Climate change is the defining challenge of our time. Its devastating consequences already affect billions of people around the world, impacting economic prosperity and security, exacerbating inequalities, conflict and migration, and putting pressure on our democratic societies and decision-making processes.
While the science is clear and we know the solutions, the barriers to addressing climate change are primarily political: our increasingly polarized societies fail to build the necessary consensus, causing our policy responses to remain insufficient, in both scale and speed. The situation requires nothing less than fundamental economic, social, and political transformations and challenges our societies to develop new strategies to address climate change.
Capitalizing on International IDEA’s longstanding expertise, we want to bridge the gaps between scientists, citizens, and policymakers, build knowledge, and offer capacity-development and policy advice to inspire and support the development of strategies that:
- Minimize democracies’ structural weaknesses (such as short-termism, cumbersome procedures, and the influence of vested interests),
- Leverage their inherent assets (including free circulation of information, participation, transparency and accountability), and
- Innovate our democratic processes and infrastructure (through constitutional reform and long-term framework legislation, citizens deliberation, and dedicated institutions for future generations).
In doing so, we are supported by an international Expert Advisory Group with diverse personal, regional, and professional backgrounds, and we promote, among other initiatives, the International Climate and Democracy Coalition (ICDC), an effort to counteract fragmentation in the field and develop joint action with like-minded organisations.
At a time where democracy is under threat in many parts of the world, governments need to formulate citizen-owned policy responses to climate change for our governance systems to remain legitimate and credible for young people and future generations. Only then will we be able to turn mass movements around climate that question and contest our existing political systems into an opportunity to revitalize democracy.
