Padilla ’21 [Luis-Alberto; 2021; president of the board of the Guatemalan International Relations & Peace Research Institute (IRIPAZ), member of the International Peace Research Association (IPRA), former Secretary General of the Latin American Council on Peace Research (CLAIP), Director of the Diplomatic Academy, Former Vice Minister, former ambassador in Chile, former permanent representative to the United Nations at the Vienna International Centre, former ambassador to Austria, former ambassador to the Russian Federation, former ambassador to the Netherlands, permanent representative to the UN in Geneva, and professor of the Seminar of World Geopolitics at the Faculty of Political Sciences of the Catholic University Rafael Landivar (URL) of Guatemala; Sustainable Development in the Anthropocene, “The Origins of Human and Sustainable Development as UN Paradigms,” Ch. 4.4, p. 181-182] Spark
Democratizingdevelopment could also be the emblematic leitmotiv of sustainable development because the transition from the status of ‘object’ to ‘subject’ can only be achieved as the processes of citizen participationdeepen. This ‘deepening’ is understood here as an increase in participatory democracy and not merely in the formal aspects like competitive elections or political parties, which are necessary but not sufficient on their own. Participatory democracy also implies greater citizen awareness, less paternalism and fewer guidelines imposed from ‘above’, and greater consciousinvolvement of citizens in the decision-making of all matters that directly concern them through referendums or direct democracy.11 In short, sustainable human development that contains this new paradigmatic vision of development also entails transforming the international system in order to reach sustainability in the midst of a dense network of new local economic micro-orders that are based on social solidarity and collective cooperation and not on individualgreed and desire for personal enrichment.
