05/02/2026

Climate versus democracy: obstacles facing democracies in managing the climate crisis

by Cristina Monge

The climate crisis is undoubtedly the greatest challenge facing humanity. How it is managed could help strengthen democracy or, conversely, could strain it to the point of damaging or breaking it.

Although democracies continue to be more effective at managing environmental problems than totalitarian regimes, it is also clear that they have difficulties in addressing this challenge. Identifying these difficulties and attempting to resolve them is key both to the success of environmental management and to the strengthening of democracies themselves. Specialised literature has identified problems specific to democracies when it comes to managing the climate crisis. They refer to the two spheres of advanced democracies: public conversation and decision-making.

A high-quality public conversation

The complexity of the climate crisis makes it difficult for democratic societies to manage it without suffering. Having sufficient knowledge to understand both the crisis and the transition, and making that knowledge accessible to all citizens, is key to its success.

This scientific knowledge available to society must be translated into quality information, which means tackling any hint of misinformation. According to the European Commission, climate misinformation ¹ is defined as the intentional dissemination of false information related to climate change and measures to combat it. Aware of the variety of cases of misinformation, authors such as Almiron & Moreno (2022) warn of the need to create different categories that represent the diversity of attitudes that are usually hidden under the generic term ‘misinformation’. From sceptical positions based on pseudoscientific ideas, to obstructionism that seeks to hinder environmental policies, to ‘delayism’ that seeks to delay climate policies, all of these fall within a framework that undermines confidence in science, weakens public support, hinders implementation and, ultimately, weakens democracy.

Although this phenomenon has been increasing in quantity and impact, it is not new. Already in the IPCC’s Second Assessment Report on Climate Change, published in 1995, there is a reference in the foreword to the problem of misinformation as a tool that hinders communication in environmental science. In the sixth report (2022), the document dedicated to mitigation includes among the relevant areas of research that require further study: ‘The impact of the media—both traditional and social—on climate change mitigation, including the role of misinformation.’

On the other hand, in the Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament, the Council, the European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions COM (2024) 91 final, Managing climate risks; protecting people and prosperity, climate misinformation is cited among the factors accelerating climate risks. The Commission then commits to taking action to combat disinformation by analysing its influence on behaviour, using relevant communication tools and approaches, etc.

Various studies² on climate misinformation on digital platforms reveal a variety of strategies, including both denialist and delayist discourses, the involvement of influencers in different areas such as wellbeing and spirituality, the emergence of campaigns at specific times such as the COP27 conference and others of a more permanent nature, etc.

Some traditional media outlets and, more recently, new digital channels have acted as vectors for the dissemination of misinformation. The work of Supran & Oreskes (2021) is revealing in this regard, as it shows how ExxonMobil’s argument, based on the rhetoric of climate ‘risk’ and consumer energy ‘demand’, normalises dependence on fossil fuels and individualises responsibility, as the tobacco industry did before. It also reveals how ExxonMobil paid the New York Times to publish editorial-style advertisements between 1989 and 2004.

Misinformation has also been facilitated by a misunderstood rule of balanced media coverage, in which climate science experts and deniers were represented equally, something that makes no sense from the point of view of debate and the quality of information. Would anyone consider it necessary to invite a flat-earther to debate with a geographer?

Finally, in recent years, social media has contributed to the spread of misinformation about climate change by amplifying obstructionist, delaying and denialist discourse. Sometimes, they do so by taking advantage of the lack of public scrutiny of messages that only reach a group of recipients willing to believe environmental hoaxes via instant messaging. In other cases, they make no attempt to hide their anti-scientific attitudes.

As for the strategies employed, sowing doubt is one of the most commonly used, but it is not the only one. There are also campaigns and actions that seek to downplay the importance of the climate crisis, make people believe that it is impossible to tackle it, or divert attention and blame the problem on individual behaviour.

