Reconciling Ecological and Democratic Values: Recent Perspectives on Ecological Democracy

The idea of ecological democracy is a promising one, a combination of two sets of appealing core normative values – environmental concern and engagement on the one hand, and democratic legitimacy and procedure on the other. Yet, these two sets of values are quite different, and not so easily reconciled. Theorists of ecological democracy have long struggled with this dual (and dueling) set of promises, and have always had to address the obvious potential for conflict between them. As Goodin (1992: 160) clearly laid out, long ago, ‘to advocate democracy is to advocate procedure, to advocate environmentalism is to advocate substantive outcomes: what guarantee can we have that the former procedures will yield the latter outcome?’ There is no guarantee that democracies will necessarily bring about ecological and sustainable ends, and more authoritative processes of attaining those ends could undermine democratic ideals and legitimacy.