Reflecting on interacting with a government-led Climate Citizens Assembly
A Citizens Assembly that genuinely empowers ordinary citizens to deeply consider a problem and come up with their own solutions is not the way government is used to doing business.
On the one hand, Citizens Assemblies can simply be a new way to consult citizens over solutions that have already been decided on. On the other hand, they are becoming increasingly seen as an approach to addressing intractable challenges such as climate change. Involving citizens in overarching policy trajectories that have already been decided on is very different to enabling citizens to propose the policy trajectory needed.
As Brett Henning points out, the advantage of the latter approach is that it does not treat citizens as lacking in an expertise that others have (politicians’ in politics, civil servants in policy, deliberative democracy experts in democracy). Instead, it breaks the link with those who already have a definite idea of the outcome they want, and it enables policy trajectory to be decided by those uniquely qualified to be open-minded:
"It's the fact that it’s random that means you break the link with vested interests. . . If you choose people that aren’t the usual suspects, who aren’t typically politically engaged, what we find is that people are aware of their own lack of information and take their role very seriously. They’re really willing and open to change their minds and change their opinions.” (Brett Henning)
In terms of developing genuinely empowering citizens assembly processes, no rules of ‘best practice’ exist. Rather, we are all feeling the way forwards to what can be most constructive in creating a good process with effective results; understanding checks and balances, what works and what doesn’t.
XRS Political Engagement Circle offers this on the basis of our experience of engaging with plans for a Climate Citizens Assembly in Scotland. We had campaigned for it since late 2018, ensured it was mandated by Parliament in September 2019, and early in 2020 we were invited by the civil servants to join the Stewarding Group shaping the Assembly, a group that met – mostly monthly - from March 2020. We ultimately withdrew from this process at the beginning of November 2020, a week before the Assembly held the first of its 6 or 7 weekend meetings (online). We learnt a huge amount from watching the UK and French Climate Citizens Assemblies unfold. We hope that our experience can be of value to others, including within the wider XR movement, in building better and more transformative processes elsewhere.
One overall piece of advice is to be prepared to follow the Assembly process every step of a long journey. We had originally thought that having an Assembly at all was the victory; then we realized that the question to be asked was critical; then the accountability relationships between all the stakeholders in organizing the Assembly; then the detailed content of what was to be presented…. down in the end to the skills and values of the individual table facilitators. There is no one point at which one can sit back and think ‘job done, the rest will take care of itself’. It won’t. You have to argue every inch of the way.
Assembly Process
Issue 1: Effective independence from Government
We need effective open engagement from all relevant stakeholders, as opposed to a carefully stage-managed process which claims independence from government but actually is not.
Tips and Advice:
Beware the language used and be clear what it actually means. For example, what does being ‘at arm’s length’ from government mean in practice? If there is to be a secretariat are they all civil servants? Who are they accountable too? Will their performance still be managed according to civil service rules?
Who is meeting any of the costs of the assembly? How can we be sure that ‘the one who pays the piper doesn’t call the tune’?
Are the roles and responsibilities of the different stakeholders clear? If there is a secretariat, a stewarding/ steering group/ board, a facilitator, a convenor, a group of evidence experts, a design team - what are their respective powers? What can they decide on? Contribute views on?
Who decides who sits on a stewarding group? Are they carefully hand-picked by government, or can civil society choose their own representatives?
Are government processes to be used? Who will keep the official record of meetings? When will those minutes be made available - within a few working days? Will they be government style minutes which tend to be ‘high-level’ and cut out any important record of discussions and names of individuals out of concern that they might be subject to a Freedom of Information request? What would be wrong with a non-government actor keeping the minutes?
Contracting out of services – e.g. of the Facilitator - if the contract is managed solely by government then the power of civil society is clearly diminished.
A better process might have looked at the role of the Facilitator of the Assembly being the neutral party holding the process and the dialogue between all the different players (Secretariat, Stewarding Group, contracted Experts and possibly Convenors). There could also be two co-chairs of the Stewarding group (and of the Assembly?) – one acceptable to Government, and one to civil society, but both being facilitative through having a shared awareness of the enormity of the challenge.
Issue 2: Clarity on Roles, Decision-making, Transparency and Accountability.
Following from the above, to build an open and effective Assembly process, the roles and responsibilities of the different players should be made clear at the outset and adhered to, or explicitly renegotiated as necessary.