Behind many of these disinformation strategies are corporate and political lobbies that have deliberately launched these campaigns in line with their interests. According to the analysis of denialist literature carried out by Jacques et al. (2008), of the 141 books published between 1972 and 2005 that promoted environmental scepticism, 130 were associated with conservative think tanks from Australia to Canada, including Europe, South Africa and the United States.

Decision-making here and now

Western liberal democracies are firmly anchored in the axes of modernity, space and time. Their space is enclosed by the borders of states, which may be more or less complex, but are always precisely defined. Time is the period between elections, during which commitments are made and accounts are rendered. Climate change transcends both of these limits.

Let’s start with space. The quintessential sphere of democracies is the state, with its different levels in the case of composite states. On this basis, authors such as Gerratt Hardin (1968) spoke in the 1970s of the “tragedy of the commons” to highlight the difficulty for individuals and states to cooperate in order to achieve the best environmental outcome for all. The response to Hardin came from Nobel Prize-winning economist Elinor Ostrom with her research on how, under the right circumstances, people tend to cooperate and create rules to manage shared natural resources rather than acting out of pure self-interest.

Global governance of climate change is an example of complex, open, participatory and networked governance, which has both advantages and significant obstacles. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) itself is an example of this, to which must be added a whole series of agreements between other public and private actors and networks for technical and political cooperation. Generally accused of failing to achieve binding results that lead to the immediate implementation of agreements, it is interesting to ask whether it would be possible to tackle a global challenge such as this in another way.

If space creates these obstacles to managing the climate challenge, the other major challenge has to do with time. When a candidate runs for election, their commitments, programme and value proposition are set within a limited time frame, generally four or five years, and their accountability to the public corresponds to that time frame. It is very difficult to incorporate a long-term perspective from the point of view of accountability in our democracies (Held, D. et al, 2011). This is especially true if the ecological transition is presented within a paradigm of sacrifice and renunciation.

In the current situation, there is an opportunity to mitigate this handicap by considering adaptation policies, which seek to solve present problems, as allies of mitigation policies, which look to the future, thereby reinforcing their impact.

On the other hand, entities such as the European Union may offer an alternative, given that their governance model and the balances on which it is based can help to reconcile present decisions with long-term perspectives and strategies.

With this objective in mind, institutions such as Ministries of the Future, Commissions of the Future, etc. have also emerged, which attempt to engage in foresight exercises and look to the future. If they manage to go beyond the usual forward-looking exercises, they can help to articulate a high-quality public conversation around the ecological transition, although the increasingly evident consequences of the current climate crisis suggest that these policies should be presented as urgent necessities of our times. Time, which had been a handicap in the periods established for accountability and the election of public representatives, ceases to be so from this perspective.

There is a third handicap that is not exclusive to democracies, but which affects them particularly badly: corruption. Several studies show the harmful effects of corruption on environmental policies. In fact, it is one of the factors that undermines the effectiveness of democracies in their climate performance. Political scientist Marina Povitkina has compared 144 countries and studied their carbon dioxide emissions alongside their levels of democracy and corruption. According to her study, democratic governance only affects emission levels in countries where corruption is low. Conversely, if corruption is high, democracies do not perform better in terms of climate action than authoritarian states (Povitkina, 2018).

When the state is weak, institutions are unable to develop and enforce environmental policies and regulations, are more easily subject to policy capture, and authorities have more difficulty controlling and prosecuting illegal activities such as environmental crimes. To make matters worse, corruption leads to the erosion of tax revenues, further undermining governance capacity.

Transparency International reports identify evidence of state capture in decarbonisation policies with regard to the adoption of carbon taxation; of large-scale institutionalised corruption in the transition to renewable energy; and of transnational corruption through foreign bribery in relation to biodiversity loss, among others.

On the other hand, expert reports point out that the large amount of funding currently allocated to climate policies, as well as the new instruments created for this purpose and the necessary collaboration between the private and public sectors, which is essential to address the climate challenge, have increased the risk of corruption (Nest, 2024).

