Future of Mobility #9: About Climate Citizens’ Assemblies in Ireland, France & UK.

On the one hand, the experts from the latest IPCC report are sending us a desperate alarm on the irreversible climate change. On the other hand, three countries have recently organized Climate Assemblies with their own citizens to find ways to reverse this situation. Ireland, France & UK have published their own report of these experiences with citizens. Each one provides a list of recommendations on how we should change the way we live, particularly on mobility, to save the planet. Here, I would like to celebrate their contributions and make a comparison between these three Climate Assemblies which are a hope for our future.

1. Citizens' Assemblies around the world

In my process to better understand the origin and the organization of these Climate Assemblies, I wondered if there had been any previous Citizens’ Assemblies around the world. Therefore, following a methodology which is becoming typical for all of us, I visited several Wikipedia’s entries which brought me to other websites which themselves drove me to more and more links, until I had my screen full of opened tabs, and until I was totally confused! In this kind of situation, the wisest reaction is to sleep on it and come back a few days later. This is what I did and I guess it went well. 

As you will see in the table below I have made a list of Citizens’ Assemblies since the beginning of this century. All of the major initiatives have been done in Europe and North America. The initial ones in 2004-2006 were focused on the reform of electoral systems (Canada and Netherland).

In 2008, the state of Oregon in the US pioneered a Citizens’ Initiative Review process, which has since then been extended to a few more states (Colorado, Massachusetts, California and Arizona). A limited size panel of citizens (20-24 persons) study and share clear information to all citizens who are requested to vote for an issue or law in the State.

After the 2008 crisis, Iceland established a National Assembly to take political countermeasures: the electoral reform was part of it, however, for the first time the management of natural resources was raised as a citizen’s major concern. Afterwards, political topics remained an important part of these initiatives, like in the case of Scotland since 2019.

Also it is interesting to report some local initiatives like the one from the city of Gdańsk in Poland, or the small German speaking Ostbelgien region in Belgium. I did not check the agenda of their sessions, but I guess they certainly raised and took care of environmental concerns in their communities. Whilst in Spain, for the past 10 years, there is a Mediterranean Citizens’ Assembly, which seems to be more a private foundation. 

The most impactful initiative has been the Irish one: after a pilot phase in 2011 called “We The Citizens”, the first convention on the revision of the Constitution was organized by the Government between 2012 and 2014. Then, a second assembly was established between 2016 and 2018, this one without the participation of politicians, to address five key topics: 1. the abortion law; 2. the challenges and opportunities of an aging population; 3. the fixed-term parliaments; 4. the manner in which referenda are held; and 5. the climate change. Several experts participated to this assembly and their presentations were broadcasted on live streaming with the intent to bring full transparency of the process.

This Irish case was the first one to dedicate a portion of a convention to climate issues. They scheduled only two weekends of work on this topic, but the result has been noticeable. This experience became a benchmark for the organization of the French Citizen’s Convention on Climate (2019-2020), and subsequently for the UK one (in 2020). 

2. Citizens’ Assemblies on Climate Change — 3 cases: Ireland, France & UK

My investigation started by reading the 460 pages of the French Citizen’s Convention report. This initiative generated an enormous amount of communication and debates in the country over the past 18 months. Initially, I thought about writing a text with a focus on the Mobility part of this report, but I was worried I would end up repeating many of the same comments and judgments that have already been made by the media, without bringing any different perspective to the table.

Thanks to my previous Wikipedia research, I realized that Citizens’ Conventions was not a unique French touch! Then, I told myself “let’s do a comparison between the three Climate Assemblies in Ireland, France & UK, with a focus on travel and transportation.” I triple checked on internet and could not find any similar comparison done already.

The question asked to the citizens in these three assemblies are quite similar:

• For Ireland: “How can the State make Ireland a leader in tackling climate change?”
• For France: “How can we reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 40% by 2030 while ensuring social justice?”
• For UK: “How should the UK meet its target of net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050?”

In each of the three cases, citizens were randomly selected and requested to dedicate time (a few weekends) to join several sessions in person to debate and meet with many experts on Climate and related domains. I went over the three reports in detail to make this article and I was really impressed by the fantastic job done. Reading them gave me so much hope because I felt that we all share the same sense of urgency, the same concerns and the same wishes to restore the climate. I envied them as I would have been happy to be randomly selected, but it did not happen! Actually, the daughter of one of my best friends was lucky enough to be selected and she was deeply inspired by this opportunity.

