Political institutions in the Anthropocene
Résumé
Human institutions developed during the unusually stable Holocene epoch of the past 12,000 years. Its successor is the Anthropocene, the emerging epoch in which we live, defined by human activity decisively affecting the parameters of the Earth system as a whole. As a result of human actions and interventions, the global environment will become more unstable and susceptible to potentially catastrophic state shifts. Our established human institutions must now adapt to Anthropocene conditions or be discarded. Existing dominant practices and institutions (such as states and markets) suffer from pathological path dependencies. They generate forms of feedback that reinforce their own indispensability but are themselves insensitive to the condition of the Earth system. This chapter explores what can be done, in Australia, the only continent in the world to be governed by a single (albeit federal) state. What does the Anthropocene require of Australia's political institutions?
✦ The key antidote needed for established institutions to adapt their behaviours is ecological reflexivity (Dryzek and Pickering, 2019). Reflexivity means the capacity of an institution, structure, or set of ideas to reflect on its own performance and core commitments, and if necessary, transform itself in response. Ecological here means openness to feedback on the condition of the Earth system, and the capacity to anticipate and forestall potentially catastrophic state-shifts in that system.
✦ Ecological reflexivity is the first virtue needed for social institutions in the Anthropocene. It cannot be reduced to sustainability or more effective environmental policy, but requires instead deep recognition, reflection and response.
✦ Recognition means listening for changes in socioecological systems, monitoring human impacts on those systems and anticipating changes and impacts in the future.
✦ Reflection means learning from past success and failure, the capacity to rethink core values and practices and envisioning possible futures.
✦ Response means the rearticulation of core aims, values, and discourses, and reconfiguration of functions and practices.
✦ Reflexive institutions need to demonstrate that democracy and justice can be preserved (and advanced) in the Anthropocene. The contours of both democracy and justice will need to be re-thought.
✦ Planetary justice must also be addressed because of the inequality of suffering that follows from an unstable Earth system.
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