As part of a unique initiative of its kind, citizens of the country will be invited to participate in the Global Citizen Assembly ahead of next year’s COP26 Climate Summit in Scotland. The objective of this initiative is to bring together millions of people from all over the world and discuss what strategies the world should adopt to deal with the climate crisis.
Citizen Assembly is fast emerging as an effective and popular medium to help governments deal with climate crisis. These are forums that are chosen through lottery. Because of this people from demographically diverse groups gather on one platform and discuss a policy issue over a large period of time.
This gives them an opportunity to learn more about the issue. There is also an opportunity to test the information of experts and to engage in conversations with people representing different aspects and to discuss with their fellow participants about possible ways to move forward. This process allows for very fine-grained debate and acceptance of policy recommendations and decisions by the public. In a survey conducted after the recent French Climate Assembly, 62% of French people who heard about this assembly supported the recommendations made in it. At the same time, 60% of the people believed that the suggested measures would be effective.
It is worth noting that this initiative has the support of the United Nations and is led by Rick Wilson, founder of Involve, the organization that runs the Climate Citizens Assembly of the British Parliament earlier this year. The team working to implement this global assembly includes experts from Canberra University’s Center for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance, including Nicole Curatto and Dr. Simon Niemeyer, Brett Hennig, co-director of the Sortition Foundation, and Bian Bilsta, deputy director of the Danish Board of Technology. Contains a whole group of.
This huge gathering of Scotland will take place in two parts. The first part of this will be in the form of online co-assembly. It will consist of 1000 people representing an accurate demographic picture of the world’s population. At the same time, the second part will be in the form of programs organized at national, regional or local level which will be fully connected to the core assembly. Everyone who participates in this huge gathering will get a chance to speak on the final recommendations.
Those invited to participate in the core assembly will be selected through a lottery and the organizers hope that any citizen of the world can be selected. This means that a worker from an Indian factory could work with a bus driver working in France to work out a plan to deal with the climate crisis.
Oscar-winning Mark Rylance will help implement a ‘Crowdfunder’ to ensure that the Global Citizen Assembly is financed by those for whom it is being organized. This assembly will require money to meet many technical and other requirements. These include expenses on translators and equipment needed for participants and expenses on care of children of those who would not be able to participate in the event with their children.
Such meetings can also be seen as a means of balancing the growing impact of mass information shaped by misinformation, social media, polarization and excessive partisanship and mistrust of experts.
Although such climate public meetings have been held at the national level in the past, but no such assembly has been worked out at the international level so far. At the same time, there has been no such citizen assembly in which anyone from any corner of the world can attend. This aspect makes it one of its kind unique experiment in democracy. It is expected that during the Climate Summit to be held in Glasgow next year, the Heads of the World will not be able to ignore such focused discussions by the general public in this International Assembly.
French President Emmanuel Macron last year invited 150 citizens elected via lottery to discuss ways to cut the country’s carbon emissions by at least 40% by the year 2030. For over nine months this assembly listened to over 130 experts to help answer technical questions. In this assembly 149 measures were suggested, including measures like completion of energy restoration work in all buildings by the year 2040. Many of these measures were considered far more ambitious than France’s previous policy action plan.
The Canadian province of British Columbia also convened a Citizen Assembly on election reforms, which successfully suggested a way to hold the referendum. In addition, there was a national debate on constitutional reforms in the Irish Citizens’ Assembly on issues of voluntary abortion and gay marriage.
High Level Action Champion UNFCCC, COP 26 Nigel Topping said “The Global Citizen Assembly is the biggest news of its kind ever for COP 26. It will build new relationships between people around the world. Also new between citizens and leaders Relations will form. Such efforts are necessary to make COP 26 truly ambitious. “
Professor Nicole Curato of Canberra University’s Center for Delhi British Democracy and Global Governance said “The Global Citizens Assembly to be held for COP 26 is a great opportunity to pave the much-awaited creativity ambition and legitimacy in our climate good governance systems. This is one of the best It is designed on the basis of available evidence and represents a behavioral mechanism to fundamentally improve international climate decision making. “
Susan Nacking Lee, a member of the core team of Global Assembly COP 26, said “While the younger generations are frustrated with rising temperatures and ecosystem faults, we are also desperate to continuously recycle old political solutions. When I get to the Global Assembly When I found out, I could not believe that such an entity had not yet been formed. A global gathering for COP 26 not only seems necessary but also feels like a common sense. “
Rick Wilson, founder of Involve and director of the OSCA Social Impact Lab, said, “From climate to COVID-19, it is becoming increasingly clear that our international governance systems are facing difficulties to cope with multiple crises in the current era The Global Assembly is not a single project but is a new part of the structure of good governance. It aims to mentally prepare its leaders for leadership, along with ensuring their leaders’ understanding of the changes, because every time Somebody has to play his role. ”
The international debate on climate has long been dominated by powerful minorities. Now the time has come to end it. The Global Citizens’ Assembly is by far the largest experiment in global democracy. This is as ambitious a step as the crisis before us.
Claire Mellier, member of the core team of Global Assembly COP 26, said, “We will bring many new voices to the Global Assembly that have rarely been heard before. They may not be going to agree with the conditions we are going through Or do not agree on what we should do next. However, we will listen carefully to people so that real understanding can come out and when this happens we know that new possibilities will come to light, which will show that we will get together What can we do.”
Bian Bilsta, deputy director of the Danish Board of Technology said “The foundation of the Global Citizens Assembly for COP 26 rests on what we learned from the World Wide Views projects in Copenhagen and the Paris COP. This time it is different that we give citizens our policy We are giving an opportunity to come out with the agenda. We have multilingual, multicultural discussions and we are ready to be 100% digital. ”