Democratising sustainability transformations: Assessing the transformative potential of democratic practices in environmental governance

IF 4.4 Q1 ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES Earth System Governance Pub Date : 2022-01-01 DOI:10.1016/j.esg.2021.100131

Jonathan Pickering , Thomas Hickmann , Karin Bäckstrand , Agni Kalfagianni , Michael Bloomfield , Ayşem Mert , Hedda Ransan-Cooper , Alex Y. Lo

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引用次数: 24

Abstract

Many democracies find it difficult to act swiftly on problems such as climate change and biodiversity loss. This is reflected in long-standing debates in research and policy about whether democratic practices are capable of fostering timely, large-scale transformations towards sustainability. Drawing on an integrative review of scholarly literature from 2011 to early 2021 on sustainability transformations and the democracy-environment nexus, this article synthesises existing research on prospects and pitfalls for democratising sustainability transformations. We advance a new typology for understanding various combinations of democratic/authoritarian practices and of transformations towards/away from sustainability. We then explore the role of democratic practices in accelerating or obstructing five key dimensions of sustainability transformations: institutional, social, economic, technological, and epistemic. Across all dimensions we find substantial evidence that democratic practices can foster transformations towards sustainability, and we conclude by outlining a set of associated policy recommendations.

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可持续性转型的民主化：评估环境治理中民主实践的变革潜力

许多民主国家发现很难在气候变化和生物多样性丧失等问题上迅速采取行动。这反映在研究和政策中关于民主实践是否能够促进向可持续性的及时、大规模转变的长期辩论中。通过对2011年至2021年初关于可持续性转型和民主-环境关系的学术文献的综合回顾，本文综合了关于可持续性转型民主化的前景和陷阱的现有研究。我们提出了一种新的类型学来理解民主/专制实践的各种组合，以及向可持续发展/远离可持续发展的转变。然后，我们探讨了民主实践在加速或阻碍可持续性转型的五个关键方面的作用:制度、社会、经济、技术和认知。在所有方面，我们都发现了大量证据，表明民主实践可以促进向可持续性的转变，最后，我们概述了一套相关的政策建议。

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