The organization of each assembly has been the following:

• Ireland - “Citizens' Assembly”: during their two weekends of sessions, the citizens made a list of 13 recommendations addressed to their Government. They provided more of a sense of direction and priorities to be considered by the State. However, these proposals were so radical that a Committee was established afterwards to respond to each one of the recommendations. It ended up taking an additional 18 months to launch a very detailed Climate Action Plan from the Government with 183 concrete measures and, for each one, the name of who's responsible and a due date to report progress. This Climate Plan looks like a traditional Recovery Plan that a private company would put in place in a crisis period.
• France - “Citizens’ Convention on Climate”: here, the approach has been quite different. First, the citizens participated in many working sessions, engaging with a multitude of experts, a Public Law Committee and Fact Checkers. Their work has been tremendous and very detailed. Eventually, they wrote a list of 150 recommendations, highly detailed with clear objectives, countermeasures and expected results. This is the most impressive list of recommendations that I have read. At a second step, this list has been amended partially by the Ministry of the Ecological Transition. Then, the draft document went through the legislature review process with debates at the Parliament. Eventually a law on Climate was published in July 2021.
• UK - “Climate Assembly”: here, also, the approach was different. The intention was to gather citizens and allow them to have open discussions. All the opinions were considered in a very democratic way: this is the nice part of this “pleasant to read” report which also includes many quotes from participants. The proposals are split between Underpinning Principles, Considerations, Policies, and for each item a % of acceptance amongst the participants which goes from high to low scores. This is a fair prioritization rule and all the suggestions raised during the sessions have been considered in the report. This report is really enjoyable to read and you feel that citizens had a good time together.

In comparison to UK, France did not provide ratio of approval for each recommendation, they rather highlighted the different point of views with what they called “Alternative opinion”. For instance, some French citizens did not want to see the reference to SUV as polluting vehicle because they considered that it would be discriminative; others rejected the proposal to modulate street lighting because it would be unsafe for pedestrians; or others opposed to the interdiction of pesticides in agriculture.

Whether or not the outcome of such initiative should be a Law (like for France) or an Action plan (like for Ireland), my preference would go to the second option, maybe because of my background in the private sector. My reasons are the following:

• I am concerned about the concept of Climate Law because: a) It is shrinking the level of opportunities (exit proposals which are not fact-based; exit challenges to existing laws which are against climate change; exit challenges to European and international rules…); b) Policymakers will shift to other problems and will trivialize this topic; c) It is engraved in stone and, while climate will continue to deteriorate, articles of the law will become obsolete very soon; d) The level of application will be low because the impacted bodies will look for ways to divert or evade the law.
• What I like in the concept of Climate Action Plan is the possibility given to act on something which is already by itself a fantastic step forward. It is a virtuous cycle which will increase engagement and generate new ideas during the implementation and checking process. In industry, this process is called PDCA (meaning Plan-Do-Check- Act). After making a plan, you allow the implementation of actions. Then, through the implementation phase, you check the progress, take countermeasures and continue to move ahead until achievement. Also you communicate at each step of the process to make sure that everyone understand where we are and where we go. In an action plan well managed, the best reward is the motivation, the engagement and the enthusiasm of the participants. It may be a dream for climate change but I am definitely more of a fan of Action Plan than Law!

By any means, we need to bring people to work together in a pragmatic and constructive way, this will save time and bring positive spirit to all of us. Unicef is conveying the same message in their video to explain the meaning of the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). As a kind reminder, theses goals have been adopted in 2015 to bring peace and prosperity to all people on the planet by 2030… This is tomorrow and we should have a plan already in place to reach these SDGs.

3. Comparison between the recommendations of the Climate Citizens’ Assemblies

The table below shows the list of the main recommendations that I have collected from the three reports. It has not been easy to combine them because the approach is a bit different for each group. However, I believe this table gives a good image of common and unique recommendations. For Ireland, I have been using both the initial recommendations from the Citizens’ Assembly and also the more detailed Government Action Plan. All of the data has been summarized on several excel sheets accessible on one link at the end of this article.

