Case study: Citizen participation in environmental policies
This article was written by Pénélope Caron
Introduction.
The right for citizen participation in the environmental decision-making process has been recognized in the Rio Declaration of 1992, and the Aarhus Convention in 1998. They have set a legal framework ensuring to all public actors the right to access environmental information and justice in environmental matters. More recently, the need for “responsive, inclusive, participatory and representative decision-making at all levels” are part of the 2030 United Nations Agenda for Sustainable Development.
Climate emergency has been at the center of concerns and political discussions in recent years. Informal forms of citizen participation such as climate protests and strikes took place all around the world putting pressure on private actors, policy makers and world leaders to take actions on climate change. Movements such as Youth4Climate are giving the opportunity to citizens under-30 to be part of the talk, using tools aimed to enhance open information and transparency. Citizens are also increasingly using formal means to participate in climate policy, such as referendums, petitions, consultations and participatory budgets.
In response to making space for citizens participation, countries such as Ireland, France, and the United Kingdom are using deliberative processes to build environmental policies. While these democratic mechanisms are on the rise, are they a solution to tackle climate change and are they enough to restore citizens’ confidence in our modern democratic institutions?
Citizen assemblies 4 Climate
One of the most striking recent examples this year is the Citizen’s Climate Convention which emerged out of the “Yellow Vest” protests in France. The current government of Emmanuel Macron announced an increase of the carbon tax in January 2019 that led to a social movement made of working people living in rural areas, that had a feeling of social downgrading and who lost trust in politics. In fact, the policy did not consider the consequences on low- and middle-income households at a time when oil prices were rising, which resulted in one of the biggest social discords. The movement emphasized the feeling of a ruling elite disconnected from the realities of citizen’s everyday life. It also showed that despite political efforts in tackling climate change and citizens’ expectations in this regard, governments struggle to meet environmental challenges while acknowledging their economic impacts. Including citizens in decision-making processes from the onset could reverse this trend.
After freezing the tax increase, the French government launched the Citizen’s Climate Convention, inspired by the Irish Citizens Assembly. An independent institute selected 150 citizens by sortition and stratification, forming a representative sample of the population, according to various criteria established by the government. Participants worked with different experts for 9 months, and built a report with 149 policy suggestions aiming to reduce by 40% greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 in the interests of social justice. The French president committed to implementing 146 measures, submitting the proposals to a referendum, a vote in Parliament or by adoption through regulations. Yet the President’s commitment has reduced over time creating tension with civil society members.
The success of the Irish Citizens Assembly in implementing climate change reforms sends hope on the use of such democratic mechanisms. In response to the assembly’s recommendations, specific parliamentary committees have been established, which enhanced democratic legitimacy and helped shape the Irish climate action plan. Nevertheless, the French debate is still ongoing and it raises a lot of questions on ensuring the implementation of the recommendations by the Assembly, balancing elected representatives legitimacy and the citizens’ assemblies, or the institutionalisation of such practices making them independent from the executive.
A French think tank that was involved in the Citizen’s Climate Convention, identified seven lessons from this experiment for the future: (i) the experience showed that citizens are capable of tackling complex mandate issues; (ii) it is desirable to provide the Citizens Assemblies with their own structured governance, plural in its composition and autonomous in its decisions; (iii) a composition by both drawing lots and recruitment based on socio-demographic criteria of representativeness combines the advantages of both methods; (iv) allowing citizen groups to specialize on a portion of the issues by simultaneous learning would allow for the growth of its members’ skills; (v) procedural precautions should be put in place to prevent the influence of experts on citizens; (vi) voting makes it possible to give a voice to those most reserved and certifies the collective will of the group; it could be used from the beginning of the process; (viii) securing and establishing the process in a legal framework where a strong commitment of the sponsor, the representativeness of the citizens drawn by lot and open information, pluralism and transparency are all guaranteed seems important and necessary.
The Citizen’s Convention on Climate is a great example of a representative deliberative process held at large scale: challenging but useful to rebuild social dialogue between politicians and the population, and eventually the nature of politics itself. The normative theory of deliberative processes provides temporarily to citizens the means to structure public policy, while respecting that elected representatives have the final word. The willingness of politicians to implement the proposals is not granted. As the OECD highlights, it is difficult to have an evaluation of the impact on the implementation of citizens recommendations put in place by governments. The challenge is that responding to the climate change emergency requires integrating the economic, social, environmental and governance dimensions of sustainable development at all stages of domestic and international policy making is an urgent topic yet the lengthiness of legal and political processes can be seen as unclear and too inefficient by the citizens.
While the effect of some of its contributions are mixed, there are still a lot of opportunities resulting from it as suggested by the CitizenLab. Public participation strengthens democracy by allowing more openness and transparency while increasing the accountability of governments to respond to public interests. Traditional parties face an increase in votes for green parties and therefore will have to align and prove leadership if they want to keep a seat at the table. Citizen participation has also taken place at a local level in many cities such as Madrid, Amsterdam or Milan, for building more sustainable cities. Online digital platforms were used to engage local communities and citizens were able to propose ideas, as well as to vote.
When well designed and communicated, policies that include citizens at different scales, can only strengthen the coherence and success of environmental policies.
This article has been published as per submission by the student (the author) and based on the lecture given by the professor in the context of an assignment, for comments or edits please contact the author : name.lastname@sciencespo.fr
Bibliography
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Devaney, L., Torney, D., Brereton, P., & Coleman, M. (2020). Ireland’s Citizens’ Assembly on Climate Change: Lessons for Deliberative Public Engagement and Communication. Environmental Communication.
EIT Climate-KIC (2020). Madrid, Amsterdam and Milan: Three cities putting citizen participation at the heart of climate action. European Institute of Innovation and Technology Climate-KIC.
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Terra Nova (2020) Convention Citoyenne pour le Climat : Quelques enseignements pour l’avenir. Terra Nova Think Tank.
