Governance, institutions and policy

A Climate Assembly of 100 Catalan Citizens

100 Catalan citizens were randomly selected to participate in the six meetings that took place throughout the Catalan region between November 18, 2023 and February 10, 2024. Applying a dilemma-based approach during the whole assembly, participants worked first with experts and other stakeholders, before initiating discussions that ended up with a total of 48 (forty-eight) recommendations.
Sonia Matera
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  • September 11, 2024
  • 2 min read

Introduction

In October 2023, 20,000 invitations were sent across the Catalan population and 100 Catalan citizens were randomly selected to ensure representativity of the diverse social profiles in terms of age, gender, educational level, territory or origin. The Assembly comprised an initial 100 randomly selected citizens, 83 of whom participated in the six meetings that took place throughout the Catalan region between November 18, 2023 and February 10, 2024.

Applying a dilemma-based approach during the whole assembly, participants worked first with experts and other stakeholders, before initiating discussions that ended up with a total of 48 (forty-eight) recommendations. The selected topics were:

  • Climate change and the deployment of renewable energies,
  • Climate change and agri-food model for the future.

The Catalan Climate Assembly ended in February 2024 and now is the time to draw some lessons. We interviewed the Government of Catalonia organizing team: Pablo García Arcos (Head of Strategic and Transversal Projects) and Núria Pérez Milán (consultant) from the Subdirectorate of Citizen Participation.

Key Messages

According to Pablo and Núria, although political commitment is a key factor when organizing a Citizens’ Climate Assembly, the participation of political party representatives in the debates and deliberations was not allowed, since the debates must provide an outcome of a well-informed and positioned citizen input. Organising such a large and delicate participatory process for citizen’s deliberation is challenging, that is why there were some elements that could not be anticipated, which were addressed while in the process.

An example of this was the methodological design of the sessions to ensure a more prominent citizen positioning in the most controversial debates, something that provides key learning for other assemblies in approaching a concrete and specific debate.

Climate assemblies are considered as sustainable and reasonable tools to stimulate deliberative democracy in climate policymaking. The ambition of the CLIMAS project is to support a transformation to climate resilience by offering an innovative problem-oriented climate adaptation toolbox, co-designed together with stakeholders by applying a values-based approach, design thinking methods and citizen science mechanisms. Follow this journey with CLIMAS, where climate action meets deliberative democracy.

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