Citizens’ Assemblies and the Making of Climate Law and Policy: A Solution to the Climate Emergency?

Second session of the IAS's Carte Blanche series, with the participation of Leslie-Anne Duvic-Paoli, Paris IAS Fellow.

Starting in the spring of 2021, the Cartes Blanches series will allow, once a month, one of the IAS research fellows to talk on a topic of his or her choice related to contemporary societal issues and extra-academic environments.

Presentation

In recent years, the idea that citizens’ climate assemblies – randomly selected representative citizens gathered to make recommendations on how to meet greenhouse gas emissions targets – could provide an innovative solution to the failure of governments to design and adopt ambitious laws and policies has gained in popularity.

In this discussion, Leslie-Anne Duvic-Paoli appraises the process and outcomes of the first three citizens’ climate assemblies held at the national level, in Ireland, France and the United Kingdom, to assess their contributions to the making of climate law and policy.

Adopting a legal lens, she talks about how the specificity of climate law and policy presents unique challenges for these deliberative experiments. How can they respond to the highly technical, multi-level and long-term nature of climate law and policy? What are the actual impacts of the assemblies’ outcomes on climate law and policy and how do these innovations relate to traditional law-making processes? How is law understood and imagined in citizens' assemblies and should citizens indeed become law-makers?

Practical Information

Carte Blanche in English.
No registration needed. Join this Carte Blanche on May 27th at 6pm (Paris time) on the IAS YouTube channel.