by Andrea Westall | Feb 2, 2023
Full paper → Introduction The grand challenges of our time – climate change, biodiversity loss and excessive inequality – are proving difficult for our current liberal democracies to tackle effectively. The inability to address them will not only negatively affect...
by Ariella Shalev | Apr 13, 2022 | News and Comment
FDSD believes that democracy needs to adapt in order to meet the challenges of sustainable development, but equally that democracy itself is a better away of achieving sustainable goals than autocracy. However, our current democratic system has been facing challenges...
by Ariella Shalev | Feb 22, 2022 | News and Comment
The focus on the crisis of party-political democracy has diverted attention away from the role of wider institutions of governance. In his book, Towards a New Civic Bureaucracy: Lessons from sustainable development for the crisis of governance, Matthew Quinn redresses...
by kultur.work | Nov 24, 2017 | News and Comment
As environmental crises become ever more severe, voices are reappearing that call for authoritarian solutions: Democracy, so the argument goes, has proven to be too slow to respond to urgent threats, and so a stronger, authoritarian hand is needed to push through the...
by Graham Smith | May 5, 2017 | News and Comment
The House of Commons Audit Committee recently published its report Sustainable Development Goals in the UK. The Committee is critical of the Government’s lack of ambition in embedding the SDGs. As the report argues: The Sustainable Development Goals represent a...
by kultur.work | Mar 14, 2017 | News and Comment
+++ The video of the event is available here. +++ FDSD, in collaboration with the Centre for the Study of Democracy and the Centre for Understanding Sustainable Prosperity is organising an event on Tuesday 11th April to explore the potential to establish a...
by John Lotherington | Nov 20, 2016 | News and Comment
In a recent article for Le Monde, Thomas Piketty argues that unsustainable development – a pattern of globalization which has boosted inequality and so undermined communities and social justice as well as the environment – has brought about the recent...
by John Lotherington | Jul 18, 2016 | Blog, News and Comment
As everyone woke up to Brexit on 24 June, there was a dawning realization that we were in uncharted territory. The campaign was focused on what we were trying to avoid, not where we wanted to head. That was true of the Remainers, with their increasingly...
by Andrea Westall | May 30, 2016
Charlotte Burns and Viviane Gravey argue that the EU Referendum debate in the UK has been “surprisingly quiet on the issue of the environment”. They look at three options for the UK from the point of view of their impacts on participatory democracy, as...
by kultur.work | Mar 24, 2016
The environmental and social planning consultancy, Essential Planning Ltd., is offering a training course for the internationally recognised IAP2 Foundations in Public Participation, which will provide participants with an overview of public participation, best...
by kultur.work | Mar 24, 2016
The event on 11 April, hosted by the ESRC’s The UK in a Changing Europe (UKiCE) Initiative, will have leading practitioners debate the findings of a landmark independent report on the implications of a Brexit for the UK’s environment. “The EU has had a profound...
by kultur.work | Mar 24, 2016
On 19th April 2016, the newly formed APPG on Limits to Growth will hold its inaugural event Limits to Growth or Opportunities for Prosperity? The current Co-Chair of the Club of Rome, Anders Wijkman, is confirmed as the keynote speaker for this evening. The event will...
by kultur.work | Mar 16, 2016
The registration for the inaugural UKSSD Conference: towards a sustainable UK is now open. The new forum sets out to “be the catalyst for domestic action to set the UK on the path to sustainability, gathering 100 politicians, chief executives, practitioners, and...
by Graham Smith | Mar 6, 2016 | News and Comment
The floods that hit wide areas of the UK at the end of last year were devastating for many communities. In many places local crisis management was found wanting. But in Leeds, the spontaneously self-organised volunteering infrastructures were exemplary in their...
by Nick Aveling | Jan 26, 2016 | News and Comment
János Zlinksy, one of our longest serving Trustees and an advisor to the UN Open Working Group on Sustainable Development Goals, reflects on the relationship between the Paris COP and the Sustainable Development Goals Interview by Nick Aveling There’s been a lot of...
by Andrea Westall | Jan 20, 2016
This report summarises and updates the analysis and practical implications of previous FDSD work on the The Future of Democracy in the Face of Climate Change. It investigates the links between democracy and climate change, as well as the drivers of change that might...
by kultur.work | Dec 18, 2015 | News and Comment
“Habemus consensus!” a Huffington Post article reads, summarising the sanguine diplomatic outcome of the COP21 conference in Paris. It might not be as binding as hoped by the hundreds of thousands of people engaging in the climate march; it does, however, signify a...
by kultur.work | Nov 24, 2015 | News and Comment
The concept of community resilience to climate change in the UK is multifaceted and comes with a wide range of associated activities. In order to build the evidence base and help support the development of community resilience to climate change, the Joseph Rowntree...
by kultur.work | Nov 4, 2015 | News and Comment
Following the adoption of the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act in April 2015, the Welsh Government has appointed its first Future Generations Commissioner, Sophie Howe, currently Deputy Police and Crime Commissioner for South Wales. “Public bodies in...
