Enfranchising the Earth, and its Alternatives

Greens have always favoured grass-roots participatory democracy, but it has never been clear in terms of their fundamental environmental ethic why they should. An argument for doing so is developed in familiar liberal terms of equal protection of interests. First it is shown that nature has ‘interests' as deserving of protection as anyone else's. Then it is shown that notions of ‘encapsulated interests’, discredited in other connections, are the appropriate way of conceptualizing those interests politically. Finally, it is argued that discursive participatory democratic practices are most likely to evoke such encapsulated natural interests and secure representation for them in political deliberations.