The Climate Change Citizens’ Summit involved six regional workshops—in Bristol, Birmingham, London, Newcastle, Nottingham and Manchester—held during in late March and early April 2007. The workshops involved 28 to 29 people each, for a total of 174 participants.
Problems and Purpose
The public engagement programme was designed, as part of the draft Climate Change Bill consultation process, to: (1) help government design policy to maximise positive individual behaviour on climate change and (2) drive awareness, information, and debate on climate change. The summit explored Defra’s Government–business–consumer environmental contract to discover what happens when citizens understand more about what Government and businesses are currently doing. As the Climate Change Bill was highly technical, the focus for citizens was on the principles behind the Bill—i.e., a legally enforceable long term target for reducing CO2 emissions. [1]
Background History and Context
Organizing, Supporting, and Funding Entities
Participant Recruitment and Selection
The workshops were designed to reach 28 -29 people each from a range of urban and rural locations, for a total of 174 participants. Participants were recruited to provide a demographically representative sample of the region in terms of age, gender, black and minority ethnic and socio-economic status, and a range of consumer typologies based on attitudes and behaviour on climate change. [1]
Methods and Tools Used
What Went On: Process, Interaction, and Participation
Each workshop ran for three hours in the evening (6.30pm to 9.30pm). All participants in the regional workshops were invited to attend a reconvened event (the Citizens' Summit). It built on the process and outputs from the regional workshops. [1]
Influence, Outcomes, and Effects
The general nature of the summit’s task means it is difficult to gauge its actual impact. Furthermore, as the evaluation report states: "[t]he most valuable forms of output were the polling results, and the opportunity to listen directly to public participants debating at the Summit. The final report of the engagement process was seen as less useful, being broad but shallow in terms of detailed research findings, as a result of the recording methods used which did not capture all the detailed points made during the table discussions. There were concerns that the final report did not fully deliver the detailed research outputs that had been hoped for by some policy makers, although it did meet other of the multiple objectives for the process." [2]
Analysis and Lessons Learned
See Also
References
[1] Pilet J-B, Paulis E, Panel S., Vitori D, & Close C. 202X The POLITICIZE Dataset: an inventory of Deliberative Mini-Publics (DMPs) in Europe. European Political Science.
[2] Warburton, D. (2008). Evaluation of Defra’s public engagement process on climate change. Shared Practice. Retrieved from http://www.sharedpractice.org.uk/Downloads/Defra_CC_evaluation_report.pdf, p. 81
External Links
Notes
This entry is based on the POLITICIZE dataset. More information can be found at the following links:
- Paulis, Emilien; Pilet, Jean-Benoit; Panel, Sophie; Vittori, Davide; Close, Caroline, 2020, "POLITICIZE Dataset", https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/Z7X6GT, Harvard Dataverse, V1
- Pilet J-B, Paulis E, Panel S.,Vitori D & Close C. 202X The POLITICIZE Dataset: an inventory of Deliberative Mini-Publics (DMPs) in Europe. European Political Science.