NOTOur societies have entered a cycle of forced transformation under the constraints of climate change. They will emerge with a diminished or strengthened democracy depending on whether or not we demonstrate a collective capacity to manage in a fair and shared way the tensions which will inevitably increase.
Awareness of the correlation between democratic practice and the management of imposed physical constraints has not yet replaced traditional political governance resulting from the advent of the social contract which requires that any strategy of change is carried out by law, regulation and the authoritarian norm, in the name of equality, and a posteriori when freedom has failed.
No one any longer believes in upstream consultation and exchange mechanisms which rarely produce the dynamic compromises that we so desperately need. We have reached a level of distrust such that we are convinced that the “green industry” could not see the light of day in the current state of local residents’ rights and that the accumulation of possible remedies is incompatible with a new balance of multiple interests to be arbitrated.
The cursor slides towards urgency, and good intention justifies attacks on the founding principles of environmental law such as transparency and the interest of local communities. We are failing, citizens and elected officials at the same time, in building a democracy of stakeholders capable of producing reasonable accommodations when it is necessary to reconcile contradictory principles.
We do not use the binding contract enough
However, behind the sum of the small local failures that we allow to occur, it is democracy that we assassinate in the name of efficiency or radicalism; we want to believe that it can only be direct or representative. But it still needs to keep alive the social pact, resulting from the rationality of law and the attachment to living together which is more necessary than ever, to lead to forms, certainly unsatisfactory for everyone, but saving for the collective. .
A French reason explains this: we do not use enough the binding contract, the evaluated provisional agreement, and all the forms of supervised local experimentation; However, they constitute tremendous possibilities for adjusting reality to what is desired and for co-constructed solutions to emerge. What the unilateral rule, top-down moreover, never brings.
This is what is happening to the detriment of the agricultural world, which is right to put its thumbs up when environmental pressure impoverishes it. The problems arise less from the merits of the measures than from the method chosen, especially when it is accompanied by biodiversity police to control the way in which farmers exercise their profession.
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