The democracy in front of environmental stakes – DEMOENV

 
The research programme "The democracy in front of environmental stakes" (DEMOENV) has the object of
examining new and decisive questions facing democratic societies as a result of environmental problematics, by
combining the approaches of sociology, anthropology, economics, politics, jurisprudence and philosophy. In short, it
means constructing common concepts for these different disciplines as well as a synergy around questions of a
philosophical order. The aim is to rethink democracy in terms of new environmental issues. The programme is articulated
around five issues: 1) The accumulation of vulnerability. This notion leads us to consider new forms of vulnerability
brought about by environmental change, which come on top of already-existing social vulnerabilities within and without
democratic regimes. The precariousness and fragility of certain populations are the source of new conflicts, new revolts
and famines, new climatic migrations, and of major political and geopolitical instabilities, both now and in the future. 2) The
economic evaluation of environmental goods. This evaluation involves extending the market economy to global public
goods, i.e. extending market logic so that it now concerns the gifts of nature and not just human production. Public
decisions made in this domain are thus confronted with the attribution of a monetary value to the environment,
encompassing a normative dimension as well, potentially, as an ideological one. 3) New practices of governance. These
practices will have to be analysed in the following lights: their legitimacy (or illegitimacy), their efficacity (or inefficacity), the
process of progressive privatisation they often involve, and the reduction of the public domain. 4) Limits on national and
international juridical protection of the environment. The new juridical rules lead certain key players to set up avoidance
strategies, so as to get round the objectives of the law (directly or indirectly). Certain economic players, for instance,
indulge in “environmental dumping”.  The question then is to see how to make people in general obey laws for the 
protection of the environment. 5) Political conceptions presented as being capable of responding to environmental
emergencies, and the possibility of a drift towards authoritarianism. Here we will examine the major risk faced by the
democratic regime, that of being called into question in the face of an “environmental emergency”.  These five issues are 
also risks for democracy. Some of these risks are temporary, occurring at a particular moment in time, but others are
more fundamental and produce crises within the democratic regime, even calling it into question. So this means applying
our thinking to a reconsideration of the internal structure of democratic society and its limits, and its capacity to integrate
new dimensions resulting from environmental change. The programme is interdisciplinary, because environmental
questions are never univocal; they always lead on to different orders of phenomena, different orders of effects.
Institutionally, this multi-disciplinary approach is represented by five French teams in partnership with the project (see
below) which cover all the disciplines indicated: the environment, human and social sciences, political science and law. In
addition there is a German team (Technische Universität Dresden, Philosophische Fakultät, Institut für Politikwissenschaft,
Lehrstuhl für Politische Theorie und Ideengeschichte) directed by Professor Hans Forländer, and an Italian team directed
by Professor Francesco Saviero Trincia at the “Sapienza” University of Rome.