Problems and Purpose

Universities play a complex and multilayered role in climate change emissions, with impacts ranging from investments to the handling of IT waste. Similarly, UK students and international students are impacted by environmental crisis in different ways, such the added burden of taking multiple international flights. These issues as exacerbated by the bureaucratic separations between students, academics and professional services. The Westminster University’s Climate Assembly (UWCA) marks the first UK university climate assembly. It focussed on the climate, bringing together 45 participants across the student body, academic departments, professional servicers and contractors from across 4 campuses.

The ultimate goal of the assembly was to answer the question: “How can the University and its community take forward meaningful action on climate change in a way that helps make the University a great place to study and work?.” Themed sessions included topical presentations, Q&As with expert panels, guided discussions, and a chance to hear from relevant sustainability team members, all guided by an external facilitator. Following the end of each session, participants Through various themed discussions, participants created 51 recommendations that have been passed onto the University’s Sustainability Development Goal Committee.

Background History and Context

The University of Westminster has previously committed to the 2030 UN Sustainable Development Goals as part of their “Being Westminster” institution strategy. These involve commitment to climate action, protection of life on earth and water, alongside sustainable economic development and consumption. While the University has a dedicated Sustainability Development committee, the exact nature of its commitments were due for a discussion as the University shaped its upcoming 2029 strategy and agenda. In response to this, the CA organisers took the initiative to create a dedicated democratic forum, in collaboration with the Quentin Hoggs trust and external facilitators. The forum meant that sustainability priorities were actually shaped by people who were directly affected, and allowed the community to raise issues not immediately evident in connection to the Sustainable Development Goals such as the impact of increased AI usage.

Organizing, Supporting, and Funding Entities

The Climate Assembly was organised by Dr Ro Spankie (Assistant Head of the School of Architecture + Cities), Dr Graham Smith (Professor of Politics), and Yasmin Kulasi (Lecturer in Business). Both Dr Ro Spankie and Yasmin Kulasi also oversaw the facilitation and provided essential administrative support throughout the session. Funding for the sessions, compensation for the participations, and the inclusion of external participations was made possible through the support for the Quentin Hoggs trust.

Sarah Allan, external facilitator, oversaw each session with the help of part time facilitators from the university community. These part time facilitators ranged from lecturers to fellow students, and received training on guiding sustainability discussions. Alongside this, students were also invited as observers, and did not directly participate in each session but took notes on any relevant trends and topics.

Participant Recruitment and Selection

Organisers recruited participants using the democratic lottery system, which comprised of two stages. First, they put out an open call to the entire university community for any interested participations, inviting interested participants to share their motivation for joining and some background information about themselves. Because of the possibility of financial compensation, there was a higher than average level of responses. 330 students, 39 academics and 21 professional colleagues responded to the first call.

In order to ensure the Assembly actually reflected a diversity of views, organisers worked with the Sortition Foundation to apply a representative criteria to the pool of participants. To represent the community proportionally, they decided that half of the Assembly members should be students, and the other half colleagues from the academic and professional services. Further criteria were applied to these subgroups, to ensure that the Assembly included people from varied life experiences, such as those with lived experiences of disability. After applying both criteria, the lottery system then picked Assembly members at random. 20 students, 10 academics and 10 members of professional services made it to the final round of Assembly members.

Organisers were keen to include contractors, such as caterers, cleaners and security staff. These were not accessible through open call channels as they were not directly employed by the university, but remained a key part of the university community. To include them, organisers walked around campus handing out invitation letters and/or sending employees invitations to the Assembly. 5 contractors ultimately joined the forum.

Methods and Tools Used

The Climate Assembly used the citizen assembly method. Each session began with a presentation by the external facilitator, reflected by workbooks distributed to each member. Through presentations and activities, the aim was to familiarise participants with the current approach to sustainability (learning phase), then narrow down what aspects of sustainability participants thought was the most important to focus on (deliberation phase), before finally writing up policy recommendations for the university to implement. The Assembly also hosted Q&As with experts, Sustainability Committee members and partner universities to help inform Assembly decisions.

What Went On: Process, Interaction, and Participation

Sessions were delivered in person across the four campuses at the University of Westminster. Assembly members were divided up into the smaller groups, and assigned facilitators, which were rotated from week to week to ensure cross group communications. Each session, Assembly members were given a booklet which contained the relevant background information, and laid out the structure of the sessions. Themes were generally as follows:

1. Session one: Introduction to the Assembly and Sustainable Development Goals
2. Session two: Examining the university’s emissions and voting on the focus of the assembly
3. Assembly members cast 3 votes across 6 subjects (electricity and gas usage, ICT emissions, procurement, travel mileage, water and waste management, and ongoing construction) to confirm which issue they wanted the assembly to focus on
4. Session three: Examining sustainability efforts across the University’s teaching, research and culture
5. Assembly members cast votes on how they would like to integrate sustainability across these 3 sectors
6. The session also featured a Q&A with various University academics, to explore how they included sustainability in their own practice
7. Session four: Specialist panel on AI and ICT emissions, alongside further discussion on tackling both issues
8. Academics across both STEM and Social Sciences came together in a 5 member panel to discuss the impact of emerging technologies and their disposal
9. Session five and six centred around refining policy recommendations in small working groups and voting on outcomes.

