Swiss voters reject green overhaul of economy

The price of prosperity? Swiss voters care about the environment, but they don't want to dismantle how the economy functions in order to save it. Keystone / Laurent Gillieron

Citizens on Sunday overwhelmingly said no to an ambitious proposal by the Young Greens to bring the country’s economy into line with “planetary boundaries”.

The final rejection was even heftier than pre-vote surveys had predicted: in the end, 69.8% of voters rejected the “environmental responsibility initiative”, and not one of the country’s 26 cantons came out in favour. Turnout was around 38%, well below the average of 45%.

Support was likely confined to left-wing and ecological circles, gfs.bern’s Lukas Golder told Swiss public television, SRF, on Sunday. Among other voter groups, however, there was clearly no appetite for such a “drastic” proposal – even if climate and the environment remain important issues for many, Golder said.

The initiative, brought by the youth section of the Green Party, had called for a constitutional amendment requiring the Swiss economy to respect “planetary boundaries” – a scientific concept of thresholds beyond which nature can no longer regenerate itself.

To achieve this, things like CO2 emissions, biodiversity loss and water usage would have to have been seriously curbed – for example, the country would have had to decrease its per capita carbon footprint by over 90%, Greenpeace Switzerland estimated.

Backers of the idea, including the left-wing Social Democrats and a coalition of NGOs, did not concretely say how all this would have been achieved, though they said it should be done in a “socially acceptable” way and within a ten-year timeframe. Parliament would have been responsible for working out the details.

Right goal, wrong approach?

On Sunday, the Young Greens complained that the result marked a victory for “defenders of the status quo”, who were ignoring scientific warnings about the scale of ecological crisis. The opposition campaign had used “scaremongering” tactics to divert attention away from planetary protection and onto economic fears, the Young Greens said in a press release.

Other supporters struck a more moderate tone. Social Democrat Linda De Ventura told SRF that the outcome was to be expected; initiatives by youth parties invariably struggle at the ballot box, she said. However, the result was “not a statement against climate protection”: previous popular votes in favour of new climate and electricity laws show that Swiss citizens want to make progress, she said – just not in the form proposed in this case.

On the opposition side, Maxime Moix, vice-president of the youth section of the Centre Party, agreed on this. Voters care about the environment, he told Swiss public television, RTS. However, they want to protect it “pragmatically” – not in a way that will seriously worsen their quality of life, and not within such an “unrealistic” timeframe.

Indeed, throughout the campaign, opponents – the government, a majority in parliament, and business groups – argued the initiative would be ruinous for the state’s finances. Firms and jobs could be tempted to move abroad, while consumers would face higher prices, the government said. “Much of what constitutes the current standard of living in Switzerland would have to be given up,” it wrote.

Others even warned that the scale of the reforms needed would effectively turn Switzerland into a developing economy. “We would destroy Swiss prosperity and revert to an economic level similar to countries like Afghanistan, Haiti or Madagascar,” parliamentarian Nicolas Kolly from the right-wing Swiss People’s Party said.

Scant attention

The sense that the vote was a foregone conclusion might have been one factor behind the low-key campaign. According to Année Politique Suisse, a research group at the University of Bern, media coverage was well below average; other reasons for this may have been the low campaign budgets (on both sides) and “competing media events” such as the resignation of Swiss Defence Minister Viola Amherd, announced in January.

Whether the initiative could yet have a lasting impact on public opinion remains to be seen. In the Swiss direct democracy system, even failed proposals can sometimes claim success if they manage to foist a new idea onto the agenda – whether it’s Universal Basic Income, the abolition of the army, or – in Sunday’s case – the concept of planetary boundariesExternal link as a guide to ecological stability.

Edited by Reto Gysi von Wartburg/ts

With input from Keystone-SDA/SRF/RTS