In some ways the organization of the CA mirrors that of government - there needs to be decision-makers on the content and direction of the work (like the legislature), people who carry out the work (the executive/civil service), and people who can be appealed to if the implementation isn’t as it should be (judiciary). It doesn’t work well if there is no system of checks and balances such as this.
Appeal could be to overall ‘Co-Convenors’ of the Assembly (provided they are selected in a way which means that the Government and civil society has confidence in them), or an overall Facilitator as described above.
Beware if the executive wants to keep things very much under their control, without scrutiny, with everything just being done on friendly, goodwill terms.
Often the excuse we were offered was ‘we know you are all so busy - you won’t want to be involved in this level of detail’ - when in fact people did want to be involved and were being kept at arm’s length
Issue 3: Design process
CAs take a lot of organizing - the process of selecting the Members, the circumstances of how they meet (virtual or actual - and the logistics of all this), the content of the material they deliberate on, the facilitation of the processes by which decisions are made and recommendations are developed
Tips and Advice:
Whose voices are heard in the design process?
If there is a ‘stewarding group’, ‘steering committee’ or something similar, involving a spectrum of people, who exactly are they? And how were they chosen? Does civil society choose their representatives - or is a letter written inviting certain named organisations and individuals? Who are they accountable to?
Is there any representation from those most affected by the climate crisis?
Is there any prior engagement from the people chosen as Members of the CA? Are they kept separate from the design process until the day they arrive for the first meeting? Or are they able to influence the process?
For which experts are involved in the design, see below
Who decides on the question?
Much has been written on how critical the question is. Rightly so.
Need a good process for this - not just ‘word smithing’ by committee.
Great to design the question through a facilitated deliberative process so that the dimensions of what is needed and the level of ambition that different individuals have, can be fully captured. With the Scottish CCA we did this very well - arriving at 5 different potential questions (product of small group deliberation) all of which had some merit and which collectively enabled us to move from the original question as proposed by government ‘How should Scotland respond to climate change?’ to the final question ‘How should Scotland change to tackle the climate emergency in a fair and effective way?’
Balance: The key to this process was to ensure those in civil society most concerned about the need for transformation to tackle the climate emergency (in this case XR) and those most concerned about minimizing the disruption caused by us tackling the climate emergency (in this case the Government) chose (i) one expert each to speak on the climate emergency and the adequacy – or otherwise – of Government’s response, and (ii) one expert each to speak on the level of ambition you could expect from an Assembly process.
Who decides the content of what is deliberated?
It makes sense to delegate the decisions about detailed content to a smaller group - but it then becomes critical who they are and their perspectives on the question. They need to include experts both in the content and in the process of deliberation - so there is a clear shape and design to what is being planned over the period of the Assembly. They also need to include a balance of experts from both those seeing the need for radical transformation and those seeking to minimize disruption. The reason this is critical is so that the assembly process can then be shaped in a way that navigates between these different truths (rather than ignoring either), and explores how system change might enable us to bridge the gap.
‘Experts’ don’t have to be academics or from think tanks. Expertise in the communication of climate issues - often derived from community level experience can be more useful. They need to be people fully familiar with the scope and range of material - from a wide range of different sources - which could form part of the content of CA sessions.
It is essential that they are named individuals who are all able to devote equal amounts of time to the matter. They need to be people who - besides technical expertise - are committed to the process of deliberation so that they will ensure that a full spectrum of opinions is presented to Assembly members.
It doesn’t work for someone who is very busy just to be prepared to allocate a bit of time to the work of this committee - the risk is that it can be claimed that they were involved, but that their actual influence is minimal. If that particular individual’s input is needed it would be better structured in as a contribution to the deliberation.
Meaningful Co-creation
It is good to generate a shared understanding with all the organisers of what ‘co-creation’ actually means. It is much more than participation in a Stewarding Group - though this can be used as convenient language by organisers whose actual intention is a much more arm’s length arrangement ; it could mean civil society and government co-chair and co-organise throughout; it could mean that people that are interested to engage more fully than others - for example in working alongside, and providing specific input to the designated group of experts would be possible.
