Local Authority challenges of embedding deliberation into climate policy making
As part of their research fellowship, David Evans is exploring different methods of embedding deliberative mini publics used abroad and their application to UK local authorities.
To date, most UK Climate Assemblies run by Local Authorities have tried to address the question of how they can achieve net zero targets as a whole for their region, leading to broad recommendations across a variety of climate-related policy areas. Whilst these broad recommendations can provide local authorities with clear priorities and a mandate for action, they don’t always illustrate the assembly’s preference on how the local authority should achieve specific outcomes. For instance, the ambiguity of the recommendation ‘promote active travel and public transport use’, may limit how much it meaningfully influences policy making. A local authority may claim it’s already doing something on this, and the deliberative processes hasn’t helped resolving any politically contentious policy choices, which in this instance could be around the use of low traffic neighbourhoods, parking restrictions, road reallocation, or bus franchising.
One innovation which shows promise of maximising the impact of citizens climate assemblies and moving beyond using them as a one-off tool, is to embed climate assemblies within a local government and make them run on a regular basis so that they can focus on specific topics each time. By repeating deliberative processes, recommendations can be made more specific for the local authority, a culture of familiarity and acceptance of deliberative mini publics can develop among policy makers and the public, and contentious political decisions can be selected to be addressed.
Whilst embedding does provide many benefits in theory, there are also important considerations to be made about applying them to a UK context. Many challenges exist, such as how to resource a regular process, how to gain long-term buy-in from local authority officers and elected members, and the ability for the local authority to act upon recommendations in a highly centralised political system.
By drawing on his own experience at Birmingham City Council, and by engaging with the Knowledge Sharing Network on Climate Assemblies (KNOCA) and European municipalities who have pioneered innovative deliberative methods such as Erlangen Municipal Authority, Milan Metropolitan Authority, and the Brussels Capital Region, David aims to explore these issues in more detail to understand the challenges and opportunities of embedding local climate assemblies in a UK local government context.
For more information please contact David Evans on david.x.evans@birmingham.gov.uk
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