Citizens Convention for Climate
The Citizens Convention for Climate is a citizens' assembly held in 2019 and 2020 which discussed reducing France's carbon emissions by 40% from its 1990 levels in a spirit of social justice. It was initiated in response to the Yellow Vest protests to the fuel tax. The convention was modeled after a number of other deliberative experiments known as deliberative mini-publics. The members of the convention were 150 randomly selected citizens designed to be representative of the French public across six demographic dimensions: gender, age, socio-economic background, education level, location type, and province. The convention was assisted by a number of committees including the governance committee, a team of experts who provided organizational guidance and assistance, a guarantor college, which maintained the convention's independence, and a legal board. The members themselves divided into working groups on five issues within the topic of climate change: food, housing, employment, transportation, and consumption.
The work of the convention was initially split into six sessions, with an additional official seventh session and three unofficial sessions: two virtual sessions in between the sixth and seventh session and an eighth session to evaluate the government's proposed climate bill. The sessions were initially held every third weekend beginning the weekend of October 5, 2019. The fourth session was delayed by the pension protests in December 2019 and January 2020 and the seventh session was delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic. The first session focused on defining the role of the assembly, the second session focused on the biggest questions the convention would attempt to answer, the third session involved many meetings with outside experts, and the fourth session involved work within the five working groups and a visit from Emmanuel Macron. The members finalized their proposals during the fifth session, presented them during the sixth session, and voted on them in the seventh session. In total, the convention approved of 149 proposals across the working groups, of which Emmanuel Macron promised to implement 146.
The media reported an increasingly strained relationship between the members of the convention and parliament as the members of the convention felt that parliament was failing to pass their initiatives and be sufficiently bold in their proposals. When parliament announced the bill written in response to the proposals of the convention, many members of the convention were outraged that it did not include many of their key provisions. During the unofficial eighth session, many members of the convention gave parliament a failing grade for its inability to enact their proposals.
The convention attracted significant attention from scholars, particularly scholars of deliberative and participatory democracy. There is a growing body of literature written by democratic theorists, many of whom observed the convention in person, on what the convention means for the future of democracy and evaluating the successes and failures of the convention.
Formation
On April 25, 2019, President Emmanuel Macron announced the creation of the Citizens Convention for Climate in a press conference. The stated purpose was to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 40% from their level in 1990 in accordance with social justice. The convention was a response to the wider Yellow Vest protest movement and as an extension of the French "Grand Débat National", organized in response to it. In particular, the convention was a response to the protests against the fuel tax and the decreased speed limit, which the Yellow Vest protesters viewed as unfair to the poor, and it was hoped that the convention would be able to resolve the tensions around the tax or propose alternative measures.On July 2, 2019, Prime Minister Edouard Philippe addressed a "letter of mission" that formally announced the convention to the president of the Economical, Social and Environmental Council, the organization tasked with organizing the convention. This letter describes the organization of the convention and the independence of its governance committee. Philippe also stated that the proposals of the convention would be submitted to the President without filter.
Theory
The Citizens Convention for Climate is an example of a deliberative mini-public. Mini-publics are bodies chosen from the general public by random selection, also known as sortition. Juries, planning cells, consensus conferences, and deliberative polls are all examples of mini-publics. The Citizens Convention for Climate is a specific type of mini-public known as a citizens' assembly, a mini-public in which randomly selected members of the public are given legislative power as representatives of the general public, either formal or advisory, in a specific issue area or a group of issue areas.Citizens' assemblies are designed to be representative of the diversity of the entire population. The members of the convention had varying opinions on whether they believed themselves to be representatives of the public. During the first session, 43 of the 123 members who answered a survey believed that they spoke only for themselves, 25 said they spoke for themselves and people like themselves, 24 said they spoke in the name of causes they cared about, and 3 in the name of other groups. Individual members of the convention gave more specific accounts. When asked, a 30-year-old man said that he was "trying" to be a representative while a 17-year-old high school student said "It's a little arrogant to say that but I'm trying to represent them. Not everybody has the chance to be selected." Another member of the convention said to Hélène Landemore, a democratic theorist and observer of the convention, "When I say I represent the youth, I mean me, the others ,... saying what they think, being their loudspeaker, acting for them."
Mini-publics have been growing in popularity in recent years, particularly in order to solve climate change. In 2004, British Columbia held a citizens' assembly, called the British Columbia Citizens' Assembly, in order to decide how to amend voting rules in the province. Ireland has held several citizens assemblies since 2010 to address questions such as the legalization of abortion, same-sex marriage, and climate change. At the same time as the French Citizens' Convention, the United Kingdom also held a citizens' assembly on climate change. Washington state is holding a citizens' assembly, which began in January 2021, and there have been proposals to solve a number of issues with help from citizens' assemblies such as COVID-19 and democratic reform. The citizens' convention was also, in part, inspired by consensus conventions on technology, featured most prominently in Denmark which has had 22 such conferences since 1998. These conferences also bring together a representative group of citizens to deliberate on an issue. In these conferences, the citizens write a report on what issues unite the participants and where they were able to find consensus.
Membership
Sortition
The 150 members of the Citizens' Assembly on Climate were chosen randomly using sortition in order to produce a representative sample of the French population. Initially, the organizers randomly selected 250,000 phone numbers. They then texted each selected number to request permission to call about the convention. If granted permission, they called to collect demographic information. Next, quota sampling, a statistical technique used to create a sample with specified demographic composition, was applied using the data collected from the phone calls in order to ensure a representative sample of the population across six demographic lines: gender, age, socio-economic status, education level, location, and region. Notably, race and religion were not factors in the decision as the French government is barred from asking citizens to disclose their race or religion. From this process, 190 citizens were selected, with 40 of them serving as substitutes.The use of quota sampling to ensure proportionality is not uniform across citizens' assemblies. For example, the British Columbia Citizens' Assembly only adjusted for sex and geographic district. Ensuring representation across other demographics was left to the discretion of the assembly's chair, who added two indigenous Canadians to ensure their representation. In recent years, citizens assemblies have ensured representation across more demographics. For example, the Climate Assembly of the United Kingdom employed seven demographic criteria while the Irish Citizens' Assembly used four.
Researchers have examined the sample of the population beyond the initial six categories covered by the quota sampling. There were many similarities between the French population and the members of the convention, notably among most cultural values, satisfaction with the media, satisfaction with life, and the desire for a high standard of living. There were also some key differences. The members of the convention were generally more trusting of others and more confident in citizens' abilities to deliberate. They were more in favor of redistribution and associative action, but also stronger believers in diligence and hard work. They placed a lower value on individual expression and a stronger value on obedience while valuing the development of critical thinking more than discipline. Regarding the environment, they were more likely than the general public to say that climate change is principally caused by humans, but the general public was more likely to say that it was entirely caused by humans. The members were also more likely to value environmental protections and believe that environmental degradation was caused by climate change, but they were more likely to believe that there was a chance to limit it. Members of the convention were more supportive of action against climate change and saw lobbies as the biggest threat against future action.