This small ‘expert’ group needs to be demonstrably accountable to the wider stewarding group for what they produce. Their work needs to be open for discussion and amendment - not be viewed as the product of experts only subject to small changes at the margins. They need to produce their overall plans, and their more detailed plans for each weekend, well in advance of any decision point, so that their plans are not steamrollered through but are open to being changed by the Stewarding Group, and potentially changed very radically.
Assembly Content
Being led by Science not Palatability
The physics of climate change is not open to dispute, it is the viability of different policy prescriptions which is.
For some, the best use of a CA is as a sounding board for what ‘the public’ would find acceptable as government policy. They don’t have a vision to use the CA to generate any changes which could challenge the status quo.
In the former case the starting point is agreed legislative targets (e.g. net zero by 2045) and the issue is how to reach them. We didn’t get into a confrontation by insisting on XR’s 2025 targets but focussed rather on the CA being led by the science not by previously agreed targets. This potentially opens the door to assembly members being able to argue for more ambitious targets when clearly presented evidence leads in that direction.
Trust the people - listen don’t talk
There is a real danger of experts undermining the Assembly by presenting too much top-down talk.
It isn’t necessary, for example, for people to understand the different between adaptation and mitigation before they get into discussions about what to do. That distinction is important for policy makers and for reporting to the UN, but for non-experts it’s a distraction and could contribute to a sense of disempowerment ‘I’m not clever enough to understand all of this’ - when it’s the very fact of Members coming to the issue with a fresh outlook which is their real value. Failure to trust the assembly members generates a real risk of disengagement by the very people who we most need to hear from.
See below: this 2x2 diagram can be used to highlight the challenges faced by the designers and planners. They are seeking to make the material to be deliberated on accessible to all so that people can ‘relate’ to it - but can easily fall into the trap of making everything about individuals and their behaviour because of an assumption that people don’t find the bigger picture ‘relatable to’ - or possibly out of fear that if the bigger picture is really on the table for discussion then people might actually want to run with its implications, and end up concluding that transformative change (e.g. to the economy) is both necessary and desirable.
Meet people where they are - including Covid
The Covid crisis has left many people feeling vulnerable and anxious - in addition to the anxiety that some in society are already experiencing because of the climate emergency.
We raised this issue several times and were given the clear sense that this is only an issue of individual assembly members and as a ‘risk to be managed’ through the provision of support during the Assembly if required.
In fact, it is an issue that faces us all - and looking at the ‘Discourses of Delay’ - see below - many comments made by organisers show they may actually have been suffering from some of these symptoms.
Much better to have Covid contextualized in the growing evidence that the virus and the climate emergency spring from closely related root causes.
A better process from the outset could have incorporated these concerns into the facilitation of the whole design and delivery, one that acknowledges the profound emotional impact on all of us of living in a time of ecological breakdown where people are increasingly aware that – as the UN Secretary General says “Humanity is waging war on nature. This is suicidal”. Including a recognition that emotional responses are a sign of health not of weakness can contribute to a more transformative approach overall.
Listening to a Spectrum of Opinions
In order not to unduly influence the Assembly, it is critical that a full spectrum of expert opinion is heard, so that they can each be discussed on their merits.
Again, if experts are excluded because of their wish to look at a wider range of possible solutions than the current market-based ones then the spectrum is being irrationally narrowed.
If it is acceptable to include plans for carbon capture and storage which are not currently viable at scale as part of government’s proposed plans then why are other as yet untried solutions arbitrarily excluded?
Looking at the Drivers of Climate Change
The assembly needs to consider not only market-led or government-acceptable solutions but need to have the chance to consider transformative solutions that may at this point (prior to the severe disruption caused by ecological breakdown) seem unwanted by citizens and government. This thinking is becoming daily more mainstream - with even David Attenborough talking about the problem of capitalism and the profit motive (e.g. in this 3 minute BBC interview)
Systems change: Language
The logic of looking at the drivers of climate change is looking for solutions in terms of systems change. Beware also of the use of language at this point. We may be thinking that the implication of systems change is about de-growth and post-capitalism, but the language is also used very lightly, and ‘systems change can also be used to refer to much more modest adjustment of an existing system rather than transforming or abandoning it.
