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16 Legal Service Bull. 157 (1991)
Democracy and the Ecological Crisis

handle is hein.journals/alterlj16 and id is 167 raw text is: 1 1571 Democracy and the ecological crisis Freya Mathews Can a democracy adequately respond to the ecological crisis, or do we need new political institutions and ethics? Although the present period in world his- tory has been hailed by some as an age of democracy, a period in which there is a significant worldwide trend towards greater democratisation, it is also a period that is witnessing unprecedented ecologi- cal crisis on a global scale. This crisis certainly represents a fundamental chal- lenge to the principles of democracy, and democracy itself may represent a fun- damental obstacle to ecological reform. It seems to me that this prima facie tension between democracy and the project of environmental protection raises profound political questions that are not being adequately addressed by contemporary political scientists and philosophers. These questions are fun- damental to the practice of green politics, but are not being explored to any great extent at a deeper philosophical level.' I want here to distinguish three such ques- tions, which I shall state, and discuss, but not attempt to answer. My motive for raising them is simply to draw attention to their portentous nature, and to en- courage their further exploration. The three questions are as follows: Can a liberal democratic system respond adequately to crisis when the crisis is not directly 'visible', i.e. when it is identifiable to experts and to per- sons specially briefed, but not to ordi- nary citizens? This is a general ques- tion about the limitations of democracy, but it is one which is peculiarly pertinent in the context of the ecological crisis. What is the relation of ethics to democracy? Are democratic systems based on moral values or on self-inter- est? If they rest ultimately on self-in- terest, can they guarantee adequate protection of the natural world? What in fact constitutes the best politi- cal scenario for environmental reform? Would such reform best be facilitated by the devolution of power away from the state into local com- munities, or by the centralisation of power into federal and international agencies? Limits of democracy The first question raises the issue of whether, in a parliamentary democracy, a government would be justified in, and capable of, overriding the will of its citizens for the sake of a long-term good not fully recognised by them. One imme- diate response to this question might be to insist that since democracy hinges on the social awareness of its citizens, its citizens must be educated so as to be capable of appreciating and therefore demanding important goods. However, this response overlooks the fact that even though education is fundamental to the viability of democracy, the members of a given democratic system may not recog- nise this, and may thus refuse to support adequate education programs in their own communities. In other words, educa- tion may itself be one of the vital goods that citizens fail to appreciate and conse- quently fail to mandate governments to provide. Moreover, even if citizens were fully cognizant of the ecological crisis and apprised of the need for environmen- tal reform, they might still be reluctant to subordinate their immediate interests to such a long-term and seemingly abstract good. Indeed, in the western world we have recently experienced a great popular awakening to environmental concern. The extreme gravity and urgency of the global ecological crisis has been con- veyed to the public by sustained media exposure of the problem. The public has become alarmed, and individuals have begun, in small ways, to modify their consumption patterns - for instance, by giving preference to 'environment friendly' products. They appear to be anxious that governments should act. At the same time, however, there is a sense that, having switched to benign products and signalled their concern to govern- ments, ordinary citizens are absolved from any further responsibility, and can simply hand the problem over to the authorities. It may be, however, that the lifestyle changes that the ecological crisis demands are broader and deeper than the public is willing to acknowledge, and that the social and economic costs of these changes would be higher than the public would be prepared to accept. Lacking a popular mandate for vital environmental reforms then, a democratic government would appear to have little power to im- plement them, and even if it had the Vol. 16, No. 4, August * 1991 Freya Mathews leaches philosophy at La Trobe University. Her book, The Ecological Self, was published by Routledge this year.

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