The French ecological revolution: what are the future prospects for ecological politics?

By Alessandro Mengozzi

images: http://www.greens-efa.org/index.htm | http://www.organicworldfoundation.org/

The Verts in France undoubtedly achieved a great electoral success in the European Elections: the 16.28% (2.8 millions of votes) obtained by Europe Ecologie along with the 3.1% taken by Alliance Ecologiste IndÈpendante (a three Green party coalition of the centre-right) has alone equaled the result of the Green Italian party “Sinistra & Libertà” (a recent political alliance which, besides the Verdi, is made up of Sinistra Democratica and a break-away group from the Rifondazione Comunista led by Niki Vendola); a whole ecological political identity expressed by 20% of the French voters is a noteworthy result.

The success of the French Greens, however, is not a particularly new sign and it is not generalizable to other European Greens: the Greens in Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Sweden and the UK, attained their best results historically, but without significant growth. In Southern Europe, their performance was as poor as ever. The high abstention rate (60%), too, doesn’t come as a surprise: since 1979, when just 62% of Europeans voted, abstention has always been on the rise, in linear progression almost everywhere, in France, as well as in Germany, in Italy, in Great Britain, reaching the current European mean of 43%. So, what prospective for political ecology do these elections suggest?

The political ecology movement in France is among the continent’s oldest. Nature & Progres, the French organic farming association was set up in 1964 and thanks mainly to the initiative of its president Ronald Chevriot, the IFOAM was founded in 1972; one year after the birth of the American Friends of the Earth, Les Amis de la Terre was founded in 1970, later supporting Renè Dumond as candidate for the presidential election of 1974 (he obtained only 1.32% of the vote, but made the French aware of ecological issues and the ‘developpement durable’ principle). From Daniel Cohn-Bendit, leader of the French May ’68 protests and distinguished for its anti-nuclear prophecies during the struggle against projected power plants in the mid-seventies, to Josè Bovè who from 1973 to 1976 revived the sheep farming on the Larzac Plateau in successful protest against the proposed expansion of a military camp; the history of French environmentalist is long and glorious. We cannot help but remember, too, the militants of Greenpeace, one of whom lost his life at the hands of French intelligence officers in 1985 while campaigning against nuclear tests in Mururoa.

French green political adventure has always achieved remarkable electoral results if not relevant political achievements. To quote only few areas: France remains one of the historical nuclear pioneers – not only in the civil sector – and is one of its greatest esteemers; and as regards incinerators, GMO and the privatization of public utilities such as water, hardly less so. The amount of hectares farmed organically is much less than in Italy and Germany, and as a percentage is below the EU15 mean. It is better not to speak of pollution or any particular attention to sustainable mobility. In France, perhaps, more attention has been paid to infrastructures and relative spatial planning along with care for the landscape, though we can hardly credit the Greens for that. It could be due, rather, to a national administrative and technocratic tradition(1).

Under Red Danny, the French Greens had already obtained 9.7% of the vote at the 1999 European elections with a corresponding result at the local elections of the same year. This fell to 7.4% at the 2004 European elections but the 11.54% at the 2008 local elections was a cause for optimism. But electoral analysis is complex and several factors need to be taken into consideration, starting from the scale of the event.

Some ingredients have been decisive: starting with defining the project in such a way as to unite – as much as possible – all green-leaning movements, a well organized electoral campaign, a pedagogic TV presence (see the new documentary Home(2), broadcasted on prime time, shortly before the elections). Furthermore, Europe Ecologie, rather than focusing on a single charismatic leader, utilized an authoritative facilitator who shares the platform with others in a collective show of leadership, putting others out front as needed, finally, it reinforced its action through a network of local groups. These strategies played a decisive role. It was not easy, in a country where the main parties also deploy a rich inventory of proposals on the environment and had already signed extraordinary pacts on the occasion of the last French presidential elections such as the States-General of the Environment(3).

This agreement followed a series of debates held by the Ministry of the Environment leading to a draft approved in October 2008 now waiting for final approval after a second parliamentary reading: it includes green labels, education plans for building energy saving, taxes on transports, help for the development of river/rail transport, a sea protection plan, support for renewable energies, and so on. They do not, however, include nuclear energy and GMO: according to Sarkozy, projected nuclear and GMO development plans could be at the most temporarily frozen but not abandoned as strategic options.

Unfortunately, the transition to a green economy and the achievement of ecological goals is always more problematic in a right wing Europe and green success is relative to the failure of a historic ally. The great loser in Europe, and above all in France, is the Socialist party. The PS lost of 6.7 million votes (in respect of the first ballot of the 2007 presidential elections) as declared by SÈgolËne Royal on 5th of June 2009, in her first speech after the elections. They polled just 16.4% against the 28.9% in the 2004 EU elections. At the October 2008 Reims Socialist convention, Martine Aubry won the party leadership contest over Segolene Royal by just a handful of votes and this could have stopped the difficult renewal process which Mrs Royal has been leading with dogged dedication since 2005 as president of the Region of Poitoi-Charentes and as creator of the project Dèsirs d’Avenir that she leads with her staff, outside the party, which focuses on participatory democracy. This might be defined as a political research project which aims to identify and test the right methods in involving people in politics and policy-making, without advancing ideological dogmas and closed policies, a scheme also partly adopted by Sarkozy’s UMP. As such, this leaves no uncovered space where potentially exclusive use of an original stance could gain much public attention. They not only talk about participation and debate, in the country of the DÈbat Public, they practice it, too: those who do it in more pedagogical and local forms (through force of circumstances) – Mrs Royal – also annoying some executives of her party with her suggestion of setting up citizens’ juries in order to evaluate the work of elected representatives(4); and those who do it in more technocratic and pragmatic ways – the UMP – on circumscribed goals.