The consequences of large-scale corruption in climate change policies are numerous: environmental degradation, health risks and human rights violations are the most commonly cited. It should not be forgotten, however, that they also cause delays in greenhouse gas mitigation and even increases in greenhouse gases, as well as delays and inefficiencies in adaptation, which can endanger communities through the construction of non-resilient infrastructure (Resimick 2022, Nest 2024).

In short, while democracies are more effective at managing challenges such as climate change, they also have handicaps that need to be overcome. Unlike totalitarian and authoritarian states, if democracy fails to manage the climate crisis, it can suffer considerable damage.

References:

Comité Económico y Social europeo y al Comité de las Regiones COM (2024) 91 final, Gestión de los riesgos climáticos; proteger a las personas y la prosperidad

Hardin, G., 1968. The tragedy of the commons. Science, 162 (3859): 1243–1248, Doi: 10.1126/science.162.3859.1243

Held, D., Hervey, A., (2011): “Democracy, Climate change and Global Governance: Democratic Agency and the Policy Menu Ahead.” en Held, D., Hervey, A., Theros, M., The governance of climate change. Polity Press, 2011.

IPCC (1995): Segundo Informe de Evaluación sobre el Cambio Climático .

IPCC (2022): Sexto Informe de Evaluación sobre el Cambio Climático

Jacques, P. J., Dunlap, R. E., & Freeman, M. (2008):The organisation of denial: Conservative think tanks and environmental scepticism. Environmental Politics, 17(3), 349–385.https://doi.org/10.1080/09644010802055576

Maslen, C. (2024): Ensuring integrity in the response to extreme weather and climate events, Transparencia Internacional

Moreno, J. A. ., & Almiron, N. (2022): Lobby por la (in)acción: Emergencia climática, grupos de interés y negacionismo. Ámbitos. Revista Internacional De Comunicación, (55), 6–7

Nest, M. (2024): Atlas Climate and Corruption Atlas: Lessons from Real-World Cases, Transparencia Internacional

Povitkina, M., ‘The limits of democracy in tackling climate change’, Environmental Politics,27/3 (2018), pp. 411–32,  https://doi.org/10.1080/09644016.2018.1444723

Resimick, M. (2022): Grand corruption and climate change policies, U4 Helpdesk Answer, Transparencia Internacional. 

Supran & Oreskes, 2021, One Earth 4, 696–719 May 21, 2021 ª 2021 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Inc. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.oneear.2021.04.014

Biografía de la autora:

Cristina Monge es licenciada en Ciencias Políticas y Sociología y doctora por la Universidad de Zaragoza. Sus áreas de interés son la sostenibilidad  y la calidad democrática, y en especial la gobernanza para la transición ecológica, asuntos que trabajo en centros de investigación como Globernance, BC3, la Fundación Atelier ITD, o en el patronato de Ecodes, de Fundesplai y de la Fundación AVANZA. Es docente en la Universidad Complutense de Madrid y el AP Institute. Desde el año 2020 preside la asociación “Mas Democracia”.

Es analista política en El País, Cadena SER, RTVE, Infolibre y el Green European Journal, forma parte del consejo asesor de Llorente y Cuenca , de DIRSE, de Transparencia Internacional y de la revista Ethic.

Es autora de 15M: Un movimiento político para democratizar la sociedad (2017), y ha coordinado la obra colectiva Tras la indignación. 15M: Miradas desde el presente (2021). También es coautora, junto con Raúl Oliván, de Hackear la Política (2018), y con JJ Verón de La Iniciativa Social de Mediación de los conflictos del agua en Aragón (2019). Además, es co-editora de la colección Más Cultura Política, Más Democracia(Gedisa).

Note: This article is an automatic translation of the original text written in Spanish. In case of any discrepancies or differences in meaning, the original version should be consulted.