Influence, Outcomes, and Effects

The assembly made 51 recommendations across three areas of university life: Community and culture, learning and professional development and emissions from ICT and AI. Of those 51, 44 were supported by 80% or more of assembly members, demonstrating a high level of consensus. Members then went further, prioritising the recommendations they most want to see acted on by voting on the final policies. These are laid out below, alongside the percentage of those who voted for it.

1. Climate Engagement
2. Run climate action week across schools and campuses during the same week (87.5%)
3. Run climate-plus events tailored to the interests of particular schools or disciplines (93.8%) [Climate-plus events combine climate with other issues]
4. External partnership
5. Ensure more students have the opportunity to be involved in climate-change- related work/projects with external partners (96.9%)
6. Build stronger links between our university and local residents (87.8%)
7. Interdisciplinary teaching
8. Develop a centre for student-led interdisciplinary projects and research that supports university activity related to sustainability focused topics (90%)
9. Provide hours for academics to create interdisciplinary content around sustainability (80%)
10. Support for projects
11. Students, academic staff and professional services staff should all have allocated time for projects (90.3%)
12. Create an online website or digital hub dedicated to sustainability, including opportunities, events, and staff/student work on climate (100%)
13. Course content and professional development
14. Offer someone from every department WAM hours to develop recommendations about how to integrate climate change into course specific curriculums (87.5%) [WAM is the Workload Allocation Model used by academic staff to divide their time across different tasks]
15. Credits and rewards for students who contribute to climate change efforts (90.7%)
16. Student and colleague empowerment
17. Our university should develop an overarching climate change strategy in collaboration with colleagues and students and external partners (90.9%)
18. Establish a peer network of committed university students and colleagues for university climate change discussion, using an online forum (81.8%)
19. Artificial intelligence (AI) policy and practice
20. Our university’s AI policy and practices should have strong focus on building AI literacy, including around AI’s environmental impact (96.8%)
21. Our university should provide much clearer guidance on when not to use AI (90.3%)
22. Emissions from ICT
23. Our university should explore options for reducing over-provisioning of equipment in ICT (90.3%)
24. Our university should create a carbon reduction plan for ICT emissions (96.8%)

1. Climate Engagement
2. Run climate action week across schools and campuses during the same week (87.5%)
3. Run climate-plus events tailored to the interests of particular schools or disciplines (93.8%) [Climate-plus events combine climate with other issues]
4. External partnership
5. Ensure more students have the opportunity to be involved in climate-change- related work/projects with external partners (96.9%)
6. Build stronger links between our university and local residents (87.8%)
7. Interdisciplinary teaching
8. Develop a centre for student-led interdisciplinary projects and research that supports university activity related to sustainability focused topics (90%)
9. Provide hours for academics to create interdisciplinary content around sustainability (80%)
10. Support for projects
11. Students, academic staff and professional services staff should all have allocated time for projects (90.3%)
12. Create an online website or digital hub dedicated to sustainability, including opportunities, events, and staff/student work on climate (100%)
13. Course content and professional development
14. Offer someone from every department WAM hours to develop recommendations about how to integrate climate change into course specific curriculums (87.5%) [WAM is the Workload Allocation Model used by academic staff to divide their time across different tasks]
15. Credits and rewards for students who contribute to climate change efforts (90.7%)
16. Student and colleague empowerment
17. Our university should develop an overarching climate change strategy in collaboration with colleagues and students and external partners (90.9%)
18. Establish a peer network of committed university students and colleagues for university climate change discussion, using an online forum (81.8%)
19. Artificial intelligence (AI) policy and practice
20. Our university’s AI policy and practices should have strong focus on building AI literacy, including around AI’s environmental impact (96.8%)
21. Our university should provide much clearer guidance on when not to use AI (90.3%)
22. Emissions from ICT
23. Our university should explore options for reducing over-provisioning of equipment in ICT (90.3%)
24. Our university should create a carbon reduction plan for ICT emissions (96.8%)

The University of Westminster's SDG Coordinating Group have acknowledged receipt of the recommendations and committed to responded to them within a 6-month timeframe. Whilst this does not amount to a commitment to implementation, the group will have to publicly state whether it plans to implement or adapt each proposal or, in the case that proposals are rejected, provide its reasons. The Vice Chancellor of the University has also voiced his support for the recommendations and committed to keep the Climate Assembly updated on the policy implementation process.

