October 8, 2024
📰 FEATURE STORY
Can Climate Assemblies help accelerate the fight against climate change?
Tackling climate change and global warming is an all-hands-on-deck undertaking. No one group, country, government, or organisation will succeed alone. It’s why stakeholders from across the board are often involved when discussing climate change. Perhaps the most important component here is people. People, especially vulnerable populations, are the most affected by climate change. They deserve to drive the conversation.
This is where the concept of Climate Assemblies (CAs) comes in. CAs are groups formed by everyday citizens and residents to lobby for climate policies and action. Their use has surged in recent years around the world and across various levels of government. It’s a bottom-up approach to tackling an urgent issue. Can such an approach work?
Context
Next year will mark a decade since countries assembled in Paris and finally agreed to get serious about averting a climate disaster. The Paris Agreement was seen as historic and a landmark moment in the fight against climate change. It was and remains so. However, it hasn’t been smooth sailing since.
Countries agree that structural reforms are needed to transform sectors like energy and transportation. Still, the investments aren’t being made fast enough. To be sure, countries often walk a tightrope. Introducing climate policies can trigger a backlash. Either the business community aren’t happy since it could restrict their work, or communities rebel since it’s perceived as unjust and inequitable.
On a broader scale, policies are often seen as pitting one side against another – the Global North versus the Global South or the old against the young. Put social media into the mix, and you’ve got an echo chamber of misinformation and polarised rhetoric. It boils down to this – most people agree about the problem at hand but disagree on exactly how to solve it.
A possible solution is to allow citizens to participate in climate policies designed by governments. It’s seen as a bottom-up approach rather than having climate policies imposed by technocrats from above. These “citizen assemblies”, as they’ve come to be known, usually approach the issue in three phases – the learning phase, the listening phase, and the deliberation phase.
They’re basically a form of deliberative democracy where people are allowed to increase their participation, which exists neither in the electoral arena nor in partisan politics. There’s always been a gap between public opinion on one hand and policymakers and the judiciary on the other on some hot-button issues.
Certainly, the kind of people elected to form governments at all levels play a vital role in shaping and implementing climate policies. In that way, elections will continue to play an indispensable role. But there’s an understanding that elections aren’t and can’t be the grand solution, particularly in tackling climate change.
As citizen assemblies are being seen as an important part of the discussion, the question is, how effective can they be?
VIEW: They’re invaluable
Climate assemblies are necessary to address climate change – an issue that people agree is urgent. One survey across 18 G20 countries stated that 71% of respondents agreed that immediate action is necessary to reduce carbon emissions. Only 39% believed that their government would act effectively. The survey also stated that 62% of people in those G20 countries favour climate assemblies for decision-making. That’s above 70% in countries like Indonesia, Mexico, Brazil, and South Africa.
Climate assemblies have been present across Europe for a while. In some cases, they were initiated by legislators to counteract the growing distrust in governments. In Ireland and France, for example, they’ve been instrumental in decisions to legalise abortions, permit same-sex marriage, and pursue ambitious climate policies. Through education and deliberation, ordinary citizens find common ground on important or divisive issues. The recommendations are often more ambitious than those proposed by policymakers.
One example is Brazil’s participatory approach, which has been a game-changer. Its Climate Plan is being developed through federal government ministries with scientists, the private sector and civil society. The climate participatory platform, with its in-person and digital exchanges, was launched to invite people to give solutions. The goal was to move climate policy away from sources and arenas of polarisation. It’s perhaps the best way for people to come together to demand and take action.
COUNTERVIEW: Can be very imperfect
Citizen participation is the hallmark of a democracy, however messy that can sometimes be. Citizen assemblies are a good way for people to make their voices heard by those in the halls of power. However, governments are the ones who ultimately have to implement policies, and they can be varied in how they handle recommendations. They can take all, some, or none of them at all. Take the UK, for example. It only loosely adopted some of the proposals from a 2020 assembly to frame its Sixth Carbon Budget.
Such assemblies might not work how they’re supposed to everywhere. There’s a belief that deliberating about divisive issues with people of different political views can be less productive in the US, for example, where polarisation is at an all-time high. There’s an inherent scepticism about these assemblies and the feeling that they’re “pushing an agenda” and, by design, are manipulated spaces or could be vulnerable to influence by activist groups and governments.
Practically, even with the best recruitment practices, it’s not easy to get a broad representative sample of the public. That’s especially true for low-income and marginalised groups that don’t have enough spare time for assemblies and discussions. Here’s an interesting scenario – what if the broader public disagrees with a citizen assembly recommendation? The simple answer is to go with the majority. It could be unwise to listen to 100 people over millions of others.
Reference Links:
- Getting Climate Citizens’ Assemblies Right – Carnegie Europe
- Citizens’ Assemblies on Climate – Simon Fraser University
- The Case for a Global Climate Assembly – Project Syndicate
- Climate assemblies – the fastest road towards climate action? – UNESCO
- The Community-Driven Climate Solutions Making a Difference – Next City
- The messy politics of local climate assemblies – Springer
- Can Citizens’ Assemblies Heal America’s Broken Democracy? – Atmos
What is your opinion on this?
(Only subscribers can participate in polls)
a) Climate Assemblies can help accelerate the fight against climate change.
b) Climate Assemblies can’t help accelerate the fight against climate change.
Previous poll’s results:
- The Samsung strike will dent the state and India’s image as a manufacturing hub: 43.7%
- The Samsung strike won’t dent the state and India’s image as a manufacturing hub: 56.3% 🏆
🕵️ BEYOND ECHO CHAMBERS
For the Right:
‘Influenced by politics’: Why a Muslim man’s conviction for ‘love jihad’ is bad in law
For the Left:
Prashant Kishor’s Jan Suraaj Party mustn’t be AAP of Bihar. Let’s hope no anarchy, corruption