Climate Citizens Assemblies

Description

Citizen assemblies start with a set agenda and process. This is necessary for reaching concrete results within a limited time. However, it also limits self-efficacy, democratic learning, collective empowerment, and eventually, the assembly outcomes. Assemblies could leave space and time for content and activities tailored to participants’ curiosities and desires.

The assembly content, the choice of invited speakers, and the organisational format could be partially shaped by participants’ input. Participants could start by developing guiding principles, shared values, and a vision of what they would like to happen during or after the assembly, rather than jumping into concrete measures right away. see Future Visioning. After becoming familiar with the focus areas of an assembly and related fields of expertise, participants could decide which additional people to invite to discuss specific topics and to draw on other sources of inspiration and information, such as videos, readings, or excursions. Even more radical, and organisationally demanding, participants could be involved in co-designing the process. They could shape the agenda design and structure by defining key topics and related working groups, timeframes, and collaborative methods.

How-To & Examples

Jointly define guiding principles, “impact manifesto” or cooperation agreement at the outset to align expectations and collective goals (e.g., “Thinking of the world as a whole”). In Bürgerrat Klima, participants first collaborated on “Visions for the future and guiding principles for transformation”, supported by materials on societal transformation, that encouraged thinking beyond “business as usual” [ see Future Making]. Citizen´s Climate Report (PDF)

Enable members to shape the agenda by contributing ideas and priorities through shared tools (e.g. ideaboards) and autonomously inviting speakers. At the Consiglio dei cittadini per il Clima (IT), the working group on energy suggested inviting a person with expertise in energy cooperatives. Based on these contributions, the group concluded that a ‘rethink’ on collective agency was needed.

Grant participants the possibility to expand the scope of discussion beyond the original agenda and tackle unforeseen topics (e.g., biodiversity) CCC in France, by also providing resources for unexpected events [ see Aligning Ambitions and Resources].

Balance broad commissioning mandates with participant-driven priorities through a two-step agenda-setting process: first defining an overall remit, then enabling participants to refine and prioritize the specific issues they want to focus on.

Literature & Sources

However, as Habermann (2023) asserts, only power-with as a co-active (cf. Follett, 1940) collaborative modality (of power) enables “[…] an emancipatory change of structures” (p. 6), that suggests the notion of collective empowerment (Allen, 1998; Hendricks, 2009, p. 178) and is therefore transformative (Rye, 2015; van Baarle et al., 2021). Therein, democratisation is seen as a crucial pathway through which the creation of commons can emerge (cf. Habermann, 2023, p. 15). From a descriptive viewpoint, power-with “[…] consists in the ability of a group to act together in view of collective outcomes or goals” (Pansardi & Bindi, 2021, p. 2) and encompasses collective horizontal organisation and decision-making (Partzsch, 2017) undertaken in a joint capacity (in accordance with Pitkin’s 1972 conceptualization). Abizadeh (2023) refers to this as “[…] the power to effect outcomes in virtue of others’ assistance,” which can manifest as joint intentional action, strategic coordination, or even non-strategic coordination (p. 15). In other words, power-with is contingent upon collective action (Guinier & Torres, 2002, Hendricks, 2009, p. 178).

Before power-with emerges, CCAs create power-to by empowering citizens to gain climate awareness and the skills for meaningful participation in climate policy and action (c.f. KNOCA, 2024) At the example of the case study of the CCA in South Tyrol, we observed that facilitators together with designers, scientists, and participants could co-create spaces of other logics, not without imperfections and only temporary, but serving as an empowering experience that participants can take forward.

Krois, Kris, María Menéndez-Blanco, Anja Salzer (2025). Assemblies of Power. Can Climate Citizen Assemblies drive Emancipatory Social-Ecological Transformations?, in El Moussaoui, M., Krois, Palmieri, T. eds. Power in Transformation. Design and Art as Catalysts of Change. 2024. Munich: oekom, ISBN 978-3-98726-150-3

Alice Moseley, Rebecca Sandover, Patrick Devine-Wright, Integrating citizens’ assemblies into local climate governance: Lessons from a UK case study, Environmental Science & Policy, Volume 168, 2025,