Originally published 9 September 2009. This article is retained from the tCI archive. Law, policy or practice may have changed since publication.
Some people think that the mega-meeting now taking place in Copenhagen is the most important negotiation that will take place in our lifetimes. Others believe that it has been over-hyped, hi-jacked by certain interest groups and will achieve very little.
Whichever stance you take, it is instructive to observe the various attempts that have been made to consult the public and others in the months and years leading up to this Conference. That there has been unprecedented popular participation is clear, assisted no doubt by new technology and the internet revolution. The extent to which the world’s citizens want to become involved is more problematic, and obviously varies from country to country.
One drawback of large multi-national issues is that the first to become organised are stakeholders with a vested interest. Major industry, environmental or political groups are experts in their field, and many have a specific strategy or approach they wish to promote. In a contentious area such as global warming, be sure that there is no shortage of entrenched positions that will compete for influence on any Government’s negotiating team. None of this is wrong, for there are jobs and lifestyles at stake, with hard choices to make – ones that have, maybe, been ducked for years.
Interpreting the public mood is more challenging. Opinion polls in America show the country to be divided as to whether humans are the cause of global warming. In the UK, there is evidence of a growing ‘denialist’ movement clustered around fears of big-brother Governments telling us all to abandon our cars and quit flying. But then, we’re all very susceptible to what we read and hear, and it might be an accident as to whether the last thing we watched was Al Gore’s ‘Uncomfortable truth’ or Channel Four’s ‘Great Global Warming Swindle’.
So there must be considerable interest in an international attempt to tap into public opinion through a proper deliberative process. On September 26th this year a project called World Wide Views on Global Warming (WWViews) gave citizens all over the world an opportunity to define and communicate their positions on issues central to the Copenhagen agenda. In all, about 4,000 people in 38 countries, simultaneously took part in deliberative events – roughly 100 per country and chosen to represent their region’s demographic diversity. These were structured dialogues, focused around key questions, and designed to elicit people’s views and concerns to best practice standards.
As all readers of these Topics will appreciate, much depends upon the information presented to participants and care was taken to help them learn what competing experts and stakeholder groups think. In the UK, the event took place in Kettering and was organised by our colleagues at Involve. In the spirit of transparency, the data from each event was published soon after and comparisons can be drawn. As this was a well funded project, with an authoritative Scientific Advisory Board and support from the Danish Board of Technology, there is an impressive range of videos and statistical reports available online. Although practice will have varied from country to country, the results will have been used to try to influence the relevant country’s Government negotiators. In the case of Canada, it is sending two distinguished Professors and a contingent to Copenhagen to press the views of those they consulted; others will have surely acted similarly.
So is this a one-off? Or will we see similar processes ahead of more routine G20 Summits. Or the next conference on Trade and Tariffs? Or on world poverty? Or international Development? Or disarmament? And are these models of participation that can be used for other important questions at national, regional or even local levels?
If we need to make changes to the Health service ... or to schools, or our social security system, might it be a good idea to have 38 of our NHS Trusts, or 38 of our Local Authorities run parallel events? Consultations run from Central Government are increasingly relying on citizens to enter their views individually through eSurveys, and we need to listen better through face-to-face interactions.
As we enter the Christmas period, many public bodies will be pondering what 2010 offers, and there are fears that public engagement – like much else, may have to become more cost-effective. The road to influencing Copenhagen may yet show that high-quality deliberative consultation is a better route to a value-added dialogue than some of our more traditional methods and in a period of ‘quality’ rather than ‘quantity’, this may be the way forward.
Trigger points
Do you make good use of deliberative techniques? The Consultation Institute, along with Involve, run a special training course – Effective Deliberative Events.
This is the 151st Tuesday Topic; a full list of subjects covered is available for Institute members and is a valuable resource covering so many aspects of consultation and engagement