Environment and Democracy: An Introduction

Abstract

Heightened awareness and alarmism about climate change have prompted politicians, public intellectuals and scholars alike to reconsider the political values, structures and institutions with which to confront it. A number of recurring directions of thought and experiment may be distinguished. For one, ecological authoritarianism – the strand of thought that proposes to abolish or suspend democracy for the sake of achieving ‘green’ goals – testifies to the perceived shortcomings of democratic politics when it comes to immediate collective environmental action. Alternatively, and on the flipside of the same coin, democratic innovations (e.g. citizens’ assemblies, mini-publics and juries) are contemplated to improve popular input, inclusive and deliberative decision-making, and, ultimately, democratic legitimacy in the realm of environmental politics. Meanwhile, technological solutionism has permeated democratic and non-democratic policy-making alike, adding to the fragile balance of immediacy, legitimacy and technology in contemporary climate politics. What seems to be lacking in contemporary discussions about the relationship between democracy and climate change, however, is a critical-historical reflection on (or awareness of) some of the deeply ingrained hegemonic assumptions that inform it. These assumptions revolve around three interrelated and recurring orientations toward climate politics: (1) the inclination to anthropocentrism in understanding the state and development of the natural world (as opposed to a multispecies