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This November we enter the final stretch of the process to establish the Citizens' Assembly for the Climate of Catalonia, a new democratic instrument that will serve for citizens to debate the challenges facing Catalonia in the face of climate change and formulate proposals to do face it
During the month of October, 20,000 invitations, chosen at random, were sent all over the country to sign up for the citizen participation portal of the Generalitat de Catalunya. The chosen people could register until the end of October, using the form available on the portal, with the personal code that was included in the letter they had received. Now, this November, a draw will be held among the people registered to make the final selection of the hundred assembly members who will make up this innovative project of deliberative democracy and citizen participation.
The Generalitat has worked with the Institut d'Estadística de Catalunya and the company Sortition Foundation to ensure that diverse profiles of Catalan society will be represented in terms of gender, age, levels of study, territory or origin. Specifically, the project is promoted by the General Directorate of Environmental Quality and Climate Change - through the Catalan Climate Change Office -, the Department of Climate Action, Food and Rural Agenda, and the General Directorate of Good Governance, Innovation and Qualitat Democráticas, from the Department of the Presidency, which provides knowledge on citizen participation. These people will meet on Saturday 18 November, the day the Assembly will be constituted.
The work of the Assembly will be of a public nature and will be carried out through sessions that will be organized in a training phase, where those attending the Assembly will be provided with the necessary information and training to prepare their deliberations and a phase of deliberation and preparation of recommendations. The sessions will take place over six Saturdays, between the inaugural session on November 18, 2023 and the final on February 10, 2024. Five of these sessions will be face-to-face and will take place in Barcelona, Tarragona, Vic, Lleida and Girona.
No prior knowledge of climate change is required to participate. The sessions will be supported by experts in different fields who will share their knowledge, and by a facilitation team that will facilitate and support the participants. Whoever is part of the Assembly will receive a financial compensation of 65 euros for each Saturday session and will be provided with transport, catering, accommodation or care services, if necessary.
The deliberations and proposals will focus on how to deal with the climate emergency with regard to two specific aspects: the deployment of renewable energies and the agri-food production and consumption model. The ambition is to improve, complement and innovate in the possibilities of incorporating citizens in the elaboration of public policies of the Generalitat and to contribute to generating knowledge and awareness towards the challenges of the climate emergency in Catalonia.
Specifically, the purpose of the Assembly is to draw up recommendations on political dilemmas such as what criteria should be used to decide or prioritize the type of renewable energy or what changes should be made in relation to the production and consumption model agri-food to mitigate emissions and encourage adaptation measures to climate change.
The Government of the Generalitat will analyze the recommendations drawn up by the Assembly and assess their incorporation into the public policies of the Generalitat. Subsequently, it will make a return, both to the Assembly and to the general public, in which it will report on which recommendations and how they have been incorporated, and which have been excluded and the reasons for the exclusion.
In addition, those interested in this initiative who have not been selected to be part of the Assembly, can send their proposals to the public participation portal of the Generalitat de Catalunya. These proposals, although not part of the recommendations of the Assembly, will also be collected and will complement the reports of the final results of the Assembly.
This is the first citizens' assembly of this nature that the Government of Catalonia has set up.
The creation of this mechanism of democracy and deliberative citizen participation was announced last year by the president of the Generalitat, Pere Aragonès i Garcia, during his participation in New York Climate Week, as a citizen participation mechanism, following the example of countries such as Scotland, Austria, Ireland, Germany, France or the United Kingdom. It joins other bodies already created and designed for the scientific world and for organizations involved in the work of adaptation and mitigation to climate change such as the Committee of Experts on Climate Change or the Social Table of Climate Change.
