Sydney Ideas

Efforts to reconcile theories and practices of democracy with environmental sustainability have long been central to environmental political thought. Since this first wave of scholarship on ecological democracy, there have been numerous crucial developments that pose a range of challenges. On the environmental side, we have seen the acceleration of climate change, arguments for setting planetary boundaries around humanity’s environmental impacts, and widespread acknowledgement that the Earth has entered a new epoch: the Anthropocene. On the political side, we have had the growth of environmental and climate justice movements, the proliferation of institutions for global environmental governance, and the anti-environmental and post-truth era. This panel of distinguished contributors to the ecological democracy debate will examine what theories of ecological democracy have offered, and, looking forward, how (or if) they might respond to the current set of ecological, and democratic, challenges. SPEAKERS: -