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The declaration by the Dil in May last year that Ireland is facing a climate and biodiversity emergency would suggest that there is Government recognition of the scale and seriousness of the climate crisis.

This year marks the beginning of a decade in which global emissions must reduce by 55 per cent, if the 1.5 degree limit in the Paris Agreement is to remain at all feasible. However, Ireland has consistently underperformed and ranks among the worst performing countries in Europe. This under-performance has been increasingly called out by environmental NGOs as well as grassroots and youth-led movements.

It is in this context and, following the recognition by the High Court in 2017 of an implied constitutional right to an environment that is consistent with human dignity and wellbeing, that environmental democracy must be protected and strengthened rather than threatened and restricted.

Environmental democracy ensures that the State is fully transparent and accountable to the public about policy decisions that affect them and their environment, and provides participatory opportunities for communities to determine land and resource use. It involves the right to freely access information about the environment; the right to participate meaningfully in environmental decision-making; and access to justice when those rights are denied. These rights are protected in the Aarhus Convention, which has been part of the EU legal order since 2005 and was ratified by Ireland in 2012.

However, proposals contained in the new Housing and Planning and Development Bill 2019 to safeguard the timely delivery of projects and value for public money look to significantly restrict environmental democracy. The legislation would, according to the Environmental Pillar, a coalition of national environmental organisations, row back on major changes introduced just a few years ago to enable ordinary people, their organisations, and environmental NGOs to challenge bad environmental decisions. Those changes were already long overdue and necessary to comply with EU law and the Aarhus Convention.

If passed, the Bill, brought forward by Minister for Housing Eoghan Murphy, would add new cost requirements and standing restrictions to bring Judicial Review proceedings in relation to planning decisions. While individuals and groups can appeal local authority planning decisions to An Bord Pleanla, decisions made by the national planning authority can only be challenged through judicial review proceedings in the High Court, an already costly and time-consuming process.

Under the Bill, many individuals and NGOs would lose the right to take cases to court on environmental matters. Currently, NGOs enjoy broad standing rights to bring environmental challenges and the public generally enjoy the right to challenge decisions. However, the Bill proposes that applicants show substantial interest (rather than the current sufficient interest) and must be directly affected by a proposed development in a way which is peculiar or personal. The new proposals also require NGOs to be in existence for three years and have a minimum of 100 members. This would not only eliminate many grassroots community groups that form sporadically in reaction to local environmental issues but would also rule out many national NGOs from taking legal challenges such as Friends of the Irish Environment, a group that has brought many important legal challenges in recent years.

The Bill also proposes changing the special costs rules that currently apply to judicial reviews of decisions which have an impact on the environment. In these types of cases, the normal rule, that the losing side must pay the winning sides legal costs, is not applied. This allows cases to be taken without the fear of an enormous costs order, should they fail. Such cases are generally taken on a no-foal, no-fee basis as legal teams have the possibility of recouping costs if the case is successful, is of exceptional public importance and where it is in the interests of justice.

The Bill proposes creating a protective costs cap for individual plaintiffs of 5,000, 10,000 for groups and 40,000 for defendants. This risks making it prohibitively expensive (as well as unpredictable in terms of expected costs) for the public and environmental NGOs to take legal cases, dis-incentivising litigation. It is unlikely that it would be considered compatible with the Not Prohibitively Expensive Rule under the Aarhus Convention and related EU Directives. This curbs the wide access to justice that both demand.

The Bill represents a retrograde step in terms of fulfilment of our obligations under EU law. However, in the context of the climate and biodiversity emergency, we should not facilitate access to the courts in environmental matters simply because the EU tells us to. Mobilisation within communities around environmental matters is increasing and should be encouraged particularly in the context of the successive failures of government. The Bill, in its current form, will have a chilling effect on environmental litigation and will seriously damage environmental oversight and democracy in relation to bad and unlawful planning decisions.

