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SOCIAL PARTICIPATORY PLANNING �ON THE QUESTION OF THE CLIMATE CRISIS��

FIKRET ADAMAN

Economics, Boğaziçi University, Istanbul

PAT DEVINE

Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Manchester

SASE, Montreal

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The de-facto situation of the climate crisis

Capitalism contributes to both social injustice and ecological degradation, with the climate crisis and biodiversity loss being the most urgent consequences.

Pursuing of profit and economic growth comes at the expense of environmental well-being and social equity.

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Whys?

Reaching a meaningful agreement at the global level has consistently proved problematic because the countries taking part are very unequally placed in terms of their (historical) contribution to greenhouse gas emissions and their political and economic power, and have primarily pursued their own national interest, often dominated by corporate interests.
Furthermore, there is no agreement on a common set of values and principles to inform the negotiations, such as convergence on equal per capita entitlements, and the major powers are in thrall to the dominant petrochemical and coal corporations.
At the other end of the spectrum, the local level, there are contradictory forces in civil society, such as movements for and against fracking and inland wind farms.

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An additional epistemological layer

An additional layer about the current impasse on the climate crisis is the epistemological position of mainstream economics vis-à-vis the global warming problem (in fact all ecological issues).

The argument of mainstream economics is that the use of fossil fuels and emission of greenhouse gases are under-priced, with the result that they are overused and overproduced, a situation of market failure.

The solution is then proposed as the development of various schemes that correct for this market failure, by increasing price, such as carbon pricing, or a carbon tax, or a market for permits to pollute in a cap-and-trade system.

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We posit that the mainstream economics approach effectively ignores uncertainty, incommensurability, ecological rights, historical responsibilities, and distributional inequity and poverty, and that its policy recommendations, particularly that of carbon markets, are naïve, failing to take account of social, ecological and economic reality.

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Way forward

We claim that a necessary condition for achieving social control over economic activity and a sustainable relationship between human activity and non-human Nature is social ownership (viz. all stakeholders affected and being affected by economic decisions) of the means of production and ecological resources.
Reliance on the market mechanism for decisions pertaining to investment and disinvestment cannot overcome the anarchy of production and does not provide a framework for conscious social decision-making in relation to human flourishing and ecological sustainability. Thus, the need for planning (and our critical stance vis-à-vis market socialism).
Furthermore, we suggest that social ownership needs to be combined with participatory planning in order to coordinate interdependent decisions and consciously shape them in accordance with society’s values and priorities.

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Participatory planning

Participatory planning should be distinguished from top-down, hierarchical technocratic planning and from computer-based iterative models seeking to aggregate the preferences of individuals or workplaces and communities.
It is based on procedural rationality and conceived as a deliberative democratic process (involving negotiations to take into account differing interests/values and coordinating interdependent decisions).
One should start from the basic principles of

a politically and economically self-governing society,
participatory decision-making procedures as the norm,
subsidiarity being promoted,
equal distribution of resources and power according to need.

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Effective social planning in relation to climate change would involve all those affected by the decisions to be made, the countries making up the entire global population.
Through a multi-layered structure there would be negotiations between the social owners of the climate commons over how the necessary reductions 0f greenhouse gas emissions should be allocated, taking account of the different circumstances of the participants in the light of an agreed set of common values.
At that stage, the allocations for each country would then be disaggregated and implemented through a layered decision-making structure, with all those affected at each level participating.
Since major changes in lifestyles, urban design, the relationship between town and country, technology, food provisioning, and so on, would be involved, the changes would take time, and priorities would need to be agreed.
Only by participating in the discussions and decision-making processes through which these issues are addressed, can people, in their multiple roles as citizens and stakeholders,

come to understand the issues involved,
recognise the interests of others,
and become aware of the need to reach agreement on the far-reaching changes that will be necessary.

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Capitalism is clearly incompatible with ecological sustainability and global justice, and there is a long way to go before eco-socialist planning based on participatory deliberation and negotiated decision-making might become possible.
An important part of the political process through which that possibility might be realised will be the development of public debate about the issues involved and public understanding of the radical changes that are necessary, the crucial part of transitory issues.

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Democratic planning �through negotiated coordination�

Social ownership not capitalist nor cooperative ownership

Subsidiarity

A structured, integrated, multi-level system

Procedural rationality and deliberative institutions

Abolition of the social but not the functional division of labour

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This presentation is based on:

Devine, P. (1988). Democracy and economic planning: the political economy of a self- governing society, Cambridge: Polity Press.
Adaman, F. and Devine, P. (2017). “Democracy, Participation and Social Planning” (with Pat Devine). In Clive Spash ed. Routledge Handbook of Ecological Economics: Nature and Society.
Adaman, F. and Devine, P. (2022). “Revisiting The Calculation Debate: A Call for a Multi-Scale Approach”, Rethinking Marxism.
Devine, P. (2024).“Ecosocialist Freedom through Participatory Democratic Planning”, The Routledge Handbook on Karl Polanyi (Book), Chapter 31, M. Cangiani and C. Thomasberger (eds), Routledge.