#13 · Before the Assembly
## Which resources are required to implement a CCA (time, space, budget, staff, competencies)? How to plan accordingly? What to do to compensate for missing resources while navigating constraints?
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CCAs rely on four types of resources: material (budget, space, time), organisational (staff, facilitation, logistics), knowledge (expertise, learning materials), and relational (trust, community support, emotional safety, and inclusion mechanisms). CCAs need to ensure they do not contribute to problems they seek to address directly (e.g., through catering choices) or indirectly (e.g., through facilitator working conditions).
Many CCAs start under-resourced, with limited budgets, small facilitation teams, insufficient time, or constraints in space and logistics. A key dilemma is distributing allocating available resources. Effective planning requires aligning ambitions with realistic capacities while safeguarding justice, diversity, and deliberative quality. This includes mapping resource needs early on, anticipating workloads, distributing tasks and cognitive load, scaffolding learning over time, and keeping room for adaptation. Commissioners, organisers, and facilitators should be all aware of how resources are distributed. This prevents situations in which commissioners control budgets without fully understanding the logistical, accessibility, or information needs. Responsibility for managing limited resources should not rest with a single group (e.g., facilitators). Poorly planned or unevenly understood resources can lead to facilitator burnout and a loss of legitimacy.
Use a RAG (Red-Amber-Green) resource audit to assess whether means match ambitions, and audit and align accordingly. Distinguish between ‘must-have’ and ‘nice-to-have’ outputs to clarify the implications for resources. CLIMAS Checklist For Organising Climate Assemblies
Adopt a lean design approach, using modular formats (information, deliberation, synthesis, decision) to enable flexibility and reallocation of resources if constraints arise.
Practice “Commoning”: When resources are thin, pool assets with local partners. Collaborate with universities for expertise, libraries for venue space, or local NGOs for logistical support. How can Local Institutions Cooperate
Prioritise depth by focusing on fewer topics and treating them thoroughly. If space or staff is limited, consider scaling through multiple smaller, linked assemblies rather than one large, over-budget event.
Build adaptive buffers by keeping 10–15% of the timeline as “slack” to absorb logistical overruns and useAdaptive Management (e.g. regular rapid check-ins) to reassess capacity.
Giddens, A. (1984). The constitution of society (Cambridge. Polity, 284, 1-39.
Hutchins, E. (2000). Distributed cognition. International encyclopedia of the social and behavioral sciences, 138(1), 1-10.
Vygotsky, L. S., & Cole, M. (1978). Mind in society: Development of higher psychological processes. Harvard university press.