Analysis and Lessons Learned

The introduction of the climate assembly model in a university, an institution with structural challenges to the democratic decision making process given its inherently hierarchical nature (Schoorman et al, 2010), provided a novel and largely well received space to participants. While policy recommendations are deliberated by the university, assembly organisers conducted a series of follow up initiatives to gauge how participants perceive the organisation of the Assembly, the policy process, and their own observations surrounding impact. In follow up interviews with participants (UNWCA Blog, 2026), the interviewers found that the majority positively rated the organisation of the initiative, and the process of working with the university community, with several stating that they appreciated how relatively rare cross collaborative opportunities were. They commended the communication and structure of the assembly, stating the nature of the initiative and the clear structure of each session was easy to understand and participate in. Several also positively reviewed the decision to hold sessions across different campuses, and with rotating groups, noting that they were otherwise often siloed into specific departments and working spaces. However, while this grouping dissolved spatial hierarchies, several members reported that they remained conscious of hierarchical employment within the university model, with some noting that participants from less prestigious positions, such as professional services, initially were hesitant to participate as readily as members with backgrounds in advocacy and decision making. Here, the role and effectiveness of facilitators was important, with effective facilitation providing greater opportunity to bring out effective debate. Structural hierarchies might also have shaped facilitators’ confidence and capacity to lead discussions and some participants noted that younger, less experienced facilitators could be hesitant direct discussions at times. This suggests that assembly staff are also situated within social hierarchies that citizen assemblies cannot simply bracket out and attention to power and difference should also include those facilitating the deliberative process..

Some suggested that further facilitation training and confidence building could support facilitators in reaching their full potential. Overall, observers noted a high level of engagement and enjoyment amongst participants, noting that smaller discussions were especially lively and even participants who were initially hesitant found ways to contribute over the sessions.

There is often an in-build tension within citizen assemblies, between deliberative effectiveness and fully democratised processes (Lorenzoni et al, 2024). This tension can manifest in scope of the assembly as well as its decision making processes. The scope of the assembly, received mixed feedback, particularly in relation to the wide arching and often varied experiences participants had with climate change. Prior to the assembly, participants had different understandings on the impact of climate change, with some crediting the assembly presentations and research with increasing their awareness of its structural impacts. This meant that participants had very different ideas on the scope of the assembly, with some expecting a simple discussion while others expected more immediate radical action. The organiser’s decision to pre-select environmental topics in the early sessions was one instance where participants had mixed ideas about its scope. While many showed interest in tackling the issue and were comfortable with the time commitment, sSome communicated that they did not realise the organisers had already pre-selected what issues would be discussed, and participants were largely voting to narrow down topics, expressing disappointment that there was no scope to set a more radical agenda. This suggests an inherent trade off between deliberative effectiveness and fully democratised decision making, which remains an ongoing compromise across citizen climate assemblies (Lorenzoni et al, 2024); if organisers had left all issue selection to the participants, it risked limiting their ability to provide informed and deliberative research/structure to the assembly, while in contrast some participants did not feel the process was truly democratic. The schedule of each session as well, with planned discussion times and breaks, also received some criticism as participants felt adhering to the structure and ending exactly on time limited their ability to fully explore the issue. Organisers themselves agreed that scheduling could be more effective, and there is scope to explore that in upcoming assemblies and activities.

The overall effectiveness of assemblies in creating institutional change is a key concern often shared by organisers and participants of citizen assemblies. In the case of the UWCA concerns centred around the potential impact of the assembly, particularly in policy recommendations. Participants reported feeling like their suggestions were heard, and that they felt strong ownership of their work and most reported that they felt that the policies were practical and enforceable. The main concern arises from how exactly the assembly can enforce these ideas, as it is a separate body from the leadership groups at the university, nor is it formally affiliated with the sustainability team. Participants were unsure about how best they could engage with stakeholders, and felt there wasn’t enough transparency about how recommendations will influence university policies. While it is too early in the process to make definitive statements, as the University has only committed to officially responding to the recommendations, it is worth drawing on Lorenzoni et al (2024)’s review on the efficacy of Citizen Assemblies in general. Lorenzoni et al cautions that European examples demonstrate each assembly is unique, and impacts are often driven by external factors, such as budget constraints and political shifts. Overall however, their deliberative structure often reflects dissatisfaction with current political and policy responses to an issue, and often creates interest in more systematic review and deliberation. The UK higher education sector is currently undergoing structural changes, thanks to cuts in government funding, changes in immigration and the emergence of the university as a profit body with significant industry investments. The potential impact of these changes on the environment remains to be seen, but it is clear there is significant interest in engaging with these issues at a systematic level. Organisers of the climate assembly have continued these efforts, inviting participants to continue their engagement in various capacities and maintaining a media presence. Regardless of policy implementation, this initiative has the potential to provide a systematic case study on the university and institutional response to climate change.

References

Lorenzoni, I., Jordan, A. J., Sullivan-Thomsett, C., & Geese, L. (2025). A review of National Citizens’ Climate Assemblies: learning from deliberative events. Climate Policy, 25(9), 1546–1562. https://doi.org/10.1080/14693062.2024.2449416

Schoorman, D., & Acker-Hocevar, M. (2010). Viewing Faculty Governance within a Social Justice Framework: Struggles and Possibilities for Democratic Decision-Making in Higher Education. Equity & Excellence in Education, 43(3), 310–325. https://doi.org/10.1080/10665684.2010.494493

UNWCA Blog (2026) https://blog.westminster.ac.uk/uwca/evaluation/ [Accessed via link on 26.08.2026)

External Links

Westminster Climate Assembly Substack

University Blog