Rose Wall is chief executive of Community Law & Mediation

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Housing bill flies in the face of environmental democracy - The Irish Times

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Change was in the air, and it felt electric.

Former diplomat Mietek Boduszynski was posted to Libya in 2010, a year before an armed revolt would overthrow the regime of dictator Moammar Gadhafi. In the early days of the Arab Spring, there was the remarkable sight of people in Cairo's Tahrir Square having open political discussions, and Libyans excitedly discussed their future under a new leader.

"I saw young Arabs who wanted the same thing people want everywhere: to be able to voice their opinion on Twitter and Facebook, choose their leaders, and have them held accountable if corrupt," Boduszynski told The Week. "These are universal aspirations."

The Arab Spring uprisings began a century after Woodrow Wilson began a push to promote democracy abroad, believing this would foster world peace and stability. Over the last 100 years, the United States has supported democratization efforts in all corners of the globe, but the demand for free elections and judicial reform has cooled in recent years.

In his new book, U.S. Democracy Promotion in the Arab World: Beyond Interests vs. Ideals, Boduszynski, a politics and international relations professor at Pomona College, writes about the United States' stuttering advocacy for democracy. Like many past and present members of the foreign service, he is troubled by how the current administration is wielding power.

Boduszynski didn't set out to become a diplomat. He came to the U.S. as a political refugee from Poland when he was five years old, and his family ultimately benefited from President Ronald Reagan's general amnesty. While finishing his doctorate at the University of California, Berkeley, Boduszynski was torn between staying in academia or exploring the world with the State Department. He chose adventure, and went off to Albania for his first posting. His career would later take him to hotspots like Kosovo and Iraq.

The United States has always been selective about when and where it will promote democracy, Boduszynski says, with the consequences still felt today. In the aftermath of World War II, the U.S. chose not to exact revenge on its enemies, but rather promote democratic institutions. Once the Cold War heated up, the U.S. became interested in one thing: countering Soviet influence. This maniacal focus resulted in the overthrow of democratically-elected regimes, such as the ones in Iran and Guatemala.

The breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991 gave the United States a chance to stop focusing on combating communism and start promoting democracy in Eastern Europe.

Take Ukraine. "Successive presidential administrations, Republican and Democrat, have made strengthening Ukrainian democratic institutions a goal of U.S. policy," Boduszynski said. "Pro-Western Ukrainian governments have been receptive to U.S. efforts, because they would like their country to be a member of the Western democratic community of nations."

That's one reason why he found President Trump's decision to freeze $400 million in security aid to Ukraine, which was the major impetus for the House of Representatives' impeachment vote, so alarming. Boduszynski said the kind of assistance Trump "chose to politicize was critical for [democracy promotion], and also critical to defend Ukraine against Russian aggression which is also in the U.S. interest. In other words, President Trump has distorted and undermined U.S. democracy promotion policy toward a country with fragile institutions that badly needs and welcomes American assistance, and in the process hurt U.S. national interests."

For every country like Ukraine that's willing to listen, there's another with an authoritarian leader posing a challenge. Presidents of both parties have cozied up to authoritarian regimes when it suits the United States' interests, particularly in the Middle East.

Indeed, for many decades, even as democracy promotion efforts expanded across the globe, the Arab world was the exception. Boduszynski said that in Washington, the general attitude was "these are societies that are not made for democracy. Having a strong person rule is the only way to prevent chaos and terrorism."

Then came the Arab Spring.

Boduszynski said the protests caught many off guard "because they were talking to regimes, not the people, and had been missing things." He worked for U.S. Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens, who was killed in a 2012 attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi. Boduszynski's new book is dedicated to Stevens, whom he called "a wonderful representative of the United States. He was a believer that Arabs and people around the world deserve better than having to choose between chaos and authoritarians."

Boduszynski was supposed to be in Benghazi when the attack occurred; due to last minute logistical issues, he remained in Tripoli. In the wake of the disaster, 10 investigations were launched, including six by GOP-controlled congressional committees, with Republicans accusing members of the Obama administration, including then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, of participating in a coverup.