We also found some government colleagues using the language of systems thinking as a way of avoiding the use of systems change. Systems thinking might, for example, make the connection between toxic gas emissions on busy roads and the load on the health service locally, so that reducing the former has benefits and cost savings for the latter. Some of this could be quite innovative for a civil service trained to work in ministries and departments which are siloed from each other. But actually the level of ambition in this is fairly low - again it is aiming to adjust the system not transform it. More ambitious thinking would be asking why is it that our roads are still so crowded? who is using for what goods and services? What is the connection (or lack of) with the individual and collective well-being we aspire to?
Systems change: divide and avoid
Beware the risks of a design which proposes to divide assembly members into parallel groups discussing different elements of the challenge we face: groups might include for example, diet and lifestyle, energy and transport, energy and housing etc.
There is indeed a huge amount of potential content for an assembly to cover, but by dividing the Assembly up, the different sub-groups are individually less likely to be representative of the country as a whole, and unless the Assembly as a whole has already been able to consider the scale and nature of the transformations that are possible, then these are likely to be siloed processes because each group will be assuming that their proposals largely have to fit within business-as-usual continuing in the other groups.
There is usually the intention to bring the groups back as a whole to hear the recommendations that have been developed by the different sub-groups. The could be the point at which Assembly members join the dots and see the big underlying causes and the need to tackle system change holistically, but unless it is carefully facilitated to that end, it is much more likely that the discussions go down the route of discussing the merits of the individual recommendations and whether the Assembly as a whole wants to adopt them.
Influencing through Leaving
If, after all the above, and all the steps you will have followed, you still feel that you’re part of ‘green-washing’ an inadequate response to the climate emergency, you’re better off leaving than damaging your principles and reputation by staying.
The effect on those who stayed
We know that our leaving shook the Secretariat. They at least started using the language of doing some of the things we were asking for. It’s currently too early to say if they will stick to their words. Our hope is that they now ‘prove us wrong’ by inviting Julia Steinberger to speak, although they won’t do this at the key point it is needed. We strongly argued that she, Jason Hickel or other alternative views on how to reshape economics needed to be heard in week two after assessing the level of crisis we are in, the current policy response, and so deciding how deeply we need to transform the economic drivers, before considering any of the areas in which those drivers play out (e.g. work, transport, land use, etc.)
They tried to make us seem unreasonable, saying they were ‘bemused’ as to why we would leave when they’d “done so much to take on board what we were saying”.
While we were in the Stewarding Group, we often took the flack for needing to repeat points again and again that the Secretariat seemed determined not to hear (from process points, e.g. about the need for minutes of meetings to be circulated between meetings – they weren’t, to content points). Leaving has meant some, including Members of Parliament on the Stewarding Group, have stepped forward, perhaps out of concern the process may be seen as a waste of tax payers money rather than as a cutting edge experiment in deliberative democracy.
Make a Splash - Reach the widest public you can
We didn’t go quietly. Apart from social media this is some of the coverage we secured.
Bella Caledonia article on why XR are leaving the Scottish Climate Citizens Assembly:
National article on why XR are leaving SCCA:
XR article in National on why leaving SCCA:
BBC news piece on us leaving CA: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-54830823
Keep faith with Assembly Members
Part of the intention of the media coverage was to inform Assembly members that there’s a bigger picture than the story they’re being told. There may be the potential for them to move from being passive recipients of the process that has been designed for them, into making demands of it - through asking for additional information, other experts, a wider set of view-points. For example, there is the possibility for the Scottish Climate Assembly to meet over 7 weekends not just 6. This could just be window dressing by the Secretariat to show they are willing to be flexible, or it could be an opportunity for Members to make real demands of how that weekend is used.
Be open to thinking through the implications for our movement
We have set a lot of store through our third demand for governments to do the right thing and set up a Citizens Assembly. What if this is not the way forward? If governments have shown themselves unable to bring together a credible response to the climate emergency, and if they in practice simply co-opt Assemblies to become a part of weak ‘citizen engagement strategies’, policy sounding-boards, window-dressing and green washing, then what?
Maybe we have to do things ourselves - maybe organize People’s Assemblies to help develop proposals, which can then be presented to citizen-led Citizens Assemblies, if we can find the resources for a sortition process and to organize a full Citizens Assembly. What do we need to do to be able to have the credibility and traction to do this? And to invite government along to learn?
Kate Dyer - katemaarifa2@yahoo.co.uk and
Justin Kenrick - justinkenrick@yahoo.co.uk
4th December 2020