Ecological democracy is a very complex concept, with numerous different aspects and dimensions at different levels of the society.

Some of the present practises and technologies can, during the lifetime of only a few generations, cause serious harm for thousands if not millions of future generations. However, the future generations cannot vote. How do we take such issues into account?

There are usually many different ways of solving the same environmental problems. Different solutions have different social, economic, cultural and political consequences.

Who should decide what type of solutions would be adopted? Who will, for instance, decide how much nature will be protected and how? How much decision-making power should be delegated to the global or regional level and how much to the national level? How much should remain on the municipal or local (village) level? What is the best way of linking these different levels of decision-making together? How can the conflicts between local, national and global level be negotiated?

The control of local natural resources is one issue that has divided opinions among the environmentalists in the South and in the North.

In this respect, the two most important streams of thinking could be called the sustainable use approach and the protectionist approach.

In the North the protectionist approach has been stronger than in the South, and it has dominated the thinking among the environmental organizations and the Green parties that started to emerge on the political map of Europe at the end of 1970's and early 1980's. In the North it has been the former peasant parties, now known as Centre parties, that have based their environmental thinking on the sustainable utilization and local control of natural resources. In the North it has usually been very difficult for the peasant parties and the new Green parties to speak to each other, and they have often drifted into seriously conflicting positions. The dynamics of such conflicts have hardened the attitudes on both sides and led to increasing polarization, which has been extremely harmful from the viewpoint of environmental protection. As a result many Green parties in Europe have adopted a very top-down approach in conservation and environmental protection, which has seriously alienated them from the rural populations. On the other hand rural people have become so frustrated and angry for the Green parties and environmentalists that many peasant organizations and Centre parties of Europe have become much less Green than what they used to be. While the peasant movements in the South have gradually become the backbone of most important environmental movements a similar trend has not yet emerged in the North. On the contrary, many peasant organizations have, venting their anger towards the top-down approach of the new Green parties, sometimes taken vehemently anti-environmentalist stands.

In the South the balance of power has been very different. Issues that have to do with everyday survival, acquiring an adequate supply of food, water, building materials and monetary income are so acute for the majority of the people, that an environmental approach that would not pay any attention to such issues could not attract many followers.

In the South the main stream of the environmental movements has been speaking about sustainable development, sustainable use of forests and farmland, sustainable utilization of fish stocks and wildlife, multiple land use looking for an optimal balance between agriculture, forestry, cattle raising, tourism and nature protection.

All the international environmental organizations were originally dominated by the Northern, protectionist approach. However, while the participation of the Southern member organizations has become stronger, the emphasis has been shifting towards the sustainability approach. This happened first inside IUCN (International Union for the Conservation of Nature) and FOEI (Friends of the Earth International) and slightly later in other organizations like the Greenpeace International and WWF International (World Wide Fund for Nature International).

If there will be more Green parties in Asian, African and Latin American countries, their participation inside the Global Greens is likely to induce a similar shift into the approach of the Green parties, or at least into their international cooperation organizations. This would also bring the Green Parties and the European peasant parties (Centrist parties) ideologically closer to each other, and perhaps lead to the regreening of the Centrist parties.

The shift in the thinking of the international environmental organizations has been accelerated by the United Nations Conference for Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 1992 and the UN Conference on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, the Republic of South Africa, in 2002. It was also accelerated by the "sustainability assessments" that IUCN, WWF and the other international environmental organizations produced during the 1990's. The environmental organizations thought that such assessments would provide new and powerful ammunition for their demands of new, green policies by showing that the existing policies of most governments were unsustainable because they destroyed basic natural resources. It was no great surprise that the assessments supported such conclusions. However, what came as a shock to many Northern environmentalists was that the same assessments were almost as critical also towards the conventional approaches promoted by many environmental organizations.

The weight of the evidence was overwhelming and it was almost everywhere. The same points were repeated over and over again. The assessments emphasized that natural parks and other protected areas would be overrun by people's needs, sooner or later, unless the parks would also serve the needs of the local people.