"It was really sad for me to see how the attack in Benghazi became a political witch hunt in our politics," Boduszynski said. "[Stevens] never would have wanted our domestic policy held hostage because he was doing his job, and there were certain risks that went into it, like a police officer or firefighter. The biggest craziness in Washington was when Republicans decided to make this a way to go after Hillary Clinton, instead of what it was: tragic terrorism."

In the Trump administration, democracy promotion is seemingly on the back burner. On the left and the right, there are growing calls for isolationism, with the argument being that the United States cannot be the world's policeman. "We have a lot of domestic problems and people are tired of these endless commitments," Boduszynski said.

He's found that many people overseas think U.S. foreign policy involves "a small group of people getting together in a situation room, making decisions about the world." In fact, "it's very messy ... and reflects the democratic system." This misconception presents an opportunity.

"One way we should conduct our foreign policy is to focus on things that attract people to the U.S., but also recognize the difficult road of our own democracy," Boduszynski said. "The civil rights movement was just a few decades ago. It's important to tell our story overseas, about how we still have huge problems, but we became more inclusive and a better democracy over time."

Read more here:
What a former diplomat thinks about Trump, Ukraine, and America's role in promoting democracy abroad - The Week

Boris Johnson during a house session.

Denis MacShane, The Independent

For the last 300 years the world was changed by mass movements of people demonstrating and then as the franchise was extended, by voting. Not anymore. The age-old means of winning change no longer seem to be working.

2019 was the year of marches, rallies and demonstrations, with more people voting in elections than ever before. But nothing has changed. From Extinction Rebellion demonstrators disrupting London and other cities to almost the entire population of Hong Kong occupying its streets to demand democratic rights from their communist overlords in Beijing, from the mass protests in Lebanon to huge rallies in India against the nationalist anti-Muslim identity politics and Hindu supremacism of Narendra Modi, it seemed as if the world and especially the young world was on the move and demanding more democracy. And yet the year ended with the upholders of the status quo firmly in control.

Thousands of Russians have been arrested in anti-Putin demonstrations; Paris was disrupted by gilets jaunes protests and now by massive transport strikes; London saw two of its biggest ever demonstrations when up to one million people marched to demand a Final Say on Brexit. But the men running Russia, France and Britain are unmoved and still firmly in charge. Major general elections were also held in India, South Africa, Spain, Poland, Australia, Israel, Denmark and Switzerland, but voters, when they could be bothered to turn out, simply voted for the status quo.

The European Parliament had an election, but the hopes of European political groups that having a so-called Spitzenkandidat, a lead figure from the left, the centre-right or Liberals, would animate voters flopped too. Once the elections were over, the Eurocrats and national governments took over and installed at the top of the European Commission, the European Central Bank, the EU foreign service and the European Parliament politicians nominated by national government who were never on any ballot paper in the European Parliament elections. The voters of Europe were told once again that it was the nation states of Europe who decided who would run the show.

The old 1968 graffiti If voting ever changed anything theyd abolish it has never been more true.

Commentators and academic analysts pour over these figures and gravely inform us that the left is finished, that some imagined liberal era is over to be replaced by populist identity politics. Some argue that voting systems are to blame. But, in 2019, the worlds many voting systems were made use of and they all produced the same result.

Voters are nervous of change and unconvinced by any of the political offers that imply a new start or a challenge to conventional thinking. It is the era when change began with some powerful, convincing new ideas argued by intellectuals, converted into campaigns with demonstrations, petitions and other mobilisations, then finally were either adopted by parties or gave rise to new political movements and even new parties, that is truly over.

International bodies such as the International Labour Organisation and Nato celebrated 100 and 75 years of existence in 2019, but workers have never been weaker with deunionisation (outside the protected public sector) now the norm in Britain, the US, most of Europe and elsewhere in the world. Vladamir Putin runs rings around Nato, while Donald Trump can barely conceal his contempt for it.

