Climate Assembly for the City of Nottingham
There is currently a plan to organise a Climate Assembly in Nottingham and to base it around the City Council’s aim to be Carbon Neutral by 2028. This is an ambitious plan and to date (2023) we are about halfway there with four years to go. Most of the progress so far has been made by the City Council working with its own estate and encouraging businesses to get involved. The reductions in Carbon that are necessary over the next four years will be much harder to achieve and need everyone in the city to take part.
The issue is that there has been only limited engagement with the wider population of the city and that has been organised by the Council and seen as very top-down by some.
Holding a Climate Assembly in the city would give people in the communities a say in what their priorities are in taking action and allow them to contribute ideas themselves.
How would a Nottingham Climate Assembly be developed and organised?
The Nottingham Green Partnership has taken an initial lead on this and asked Nottingham Climate Assembly, a not-for-profit group of volunteers that promote assemblies to help with the basic organisation and fundraising to make it happen.
Nottingham Climate Assembly are thinking of two parallel strands to the Assembly process.
Strand 1: Reaching out into the communities to develop the idea with local people
The intention is to partner in a series of listening and consultation sessions with local community groups and their members. These events will run right up until the main assembly and provide a steer as to the kinds of issues that should be considered in the Assembly itself.
Once the Assembly has taken place, further outreach events will be planned to take the ideas from the Assembly back into the communities.
Strand 2: Organising the Assembly
This will involve things like setting questions, appointing facilitators and inviting experts and stakeholders. To manage this an Oversight Panel will be formed. The actual sortition exercise and the organisation of the Assembly will be conducted by professional organisations that are set up to do this kind of thing, and their services will be tendered to get the best value for money.
Eventually, the Assembly members, chosen randomly like a jury but representing the communities of Nottingham, will be asked to come to several meetings to hear evidence around the set questions and then discuss and deliberate their shared answers. These will form a Manifesto which will then be presented to the City Council and Stakeholders in the City (represented in the Nottingham Green Partnership) who will then be expected to take on board the implications of the Manifesto.
To give a sense of what the manifesto might look like, see below, for part of one from a Youth Climate Assembly that was run by Nottingham Climate Assembly in 2022.
How would a Nottingham Climate Assembly be financed?
It is estimated that the cost of running the Assembly will be in the region of £150,000. The aim is to raise this from kind, financial donations, grants and a crowdfunding appeal.
There have already been substantial donations promised from both Universities and other educational organisations as well as a number of climate-concerned organisations, with several others taking a donation to their boards.
Nottingham Climate Assembly will now be ramping up the process of writing to potential donors and applying for grants with the Crowdfunder being launched in the new year.