I have identified three levels of recommendations that are impacting the Future of Mobility :

1. Direct recommendations related to Mobility.
2. Indirect recommendations which could have impact on Mobility. Here I have considered the recommendations related to other domains with an impact on transportation, such as Waste management, Recycling, Advertisement, Land Management, Grid management, etc
3. Recommendations from other domains to be taken into account for our broader scope of better life as part of smart cities initiatives.

A bit more than 60% of my summary list of recommendations are common between 2 or 3 countries. I believe that this ratio is misleading because as I was reading the reports, I found a lot more similarities between the citizens' comments, so we should estimate that there are around 80% of common proposals.

Also, the recommendations which have an impact on mobility (direct and indirect) reach the same ratio of 60%, confirming how much this topic is an essential part of the debate about the way we want to live in the future. 

Now, I would like to take a few examples of differences between the three countries on recommendations related to mobility.

3.1 EV vs ICE

One of my big surprise was the difference on citizens’ expectations related to the shift from ICE (Internal Combustion Engine, i.e. the engine for normal petrol or diesel cars) to EV models:

• French citizens are only requesting to limit new sales to vehicles below 90 gr CO2/km by 2030, and do not make any focused recommendation on zero emission vehicles (EV or Hydrogen);
• Irish citizens are more aggressive and request a ban on sales of all ICE models and a shift to 100% EV by 2030;
• British citizens are similarly ambitious with a ban on the sale of new petrol, diesel and hybrid cars by 2030–2035.

In line with the expectations from Irish and British’s citizens, the European Commission took a strong stance a few days ago and proposed to ban ICE models by 2035 in Europe. This is part of a climate plan called “Fit for 55” on which we will come back to in a future article.

3.2 Expectations on new technologies

We often say that we have to change our way of life to reduce impact of greenhouse gas emissions. This is nice, however, here we can notice a clear difference between the three group of citizens:

• Irish and French are open to put in place solutions to reduce car usage, limit air transportation and moderate our travels in the future. French citizens are the more demanding about changes in our behavior. They also seem skeptical about new technologies: for instance, they challenge the need 5G introduction and raise concerns about health risks (I will reserve my views on this very interesting 5G debate for another article).
• On the contrary, British citizens are willing to keep their freedom to travel in the future and they want to continue to drive without restriction (they would only accept a limited 2-5% car usage decrease per decade). They expect that engineers and industrials will soon be able to implement new technologies to achieve greenhouse gas emission targets without impacting their current travel habits. However, specifically for travel by air, they acknowledge that frequent flyers should pay more and get an increased fare of their flight tickets instead of receiving free miles. 

As the Covid-19 crisis started in the middle of the 6 months UK assembly, it's worth noticing that some British citizens changed their mind and became more open to reconsider the way they travel inside the country and abroad.

Eventually a combination of both (change habits and benefit of new technologies) will be required, but this feedback from the UK assembly shows that we should not expect people to easily adopt modifications in the way they live currently, even if it is at the benefit of global warming.

3.3 Multimodal mobility

I have been pleased to find some recommendations about multimodal transportation. French citizens are recommending to establish a platform to combine rail, buses, shared bicycle, ride-hailing, car-sharing, etc. This recommendation has not been consolidated in the French law, likely because the recommendation was not explicit enough and too complex for the implementation. On the opposite, Irish government put the multimodal objective in their action plan as follows: “Establish a Park & Ride Development Office and develop overall Park & Ride Implementation Plan, including the provision of multimodal facilities.” As you can see, there is nothing immediately applicable and the wording is a bit vague: we don’t know how they will implement it. However, as I said earlier, it is already great to have it as one item in their action plan. There will be one person responsible with a schedule and this person will have to report progress regularly to a committee who will challenge and support him to implement solutions. This is the right way to create a collective spirit of transformation. This will also help engage and motivate citizens.

It is also remarkable that Irish and French citizens put a strong focus on rural territories, which is a legitimate demand often neglected by the consultants. We always see images of happy travelers shifting from one transport mode to another using their smart application, but they are always in a well-connected urban zone. It will not be so simple in suburbs and rural areas. There will be a need for more infrastructure and better network coverage. A good benchmark could be Japan where you can travel anywhere in the countryside by train, bus, taxi with minimum usage of a private vehicle.

