One relatively new innovation which might provide democracies with a much-needed knee-up is the creation of citizen’s assemblies (C.A.s). There are already many around the world that have specifically been looking at climate change and the associated societal responses.

A citizen’s assembly seems to be a very similar construct to that of a jury in a legal or criminal hearing. Members of a C.A. should be drawn from all walks of life and picked in a similar way to how a jury is assembled. The C.A.s then start to interrogate the relevant matter they are charged with. They hear the evidence of experts and specialists in the relevant fields of enquiry as a jury might listen to witnesses in a criminal trial. The C.A. then go on to agree a set of recommendations - not necessarily a verdict passed onto a presiding judge. Their findings are addressed to the appropriate levels of government for their further consideration which may or may not be be taken forward into a policy response.

In the U.K., governance relies heavily on civil servants to support policymaking and delivery and ensure a smooth transition between one government and another. They are a form of check and balance already established but their recourse to blowing the whistle when their political masters go too far off-piste is not a regulated one as their official remit is to support the Government of the day in delivering their political ideology. A C.A. might be a more open and transparent arbiter with a freer hand to go the press, as it were.

The important aspect of the citizen’s assembly system is that it must be seen as a representative cross-section of the electorate. It must be overtly democratic and transparent in its processes. Unlike a simple election, where voters elect a representative to look at challenging and complex issues on their behalf, the C.A. itself is charged with that unpacking and compiling of recommendations. It is therefore a responsible additional influence, albeit limited to an advisory role, on a democratic system which is increasingly open to fraud, corruption and polarisation. In the face of social media distrust and misinformation, C.A.s should help build-back confidence in the ethics of their government’s decision-making. Most importantly of all in the context of governance during a climate emergency, is that a C.A.s evidential advice will help politicians deliver policy objectives which, in many cases, maybe of an uncomfortable direction for many within the electorate.

[1] https://www.zurich.com/en/media/magazine/2022/there-could-be-1-2-billion-climate-refugees-by-2050-here-s-what-you-need-to-know#:~:text=These%20numbers%20are%20expected%20to,climate%20change%20and%20natural%20disasters.

[2] https://www.un.org/en/chronicle/article/stockholm-kyoto-brief-history-climate-change

[3] http://unfccc.int/process-and-meetings/the-paris-agreement/the-paris-agreement

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_withdrawal_from_the_Paris_Agreement

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QAnon

[6] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-63885028

[7] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-63941509

[8] https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0cgqlvk/big-oil-v-the-world-series-1-3-delay

[9] https://yearbook.enerdata.net/renewables/renewable-in-electricity-production-share.html

[10] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Think_tank