Democracy and Environmental Sustainability Conference
Location
Stanford Graduate School of Business
About the Sustainability Research Conference Series
The Stanford Initiative on Business and Environmental Sustainability Research Conference Series is hosted by Stanford Graduate School of Business and the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability.
Climate change presents a formidable political challenge to democracies:
The climate crisis is striking the Earth with great intensity. The more severe predictions are materializing sooner than expected, requiring humanity on Earth to rise to decisive and swift action. This crisis is intensifying in the context of what has been defined by the World Economic Forum as the “era of polycrisis,” including economic crises, wars, and democratic crises.
In 2024, 64 countries, home to almost half of the world’s population, held elections, presenting a tremendous challenge in addressing climate change. Effective climate policy requires a steady public dedication to the tasks of mitigation and adaptation, but elections can result in large fluctuations in government support for such measures. In some countries, the recognition of the need for decisive and effective climate policy is a politically polarized issue, as is science-based policy in general, and even facts and truth themselves can sometimes be contentious topics.
Additionally, climate problems spill across borders and jurisdictional lines that then require collaboration between international, national and sub-national entities with sovereign powers.
