Shared Future CIC

Empowering, Sustaining, Innovating

Climate Change

We have brought together our work on climate change on this page. That includes especially our work using deliberative processes, such as citizens' juries.

Climate Assemblies and Juries: A people powered response to the climate emergency

With funding from the Place-based Climate Action Network (PCAN), an ESRC supported network that brings together the research community and decision-makers in the public, private and third sectors, Shared Future CIC has published a guide for local authorities and other bodies. The guide aims to support local authorities and other bodies thinking of commissioning a citizens’ assembly or jury. It considers how such processes might address the climate emergency, what is involved and approaches to design and delivery.

Lancaster District People’s Jury on Climate Change

Thirty local people are helping to develop a new action plan to tackle one of the biggest issues facing the world today – climate change. Lancaster City Council has convened a People’s Jury on climate change, a pioneering way of involving ordinary people in advising the council and others on how best to combat the problem. Shared Future CIC are facilitating the Peoples’ Jury, which is being held at the Storey Institute in Lancaster over February and March 2020

Leeds Climate Change Citizens’ Jury November 2019.

‘What should Leeds do about the emergency of climate change?’ This was the question that 25 randomly selected residents from across the Leeds city region agreed to thrash out over nine sessions between September and November 2019. Their bold recommendations make fascinating reading; taking back control of the local bus services into public ownership, the halting of local airport expansion, retrofitting of housing through local social enterprises and more.

Report of Our Money Our Planet Workshops

There is overwhelming evidence that we are in a climate emergency. Government can seem paralysed in the face of this complex issue. This report outlines some possible ways to make some progress, based on our experience and knowledge of participatory approaches, which put citizens into the driving seat of decision-making whilst improving transparency and governance at a local authority level.

Reframing care for our world as participatory people-led politics

“The natural world is being destroyed and it is a moral imperative to preserve and reconstitute as much of it as possible as soon as possible.” In this blog Jez Hall discusses how re-framing the debate on climate change is about how we build a fairer, greener, and political ‘shared future’. One where dialogue, social action and a people powered democracy is our new normal.

Participatory Budgeting and Climate Change: Our Money, Our Planet events

PB Partners are delivering a series of free events across the UK in response to the Climate Change emergency. Participatory Budgeting is an effective way for local authorities, and other statutory bodies to respond to this existential threat, and mobilise and enable communities take action themselves.

Beyond the ballot: How citizens can lead the climate change conversation

Over recent months, as climate change has been propelled into the political mainstream, there has been an upsurge in interest in the role of deliberative processes such as Citizens’ Assemblies and Citizens’ Juries, too. An Assembly is a key demand of Extinction Rebellion, for example. Will politicians act or just nod? In this blog Pete Bryant and Rebecca Willis consider how getting the conditions right makes action more likely.

Citizens Assemblies, Citizens’ Juries and Climate Change

Citizens Assemblies have gone mainstream, no longer are they the preserve of democracy geeks. The potential of ‘mini publics‘ in bringing together a diverse group of citizens to deliberate, reach consensus and deliver a mandate for action to their local and national politicians is fascinating. Especially, when we consider the complex nature of so many problems that our elected officials must grapple with, from Brexit to artificial intelligence to climate change. Peter Bryant tells us more in his new blog.

Fracking a Citizens Deliberation: Preston 2016

Fracking is a hugely important issue for politicians grappling with the energy challenges we are faced with now and in the future. However, the debate is dominated by industry representatives, politicians and campaigners, with citizens often left watching from the sidelines. This report is of a citizen led inquiry and the conclusions of a group of citizens who looked at Fracking with fresh eyes and an open mind.