Exploring the Power of Climate Assemblies
Image credit: Climate Assembly UK
A climate assembly is a variation on the form of a citizen’s assembly. Interest in the idea of Citizen’s Assemblies has been growing internationally and is seen as a way of increasing the democratic participation of ordinary people in the decisions that affect them.
It is where communities of people come together to hear the evidence, listen to and express views and debate the issues before making a collective decision about the way forward on a particular subject. It doesn’t necessarily replace normal democratic politics but can feed in a much better sense of what matters to communities when they engage in serious discussion.
Why the growing interest?
The rise of populism has shown that there is a growing disillusionment in the way contemporary politics works. The 5-year election cycle mitigates against taking decisions for the long term and the need for re-election makes hard choices more difficult to make – especially in the divisive political landscape we now experience.
Voters often feel alienated when their views don’t seem to be making a difference and so opt out of the democratic process and tire of the top-down consultation processes they are subjected to.
How have Citizen’s Assemblies been used to date?
There have been quite a few major assemblies organised in the last 10 years, and they have been very varied in size and scope.
Image Credit: The Irish Times
The most famous one is probably that organised in Ireland in 2016 which was run on a national basis with people from all ages, genders and walks of life. It tackled issues that were impossible for the political parties to make decisions about. These included abortion legislation, fixed-term parliaments, referendums, population ageing and climate change. It resulted in overwhelming support for changing the law on abortion in Ireland, something that was then enacted because it proved that the majority of people wanted it to happen once they had carefully listened to the arguments.
Other assemblies have included one in Greater Cambridge in 2018 to consider traffic congestion, air quality and public transport. One in Northern Ireland in the same year to consider the shape of civil society and Climate Change Assemblies have been held in Westminster, Oxford, Leeds, Camden and most dramatically on a national scale in France.
What would one based around Climate issues look like?
Previous Climate Assemblies have taken quite varied approaches, both in terms of the questions being debated, the numbers of people involved and the means of selection of those taking part.
Some Assemblies have been arranged around aspirational questions like ‘What kind of future do we want’ or ‘What are the challenges’ and ‘What type of information is needed’?
Others have worked with sets of themes. The French National Climate Assembly had five themes. These were transport, food production, housing, work production and consumption.
True assemblies are based on a process called sortition. This is where invitations are issued on a random basis to invite a true and fair cross-section of the population where the assembly is taking place. Sortition is an expensive and time-consuming process so sometimes the invitations as issued on other criteria. The Leeds Assembly was recruited based on attitude for instance.
The numbers of people taking part have also varied from a large 150-participant cohort in the French Assembly down to 25 attendees in the smaller ones. A more regular number is 50 or 60.
Here in Nottingham. there is a potential for a climate assembly. With four years to go, we are rapidly approaching the City Council’s aim to be Carbon Neutral by 2028.
Holding a climate assembly would give communities a say in what was happening.