Should animals be included in democratic decision-making about climate change?

As extreme impacts from climate change are having adverse effects on the lives of both humans and animals, the idea of including animals as co-authors of democratic decisions has gained some momentum in recent years (Cochrane 2010; 2012; Garner 2016; Magaña 2022; Saunders 2012: 286). According to some proponents of this view, we ought to institutionalize some democratic mechanisms through which the interests of animals can be adequately represented in policy-making. This idea of democratic inclusion of animals, however, faces several problems. In this paper, our aim is to take a step backwards and turn to these problems by asking a more general question that, surprisingly, has received little attention in the discussion of including non-human animals in the democratic process: to what (if any) extent is the political inclusion of animals a democratic challenge to climate change? We outline two possible ways of answering this question. The first line of reasoning claims that it is not a challenge since the political inclusion of animals is not important enough to address the issue of climate change. The second view, on the contrary, claims that successfully addressing climate change proves to be an even more onerous challenge if animals are to be democratically included. A proponent arguing for extending the political inclusion to animals, however, might sidestep these problems by arguing that to respond to the climate crisis, we ought to politically include animals to effectively vote against climate-harming policies. We argue that we can answer this objection handily if we keep the proper conception of political equality in mind. Some democratic theorists have recently claimed that equality of political status "embodies a commitment to publicly respect all citizens’ capacities as political agents" (Wilson 2019: 71) that requires citizens to actively consider the views of their fellow citizens throughout democratic decision-makings. We defend this conception of political equality and, in doing so, argue that animals should not be included in democratic decision-makings. References: Cochrane, A. (2010). Introduction: Animals and Political Theory (pp. 1-9). Palgrave Macmillan UK. Garner, R. (2016). Animals, politics and democracy. The political turn in animal ethics, 103-117. Magaña, P. (2022). Nonhuman animals and the all affected interests principle. Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, 1-24. Saunders, B. (2012). Defining the demos. Politics, Philosophy & Economics, 11(3), 280-301. Wilson, J. L. (2019). Democratic equality. Princeton University Press.