Looking at the style of the two main actors, Mrs Royal adopts a more inclusive egalitarian and solid approach, aimed above all at the young, the elderly, women, fixed-term contract workers and immigrants. She is inspired by academic sources on the one hand (based on accredited methodologies) and popular sources on the other (thanks to contacts with participationist movements and the experiences of Latin America). However Royal’s project was met with criticism for its vagueness – hardly unexpected considering the difficulties involved in communicating abstract and liquid methods such as participatory ones. The UMP, for its part, adopts largely participatory techniques when elaborating its policies, involving boards of bipartisan experts (e.g. the famous Attali commission and les Atelies du Changement) as well as open debates on bioethics or local community reforms, whether in a direct form or via the Internet (agit’ pop). They adopt a more pragmatic approach, perhaps less inclusive, less aimed at social conflict mediation and at individual and social lifestyle change: the environment is very important but actions favoring its protection must always be geared to saving jobs, business and profits.

The implementation of participatory democracy at local level is widespread enough among French municipalities, but they are basically consultative with poor results as regards empowerment, as occurs in the DÈbat Public; still, it is practiced by over 70% of French communes with more than 5000 inhabitants and with no relevant differences amongst political wings(5). Experiences at local level are good indicators, but, apart from being not fully satisfactory, they do not play a relevant role, at least up to now, on the European scale. This could explain the strong electoral abstention as well, which has been continuing on its historic decreasing trend.

The Greens also propose more democracy (such as referendums) in the institutions, but they argue for it in an almost shy, and therefore inefficient, way towards local groups. It is left languishing on the web, because by now requirements of feedback are almost taken for granted but the search for mediation on complex issues (such as ecological questions) does not appear to be one of their main concerns. Their attention is mostly focused on definite and compact proposals; at the bottom of a long list of green (and red) ideas – “The Ecologist Contract for Europe” – we can find three instruments: an ecological-social restructuring agreement, sustained by a special board for economic, financial and social security, accountable to the EU Parliament, and a new European constituent process. The participation style of the Greens is less problematic, more managed from the top, and less open to bipartisan issues of governance. Consequently their proposals are more detailed and complete. This approach works well in electoral campaigns if your opponents do not feel like proposing and preparing in time a political programme constructed by the people; this happened to the PS, when it rejected SÈgolËne Royal’s methodologies and her plans for renewal. On the other hand, UMP which has been practicing this approach is reaping the benefits, with the advantage of ruling the national government and having greater resources, responses and visibility.

Les Verts have the possibility of improving their local structures and implementing a quality participatory democracy through which they can mediate and identify, as is their strength, the key challenges of the future. The ecology as a theme is an argument of almost all political organized forces; we should define some priorities as argued by the Lomborg positivist environmentalism or we should redefine our desires and lifestyles as argued by the Latouche radical critical environmentalism. They can try to mediate these streams and promote new alliances with the socialists and the veterans of socialism. France has always been an interesting political laboratory, a place where political movements are often forerunners of sweeping changes. I do not think that the Verts, as things stand, are the current spearhead: they are logging behind in terms of participatory practices; they have managed to involve the biggest environmentalist associations but, remain a movement which has swollen from enthusiasm, without the rootedness of the Socialist party, or the Labour and trade unions, or the German greens which are based on a wide network of companies and green initiatives. Having managed to make the fragmented environmentalist movement converge to a common aim is a great success, but they need more. They should ally themselves with the Socialists and open up to a wider mediation and participatory democracy.

What about the Italians? The Italian Greens have lost a lot of their electorate engaged in the biggest environmentalist associations (Legambiente and WWF) and in community-based groups (comitati) to Italia dei Valori (the party led by Di Pietro), after nods from Grillo and Travaglio(6). The green electoral reservoir, still with a strong green philosophy and little inclined to mediation, remains thriving in Italy. The last elections, though, have disassembled the previous deployments; I believe that, right now, an Italian green political identity, exclusively green (an autonomous ecologist force) would be misleading and ineffective on all levels. The age of political trademarks – however successful and beautiful – counts for little as the new project Europe Ecologie shows. We need to understand who intends to pursue a hard-line political challenge and who prefers to dilute its message and programmes and open them up to democratic participation, putting forward that as its principal value; this could be the project of the present century, while hardcore green politics remain an issue of the late twentieth-century.

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(1) It is worth noting that Germany, Sweden and the UK have all made nuclear choices that have undoubtedly favored the development of relatively stronger Green movements.
(2) Arthus-Bertrand, Y., Home, 2009
(3) See, Le Grenelle de l’Environnement (the States-General of the Environment) promoted by Nicolas Hulot, a very popular television reporter.
(5) Lefebvre, R., La démocratie participative selon Ségolène Royal, CERAS, n°296, january 2007.
(6) Premat, C., The implementation of participatory democracy in French communes, French Politics, vol. 7, n°1, april 2009.
(7) Grillo is a famous comedian and Travaglio a critical inspired provoking journalist. In 2007 they launched a series of initiatives, which have created several followers claiming for an Italian renewal, labeled by embedded observers as “anti-politics” phenomenon.