CLIMAS

Introduction

Climate change is one of the most critical issues to tackle today as it is foreseen to have detrimental social, environmental and economic impacts in the near future. The last climate change events, such as flooding in Germany and Belgium in both Continental and Atlantic regions, heat waves and lack of water in both Mediterranean and Boreal regions, show that the policymakers, experts and stakeholders' actions are not enough, and a 360º citizens engagement is urgently needed. Therefore, we need to learn from the good experience in citizens' engagement in climate change action and build up citizens` supporting infrastructure for climate adaptation measures to help the 150 European regions and local communities to resist. Climate assemblies and Living labs are considered as sustainable and reasonable tools to stimulate deliberative democracy in climate policymaking.  We have asked prof. dr. Ilse Mariën, what the project is about and why is it important.

What is it about?

Ilse: “Through a scenario based and on a diagnosis of intensified droughts, CLIMAS proposes to change the focus from deliberating about technical solutions to balance resolutions to value-based dilemmas. Behind this diverse focus the debate of the citizens’ engagement spaces (e.g. climate assemblies) could be asking: what has a minor impact? That a valley is flooded by a dam? That a certain number of farmers have to change their crops or abandon their land? That all citizens give up the use of swimming pools? These are invented examples, but choosing one or the other to a greater or lesser extent is a subjective dilemma. While the outcome of a classic Climate assembly would be to generate a list of solutions, CLIMAS pursues a recommendation that defines which of them should be implemented to the detriment of the others, after assessing their costs and benefits and having made a subjective evaluation based on the values present in the society.

Our proposal implicitly brings philosophy back into the public debate. The co-design approach carried out within the 3 EU living labs will produce guidelines for the facilitators for engaging and empowering citizens in the climate resilient decision making process as well as for policy makers for improving their selection of climate resilience issues”.

Why is it important?

Ilse: “Citizen science projects have contributed to research, science education, environmental advocacy or public understanding of science. We believe that climate assemblies can be a perfect, open and accessible place for contributing in citizen science projects, with an active partaking of citizens who participate in projects tackling environmental issues, and become aware of the associated research. In this sense, citizens contribute in the collection of evidence, of course, but also in the co-creation of new knowledge to increase awareness of climate change and ultimately to drive changes in climate policy”.

AIM (what)

The ambition of the current project is to support a transformation to climate resilience by offering an innovative, problem-oriented climate adoption Toolbox. This Toolbox will be co-designed together with stakeholders by applying a values-based approach, design thinking methods and citizen science mechanisms. It is expected that the use of the Toolbox will anticipate possible tensions, points of controversy and dilemmas vis-a-vis the adaptation to resilience - therefore enabling empowerment and engagement strategies that produce a society "resilient by design".

Methodology (how)

CLIMAS will apply a design-thinking framework that is a human-centered approach to problem-solving, with creativity and innovation to climate adaptation solutions to engage and empower citizens with the support of civil society, academics, experts, social partners, policy-makers, entrepreneurs and other relevant actors. Next to developing climate resilient future visions CLIMAS will include the empirical component for testing this Toolbox and formulating scientific-based guidelines for policymakers. The project will support and facilitate the shift Climate Assemblies from technically based deliberations that belong to climate change experts to multi-stakeholders deliberations based on solving the dilemmas from a bottom-up, more societal and value-based perspective.

Impact (why)

The portfolio of alternative empowering and engagement mechanisms that diverse actors can access, indigenize and deploy as outcome of the project will enable all involved stakeholders to positively influence policy development, raise awareness- and offer sustainable strategies to enhance the acceptance of citizens' led decisions by policymakers.