2019 finishes a decade in which less progress was marked than at any time since 1945. Democratic advance has stalled. Filling to streets and voting in the ballot box appears to change nothing. So what happens next? That is the question to which the 2020s must provide an answer.

Read the original post:
A year of democracy that changed nothing - Gulf Today

After the Citizenship Amendment Act became a reality in the middle of December, protests broke out across India. By now, about 25 people have been killed around the country, most of them falling to police bullets. Even in the Jayaprakash Narayan movement against Indira Gandhi in the mid-1970s and the subsequent Emergency, such massive nationwide protests and police killings did not take place.

Despite the governments claims that the Opposition is behind the protests, they mostly are spontaneous. Again, contrary to the governments suggestion, it is not just the Muslim community that is demonstrating. People of all religions especially students have participated in a big way.

The panicked Bharatiya Janata Party-controlled Central government has let the police loose on protesting students and general public in states ruled by the party. But the police baton-charges, teargas shelling and firing have failed to cow down Indians: to the contrary, they have resurrected the spirit of Indian democracy.

In Hindutva political theory, there is no discourse about citizenship of human beings in relation to state and society. The concept of citizenship first formulated by Aristotle in Greece. He defines citizen as a person who has the right to participate in deliberative or judicial offices of the state. According to him aliens and slaves have no citizenship rights.

This idea was developed by later European thinkers, who broadly defined a citizen as a person who could vote and receive the benefits for continuing life and making the life better in the process of living in a given state. Immigrants were given the right to ask for citizenship based on their contribution to that society and state through their labour power, not based on religion or creed, caste or race.

The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and Bharitya Janata Party want to rely on ancient Indian literary sources for their understanding of the concept of the citizen. But there is no proper definition of citizenship in moar ancient Indian texts: they all support caste-based karma theory but not a rational theory of citizenship. Even Kautilyas Arthashastra, a treatise about statecraft, fails to define who a citizen is.

The only book that talks about the citizen, known as the nagarika, is Vastyayanas Kama Sutra. But it offers a rather perverted definition of the role: the nagarika is a householder and enlightened person. What should he do? According to Kama Sutra, having put his clothes and ornaments, [he] should during the afternoon converse with his friends. In the evening there should be a singing and after that the house holder, along with his friends should await in his room, previously decorated and perfumed, the arrival of a woman who may be attached to him.

The woman with whom the nagarika is supposed to engage with is a ganika a courtesan. But there is no discussion about the state and its membership in this text at all.

No democratic state should give citizenship to either migrants or to refugees based on their religious background. But the Citizenship Amendment Act provides a fast track to citizenship for undocumented migrants from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh if they are not Muslim.

This is a theocratic law, to say the least. According to Hindutva theoreticians like Subramanyan Swamy, no Muslim is persecuted in these Islamic nations so they have no need to seek residence in India. If so, why mention religion in the Act at all and arouse the ire of Indias Muslims? The mention of religion in the Act provides serious grounds for Indian citizens belonging to that religion to be anxious that all of them could be rendered stateless. That suspicion has deepened now.

Even considering that Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh discriminate against their minorities, why should a mature democracy like India, which has well-acclaimed Constitution, do the same? Our founding fathers would not have wanted this.

Assuming that the US decides tomorrow that illegal migrants of all religions will get citizenship, except if they are Hindu. Hindus who are already US citizens will realise that they are being told they are unwanted.Once such a law is enacted, how do they think that non-Hindus will treat them as good citizens? This is the main problem that the Indian Muslims will face with the countrys new citizenship law.

Even though India has functioned as a constitutional democracy for seven decades, our idea of human rights and citizenship remains underdeveloped. We need to evolve in our understanding of several matters, particularly how to negotiate between civil rights and religious faith. If the line between religion and civil rights is erased, our democratic system will collapse.

