Understanding social processes that disable political systems from addressing climate and natural emergencies is key to combating climate and natural crises. People need to be included in decision-making processes as without people’s agreement, we cannot advance in decision-making.
Deliberative democracy means the possibility of citizens to influence decision-making processes between elections. A Citizens’ Assembly using deliberative democracy is formed by using sortition to select members from different ages, classes, and regions to debate on policy. After expert presentations and facilitated deliberative discussions, the assembly members draft robust policies for the parliament to consider.
A Citizens’ Assembly is a political mechanism developed to ensure citizens of all backgrounds have been consulted in a more ample way than permitted by mere voting. Climate assemblies engage with the creativity and imagination of the public directly, both to ensure better policymaking and to improve acceptance of decisions which will have significant effects on our day-to-day lives.
Citizens’ Assemblies have gained traction because our political systems and institutions developed in the 17th and 18th centuries are no longer equipped to handle a long-term vision needed to counter long-term pernicious problems like the climate and nature crisis. Renewal processes are not written into party politics, and it is difficult for parties to renew themselves in the face of accelerating transnational processes in the economy. This means that the power of companies and lobbies is stronger than the people who have granted the politicians their vote.
There is a surge of localised demands happening in Global North countries, where Citizens’ Assemblies are being used in an increased manner to build trust and to collectively create decision-making processes that are compelling, fair, transparent, morally legitimate, emotionally intelligent, “decolonised” and culturally diverse.
Citizens’ Assemblies to tackle the climate crisis and biodiversity loss have been organised in the UK in 2020, France, Poland and the Republic of Ireland/Éire in 2022, for example.
Some philosophers even propose that Citizens’ Assemblies could become permanent features of the parliamentary system, regularly convened to tackle problems related to climate and nature crises.
Deliberation process, what it is?
Democracy is not just about voting, but also about meeting people face-to-face to deliberate on hard decisions, which would require adjustment in many people’s lives. Participatory policies have been proven to be a fruitful way to consider different viewpoints and decrease polarisation.
The deliberation happening during gatherings of the randomly selected participants allows for compromise over trade-offs as people can deal face-to-face with the benefits and the hindrances of a specific policy.
Meeting together face-to-face could also allow a vision to emerge more rapidly. Indeed, research shows that when measuring people’s attitudes to climate change, the world is in “pluralistic ignorance”, wherein individuals around the globe systematically underestimate the willingness of their fellow citizens to act.
69% of the global population expresses a willingness to contribute 1% of their income, 86% endorse pro-climate social norms and 89% demand intensified political action. Countries facing heightened vulnerability to climate change show a particularly high willingness to contribute.
Hence, were people given a chance to deliberate whether they would prefer the environment over their wallet, they would most likely prefer the environment. What we need is just equal terms for everyone. Citizens’ Assemblies are precisely the places where these can be deliberated and agreed on.
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) defines Representative deliberative processes or ‘deliberative processes’ as an ‘innovative method of fostering participation in government.’
Based on their extensive research, the OECD have amassed a wealth of evidence from which they have extracted good practice principles for public decision-making. Read the first empirical, comparative study to consider the workings of representative deliberative processes for public decision making and discuss the case for their institutionalisation. Through the case-studies the report details why deliberative democracy is needed to tackle questions that are difficult to handle in the current global political atmosphere:
https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/339306da-en/index.html?itemId=/content/publication/339306da-en
Example of the French Citizens’ Assembly
In January 2019, in the midst of the Yellow Vest protests triggered by the rise of the eco-tax, the Gilets Citoyens and Democratie Ouverte handed to president Emmanuel Macron a proposal to create a Citizens’ Assembly for the climate. The Citizens’ Assembly was set to debate the measures for achieving a reduction of at least 40% of France’s greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, based on the levels of 1990.
In July 2019, the Prime Minister Edouard Philippe nominated the Conseil Economique Social et Environnemental to organise the Convention.
Among its 149 proposals, the 150 randomly selected citizens in the Citizen’s Assembly called for three referendums: two constitutional changes and one to introduce the crime of ecocide in the French penal code. The Ecodice law got written into law in 2021.
Another suggestion of the Assembly was changing the preamble of the Constitution by adding the following clause: “The reconciliation of the resulting rights, freedoms and principles must not compromise the preservation of the environment, the common heritage of mankind”
Read more about the French Citizens’ Assembly for the Climate on its homepage: Site officiel de la Convention Citoyenne pour le Climat
and
https://www.democracy-international.org/final-propositions-french-citizens-convention-climate
https://www.dw.com/en/frances-citizen-climate-assembly-a-failed-experiment/a-56528234