Why a Planetary Parliament?

Around 2 million animal and plant species are threatened with extinction and the planetary boundaries have already been exceeded in many cases. Despite these developments, there is no political solution in sight. The laws to protect nature are currently not sufficient to stop the rapid global extinction of species. This is partly due to the fact that nature is heavily marginalised in legislative processes as it is not represented in parliament. This also harms us humans, because without a sufficient diversity of animals and plants and intact ecosystems, we cannot survive.

Another challenge in solving global problems lies in the fact that decisions involving almost 200 sovereign states must be made according to the unanimity principle. This means that all states can threaten and use vetoes. Such voluntary agreements based on the consensus principle, as are common in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, for example, take a long time and are usually not sufficient to solve the problems. This is because nation states often pursue their own interests, block each other and shirk their responsibilities.

How can the Planetary Parliament work?

We live in an earth system that consists of a multitude of natural spaces and living beings. The different species and regions can be grouped together and each group is given a seat in parliament. In this way, representatives of frogs, trees, rivers and mountains can negotiate laws that protect the interests of their entities.

With our initiative, we want to initiate a scientific and social discourse on how such a representative body can be designed and developed as effectively as possible. We propose establishing the Planetary Parliament at the United Nations as a second chamber, alongside the United Nations Parliamentary Assembly (UNPA). While the UNPA deals with intergovernmental and human issues, the Planetary Parliament can deal with Earth system issues.

The Planetary Parliament is not intermingled or fused with the executive branch. This is to overcome government-opposition dynamics, which would not help to represent the planet as a whole. The right of initiative, i.e. the right to introduce bills, is exercised by the parliamentary groups instead. The Planetary Parliament is also not dependent on conventional parties. Political processes can therefore be characterised more by cooperation than competition. The nomination of candidates can be taken over by environmental protection organisations instead. Instead of nominating people from their own ranks, external experts with the best suitability, like scientists or members of indigenous communities, can be nominated. The focus would then not be on maintaining and expanding power, but on competing for the best ideas

In our policy paper, we show in detail what a Planetary Parliament could look like.

Our demands!

Because the establishment of a Planetary Parliament is a highly complex project, we want to take small, manageable steps along the way. As a first step, we call for the development and establishment of an institutional mechanism for the political representation of nature at European level. Our proposal is the creation of two EU Commissioners for the protection of living beings and natural spaces. Environmental protection organisations (as defined in Article 11 of the Aarhus Regulation) should be able to nominate external candidates for the two seats who would then be elected by Parliament in the same way as the other Commissioners.

In the medium term, we call for the creation of an EU Nature Parliament as an additional legislative body as part of a separate decision-making procedure for legal acts that affect the integrity of nature.

In the long term, we call for the European Union to participate in the development and introduction of a Planetary Parliament. In this supranational parliament, all living beings and natural spaces should be politically represented. The European Union should use its diplomatic relations to win over other nation states and multinational organisations for cooperation.