This report draws on KNOCA’s collected body of work, offering an overview of what we can learn from climate assemblies practice (particularly at national level), what characterises the trends within the development of best practice over time and what work still needs to be done to improve their impact. The report also places climate assemblies within the broader field of public participation, explaining how they can make valuable contributions to climate policy and governance.
The Current Trends Report is a format first published in April 2023 to give a overview over climate assembly practice. This new 2024 edition highlights the latest development and places it within the broader context of public participation. The report from 2023 is available here for reference: Climate assemblies: emerging trends, challenges and opportunities.
The reports explain the valuable contribution assemblies can make to climate policy and governance, along with examples of impacts on policy, institutions, public debate and assembly members.
A striking finding is the way that the impact of climate assemblies has varied widely because of the different ways climate assemblies have been organised and integrated into the political system.
Often public officials who have organised climate assemblies speak about how challenging and difficult a process it can be, but always when asked say that they would happily do it again – learning from their mistakes of course!
The reports focuses on the strength of current practice, but also shows where practice can be improved, not least in relation to definition of an appropriate remit, transparancy and communication, scepticism amongst climate governance actors, and integration in the political system.
The report ends with a summary of the work KNOCA will develop over the coming year to ensure that future assemblies are designed with impact.
KNOCA intends to update the report at regular intervals to capture new developments and learnings and would be delighted to receive feedback at info@knoca.eu.
Watch Graham Smith present the report at our June 2024 launch event and hear reflections on the implications of our findings from Claudia Chwalisz from Democracy Next and Erica Hope from the European Climate Foundation below:
