TY - JOUR
T1 - Democratising planetary boundaries
T2 - Experts, social values and deliberative risk evaluation in Earthsystem governance
AU - Pickering, Jonathan
AU - Persson, Åsa
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was supported by the Australian Research Council?s Laureate Fellowship funding scheme under Project number FL140100154 and the Swedish Research Council Formas (Formas) grant number 211-2012-1842. Earlier versions of this paper were presented at a workshop held at the University of Sydney on ?Ecological democracy: always greener on the other side?? (2017), at the Earth System Governance conference in Lund (2017), and at the conference on ?A crisis of expertise?? at the University of Melbourne (2018). We are grateful to participants in the presentations, as well as to Karin B?ckstrand, John Dryzek, James Meadowcroft and David Schlosberg, for helpful feedback. Two anonymous reviewers provided insightful comments which helped to improve the paper considerably.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2019, © 2019 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
Funding Information:
This work was supported by the Australian Research Council’s Laureate Fellowship funding scheme under Project number FL140100154 and the Swedish Research Council Formas (Formas) grant number 211-2012-1842. Earlier versions of this paper were presented at a workshop held at the University of Sydney on ‘Ecological democracy: always greener on the other side?’ (2017), at the Earth System Governance conference in Lund (2017), and at the conference on ‘A crisis of expertise?’ at the University of Melbourne (2018). We are grateful to participants in the presentations, as well as to Karin Bäckstrand, John Dryzek, James Meadowcroft and David Schlosberg, for helpful feedback. Two anonymous reviewers provided insightful comments which helped to improve the paper considerably.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2019, © 2019 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
PY - 2020/1/2
Y1 - 2020/1/2
N2 - Recent debates about the concept of planetary boundaries recall longstanding concerns about whether ecological limits are compatible with ecological democracy. The planetary boundaries framework (originally set out in Rockström et al., 2009a, 2009b) defines values for key Earth-system processes such as climate change and biodiversity that aim to maintain a ‘safe’ distance from thresholds or levels that could endanger human wellbeing. Despite having a significant impact in policy debates, the framework has been criticised as implying an expert-driven approach to governing global environmental risks that lacks democratic legitimacy. Drawing on research on deliberative democracy and the role of science in democratic societies, we argue that planetary boundaries can be interpreted in ways that remain consistent with democratic decision-making. We show how an iterative, dialogical process to formulate planetary boundaries and negotiate ‘planetary targets’ could form the basis for a democratically legitimate division of labour among experts, citizens and policy-makers in evaluating and responding to Earth-system risks. Crucial to this division of evaluative labour is opening up space for deliberative contestation about the value judgments inherent in collective responses to Earth-system risks, while also safeguarding the ability of experts to issue warnings about what they consider to be unacceptable risks.
AB - Recent debates about the concept of planetary boundaries recall longstanding concerns about whether ecological limits are compatible with ecological democracy. The planetary boundaries framework (originally set out in Rockström et al., 2009a, 2009b) defines values for key Earth-system processes such as climate change and biodiversity that aim to maintain a ‘safe’ distance from thresholds or levels that could endanger human wellbeing. Despite having a significant impact in policy debates, the framework has been criticised as implying an expert-driven approach to governing global environmental risks that lacks democratic legitimacy. Drawing on research on deliberative democracy and the role of science in democratic societies, we argue that planetary boundaries can be interpreted in ways that remain consistent with democratic decision-making. We show how an iterative, dialogical process to formulate planetary boundaries and negotiate ‘planetary targets’ could form the basis for a democratically legitimate division of labour among experts, citizens and policy-makers in evaluating and responding to Earth-system risks. Crucial to this division of evaluative labour is opening up space for deliberative contestation about the value judgments inherent in collective responses to Earth-system risks, while also safeguarding the ability of experts to issue warnings about what they consider to be unacceptable risks.
KW - Anthropocene
KW - deliberative democracy
KW - Earth system governance
KW - ecological democracy
KW - Planetary boundaries
KW - science-policy interface
UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/85073802959
UR - http://purl.org/au-research/grants/arc/FL140100154
U2 - 10.1080/1523908X.2019.1661233
DO - 10.1080/1523908X.2019.1661233
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85073802959
SN - 1523-908X
VL - 22
SP - 59
EP - 71
JO - Journal of Environmental Policy and Planning
JF - Journal of Environmental Policy and Planning
IS - 1
ER -
SDG 13 Climate Action