Though Indias ancient and medieval texts do not provide us a sophisticated theory of citizenship or on how democratic institutions should function, modern Indian thinkers like BR Ambedkar have provided some guidance on these matters. Still, to sustain democracy, we needs to read and re-read the western theories of human and civil rights.

The foundational principle of democracy is that though majority elects government, the minority that voted to the opposition should always feel secure in every institution of the nation. A government should never equate itself with nation, as the BJP-RSS are doing. That is self destructive.

Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd is a political theorist, social activist and author and the Former director, of the Centre for the Study of Social Exclusion and Inclusive Policy at the Maulana Azad National Urdu University in Hyderabad.

Read more:
CAA-NRC debate: If religion is allowed to colour civil rights, Indias democracy will be imperiled - Scroll.in

From one corner of what we used to call the Western world to another, democracythe notion that a free people can freely select their leaders and then trust them enough to give them the room to leadis in deepening trouble. Increasing shares of the population believe the system no longer works, that only dividing into tribes, flexing muscle and going way outside the box will protect "us" against "them."

Sometimes that works out, sometimes not. Israel is headed for its third election in a year. The United Kingdom finally has its Brexit champion in Boris Johnson, but at the risk of dissolving the U.K. and rekindling the hypernationalism that almost destroyed the world twice over. Closer to home: Chicago rejected conventional powers such as Toni Preckwinkle and Bill Daley in favor of a little-known former prosecutor who best represented change; Lori Lightfoot's mayoralty is a work in progress.

And then there's the impeachment of Donald Trumpin some ways the biggest challenge American democracy has faced in many decades. The challenge is stark as the division is reflected among this state's congressional delegation: Every Democrat voted "yes" and every Republican "no." And, in my view, both major political parties are failing the test.

I sympathize and largely agree with the Democratic dismay at the performance of Trump, both as president and as a person. Someone who would literally sell out the health of our planet to create a few jobs in coal country, someone who would hold the futures of more than a million young Dreamer adults hostage to satisfy the nativist fringe, someone who would suggest that late U.S. Rep. John Dingell of Michigan burns in hell because his widow backed impeachment, deserves no respect.

But changing that situation is the stuff of elections. Whether or not you or I like it, Trump was elected president.

In seeking to overturn the results of the 2016 electionand Republicans are right, that is the effect of impeachmentDemocrats need to have at least a semblance of national unity behind them, lest the GOP turn the tables next time a Democrat is president. But they don't. Though the Muller report found substantial evidence of an apparent cover-up, it did not make a case for alleged collusion with Russia by Trump and his inner circle. Though Trump in my view did try to shake down Ukraine to damage a domestic political rival, former Vice President Joe Biden, the country is divided down the middle on whether proof of that is sufficient. The votes to convict are not there in the Senate.

The Democrats would have been better off to censure and not impeach. The unprecedented rebuke would help their 2020 nominee, and maybe divide Republicans, making a case for change to voters. Instead, they overplayed their hand.

If Democrats failed to listen to voters, however, Republicans are totally deaf.

Where is the GOP outrage that this president invited Russian and then Ukrainian interference in our election? Where is the objection when this president forbids from speaking aides who could give firsthand testimony about what occurred, testimony that congresses for two centuries have routinely received? Where is the recognition that members of a trial juryand that's what the U.S. Senate isneed to at least try to be impartial and not work as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has to coordinate everything with Trump's defense team?

I'm old enough to remember what happened when a Democratic president, Bill Clinton, was impeached for hitting on a young White House aide and then lying about it. Though he wasn't convicted, leaders of his party here and nationally castigated him. He apologized for his actions. Where's the apology from Trump, the vow not to sin again? It doesn't exist. There is "nothing" to apologize for or express regrets about, only "perfect" phone calls, he says.

Perhaps all of this will be a distant memory in a few months. I fear not. The Trump impeachment has been a fiasco for democracy, on both sides.

See more here:
Trump impeachment is a fiasco for democracy -- on both sides - Crain's Chicago Business