Democracy for a Sustainable World

Wednesday, January 21, 2026

3:00-4:00 pm (Eastern)

Vanderbilt Hall 208 and via Zoom

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About the event:

The path to global sustainable development is participatory democratic global governance – the only truly effective path to confronting pandemics, military conflict, climate change, biodiversity loss, and potential overall ecological collapse. Democracy for a Sustainable World: The Path from the Pnyx, explains why global democracy and global sustainable development must be achieved and why they can only be achieved jointly. It recounts the obstacles to participatory democratic global governance and describes how they can be overcome through a combination of right representation and sortition, starting with linking and scaling innovative local and regional sustainability experiments worldwide. Beginning with a visit to the birthplace of democracy in ancient Athens, a hillside called the Pnyx, James Bacchus explores how the Athenians practiced democratic participation millennia ago. He draws on the successes and shortfalls of Athenian democracy to offer specific proposals for meeting today’s challenges by constructing participatory democratic global governance for full human flourishing in a sustainable world. 

About the speaker:

James Bacchus is Distinguished University Professor of Global Affairs and Director of the Center for Global Economic and Environmental Opportunity at the University of Central Florida. He was a founding judge and was twice the Chairman – the chief judge – of the highest tribunal of world trade, the Appellate Body of the World Trade Organization. He is a former member of the Congress of the United States, from Florida. He has served at every level of human governance in significant legislative, administrative, and judicial roles of responsibility. Democracy for a Sustainable World was listed by the Financial Times as one of the "Best Books" of the summer of 2025. Among his five previous books, two others, The Willing World and Trade Links, also appeared on the “Best Books” lists of the Financial Times. In 2024, he received the prestigious Weeramantry International Justice Award for his service, his scholarship, and his commitment to international law, peace, and sustainable development, and for his global humanism and leadership in the law.

Professor José Enrique Alvarez will be the moderator.