Participatory governance reform’s necessary to address a slew of existential threats

Humanity seems to have been thrown into a ‘perfect storm’ of several huge challenges such as global warming, accelerating extinction of species, the corona pandemic and uncontrollable migration streams caused by fossil fuel emissions, overexploitation of natural resources, extreme weather, viruses, and ethnic and religious conflicts. On top of this, there are even signs that liberal democracy is in crisis, far from the days when it was proclaimed irreversibly hegemonic [1]. The challenges mentioned are, by many scientists, some world leaders and a broader audience, considered existential threats in need of urgent action, that is ‘securitization’ [2]. As the causes, effects and adequate reactions upon these threats are contested, there are no given solutions how to ‘de-securitize’ them, neither one by one, no less together. In other words, it is ultimately a question of how government and governance configurations globally, at various levels and settings, choose to decide on the road forward. Although world leaders in the Global North have been desperately fertilizing their economies with heaps of money to recover the still largely fossil-dependent ‘Great Acceleration’, there are in this ‘critical juncture’ also windows of opportunity to enter new paths. How do urban public institutions and actors in market and civil society respond to these crises? Do they only try to reinvent old ideas and practices, or do they search for healthier, more sustainable, democratic and just ways of handling major threats and risks?