The conservation strategy known as "rewilding" could be the way to restore the health of politics, suggests Monbiot

We are trying to keep our minds and hearts a little distanced from the great, grinding machinery of progressive re-evaluation that’s going on, after the recent UK General Election result.

We feel that A/UK’s focus over these last three years - on the importance of local control and autonomy; on behaviours and practices that reduce polarisation; on being literate in the deep emotions that drive our public behaviour; on powerful technology put at the service of full humanity; on the transforming urgency of the climate crisis deadlines… All of this is even more relevant than before the vote. 

But we do find that the environmental writer George Monbiot, out of all the mainstream commentariat, is the one who most often chimes best with our interests and practice (we’ve quoted him often these pages).

Here he suggests that our response to the terrible spectacle of top-down representative politics, across many countries, can only be countered by what Monbiot calls a “political version of ‘rewilding’” (a conservation concept on which he’s written a book). See below:

We must stop seeking to control people from the centre. At the moment, the political model for almost all parties is to drive change from the top down. They write a manifesto, that they hope to turn into government policy, which may then be subject to a narrow and feeble consultation, which then leads to legislation, which then leads to change.

I believe the best antidote to demagoguery is the opposite process: radical trust. To the greatest extent possible, parties and governments should trust communities to identify their own needs and make their own decisions.

Over the past few years, our relationship with nature has begun to be transformed by a new approach: rewilding. Bizarre as this might sound, I believe this thinking could help inform a new model of politics. It is time for political rewilding.

When you try to control nature from the top down, you find yourself in a constant battle with it. Conservation groups in this country often seek to treat complex living systems as if they were simple ones. Through intensive management – cutting, grazing and burning – they strive to beat nature into submission until it meets their idea of how it should behave. But ecologies, like all complex systems, are highly dynamic and adaptive, evolving (when allowed) in emergent and unpredictable ways.

Eventually, and inevitably, these attempts at control fail. Nature reserves managed this way tend to lose abundance and diversity, and require ever more extreme intervention to meet the irrational demands of their stewards. They also become vulnerable. In all systems, complexity tends to be resilient, while simplicity tends to be fragile.

Keeping nature in a state of arrested development in which most of its natural processes and its keystone species (the animals that drive these processes) are missing makes it highly susceptible to climate breakdown and invasive species.

But rewilding – allowing dynamic, spontaneous organisation to reassert itself – can result in a sudden flourishing, often in completely unexpected ways, with a great improvement in resilience.

The same applies to politics. Mainstream politics, controlled by party machines, has sought to reduce the phenomenal complexity of human society into a simple, linear model that can be controlled from the centre.

The political and economic systems it creates are simultaneously highly unstable and lacking in dynamism; susceptible to collapse, as many northern towns can testify, while unable to regenerate themselves. They become vulnerable to the toxic, invasive forces of ethno-nationalism and supremacism.

 But in some parts of the world, towns and cities have begun to rewild politics. Councils have catalysed mass participation, then – to the greatest extent possible – stepped back and allowed it to evolve. Classic examples include participatory budgeting in Porto Alegre in Brazil, the Decide Madrid system in Spain, and the Better Reykjavik programme in Iceland.

Local people have reoccupied the political space that had been captured by party machines and top-down government. They have worked out together what their communities need and how to make it happen, refusing to let politicians frame the questions or determine the answers.

The results have been extraordinary: a massive re-engagement in politics, particularly among marginalised groups, and dramatic improvements in local life. Participatory politics does not require the blessing of central government, just a confident and far-sighted local authority.

Is this a formula for a particular party to regain power? No. It’s much bigger than that. It’s a formula for taking back control, making our communities more resilient and the machinations of any government in Westminster less relevant.

This radical devolution is the best defence against capture by any political force. Let’s change the nature of politics in this country. Let’s allow the fascinating, unpredictable dynamics of a functioning society to emerge. Let the wild rumpus begin.

More here. We also note, in passing, Adam Ramsay’s piece in Open Democracy which describes the strategy which opposes this level of turbulent, bottom-up engagement: Boris Johnson made politics awful, then asked people to vote it away.