Another surprising reaction was given by French legal advisors: they emphasized that transportation is under the responsibility of each region, therefore the government cannot take any decision on it. Here, we have a big obstacle for our revolution in mobility, because the multimodal concept will require coordination at a broader level than a region. It should be developed across boarders, at country level or even at Europe level, otherwise there will be dozen of different platforms and traveler will not be able to set up his journey correctly.

Last comment on multimodal scheme, I don’t believe that this multimodal project should be handled by any government alone, but rather through the creation of a partnership between Public and Private sectors.

3.4 Creation of parking spaces

With this example I will come back to the point raised before about the difference between a law and an action plan. The French citizens recommended to create parking spaces around main cities and facilitate public transport from there to city centers. The law committee dismissed the proposal considering that it was too conceptual as the citizens did not propose a clear calculation methodology to evaluate the incremental number of parking spaces needed. Funny reaction, no? Eventually this proposal has been adopted to a certain extent, but the initial statement illustrates the mismatch between the concrete ambition of the citizens and the discredit of an objective mindset too much focused on “law implication”. 

For Ireland, the parking spaces topic has been addressed specifically for low emission vehicles. And for UK, there was no recommendation, but citizens discussed about the impact of a reduction of parking spaces (rather negative) and the parking policy for car sharing.

3.5 Taxes and Social Justice

In these three reports, I felt a clear tension between two aspirations:

• The willingness of the citizens to change the way they live and not behave selfishly. In the case of Ireland, citizens are even ready to pay more taxes to go along with this objective.  
• At the same time, the worry of the citizens about social justice, and their concern that any decision for climate change should not penalize low income people and those living in rural areas. They all feel that changing their life condition will cost more (zero emission vehicle, building renovation, heating system…), but they expect that their government will set up fair policies to minimize negative impact on citizens’ welfare and protect jobs. This request has been particularly highlighted by British and French citizens all along their report on several instances. 

These two intentions reinforce the need to work together as a unique team, between citizens, governments, public and private companies. We should avoid useless conflicts, listen to each other and build a common action plan. 

Let me take another example from the private sector. In Nissan, there is a "mantra" who says that “The power comes from inside”, meaning that if the employees are unified and working as One Team, we will have enough power to fight any difficulty and achieve successful results. We should have the same ambition. The fight against climate change will require a joint effort, common understanding and empathy for the people. Every element of our life will be affected, so we should all behave as One Team. 

On this note, I think the installation from Moustapha Dimé (Senegal, 1952-1998) called “The Little Danse” could be a good representation of the need for unity.

This installation was organized many years ago by the “Revue Noire”, a quarterly printed magazine dedicated to African contemporary artists. The philosophy of this publication was to provide a different perspective about the African continent and promote modern art. A beautiful adventure!

4. What’s next?

The participants of the Climate Assemblies are willing to be involved in the implementation of future actions and become active contributors to climate recovery plans. This has been expressed particularly by British and French citizens who want to be part of the plan to save the planet. Unity and citizens' involvement should be the two pillars of any next step.

I was wondering if by any chance some citizens from Ireland, France and UK had ever met and shared their experiences on their respective Climate Assemblies. I guess not, and here we are missing an opportunity for convergence and pro-active mobilization.

Finally, I heard that Germany and Poland have similar intentions of establishing Citizens' Climate Committees. Would it not be a great opportunity to group all these citizens together to work under the organization and management of a joint Governments' initiative? 

Climate has no frontiers;

Citizens shouldn't either.

Sources

• My collected data on this excel file with: Sheet 1. - My summary of the recommendations; Sheet 2. - The detailed recommendations from Ireland Assembly & Government Action plan; Sheet 3. - The detailed recommendations from French Convention and adoption level by Climate Law (using the very clear report form the website reporterre.net); Sheet 4. - The detailed recommendations from UK Assembly.
• 3 documents for Ireland: 1. Ireland Lessons learned from Citizen Assembly; 2. Ireland Climate Action Plan (CAP); 3. Ireland CAP annex of actions.
• 2 documents for France: 1. French Citizens’ Convention on Climate full report in French; 2. French Citizens’ Convention Summary Report in English.
• 2 documents for UK: 1. UK Climate Assembly Full report; 2. UK Climate Assembly Summary report.
• 3 documents for IPCC: 1. IPCC Summary report to Policymakers (~40 pages); 2. IPCC Technical report (~150 pages): 3. IPCC Full report (~3900 pages)