Education for Ecological Democracy

• In Event: Systemic Socio-Environmental Change From the Local to the Planetary: Comparatively Analyzing Needs and Leveraging Possibilities

Abstract

The term ‘ecological democracy’ (ED) has been established in the literature for a couple of decades (Dryzek, 1992, 1997; Faber, 1998; Morrison, 1995; Ungaro, 2005), if not always in an explicit conceptual formulation. It is slowly evolving as a liberal notion that presupposes a link between democracy and ecology, sometimes cashed out in terms of ‘sustainable development’ or ‘green capitalism’ (‘green consumerism’) while emphasizing that ED requires a form of grass-roots participation by citizens both individually and collectively. The exact nature of the link and the success and results of ED have been up for ongoing scrutiny and political skepticism. Both ‘ecology’ and ‘democracy’ are expansive concepts that have been refined and developed over the last couple of decades, so it is not surprising that the links between these and cognate concepts are hard to pin down. The term ‘radical’ ecological democracy (RED) stands for degrowth policies, grassroots participation and has been used to demonstrate problems for existing democratic structures (Kothari, 2014; Mitchell, 2006). RED contributes to the search ‘for sustainable and equitable alternatives to the dominant economic development model’ that pursues the ‘goals of direct democracy, local and bioregional economies, cultural diversity, human well-being, and ecological resilience at the core of its vision’ (Kothari, 2014,p. 57). RED also maps on to the concept of ‘radical democracy’ developed by post-Marxist thinkers Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe starting in the early 1990s (Laclau, 1990; Laclau & Mouffe, 2001). One line of thought maps notions of ‘radical’ and ‘open’ on to overlapping concepts of democracy and environment through notions of collective subjectivity (AUTHOR, 2002, 2013). In the 1980s and 1990s the first wave of scholarship on ecological democracy develop but since then there has been an acceleration of climate change indicating that The Earth has entered the Anthropocene at a time politically when right-wing forms of politics in the US, Europe and elsewhere have embraced anti-environmental, anti-immigration and populist themes in a post-truth era (AUTHOR et al, 2017). Second wave of ED concerns the growth of political movements broadly embracing the concept of environmental justice in an attempt to counteract and address backsliding anti-environmentalism. The third wave of ED takes place in relation to President Trump’s anti-environmentalism, his withdrawal from the Paris agreement, his championing of world oil and gas, and cuts to the jurisdiction and budget of the Environmental Protection Agency. In this political environment, the future of environmental sustainability depends upon more radical forms of ED tied to twin notions of citizen science and forms of learning activism that involve responsibility for the local environment.

Author

• Michael A. Peters, Beijing Normal University