Post-Climate Assemblies: Supporting Citizens to Continuous Long-Term Engagement in Local Climate Action

Refsing, Nanna Kent

4. Term

Sustainable Design (M.SC)

2023

2023-06-01

Climate change is an increasingly predominant threat to humanity which needs to be addressed in all forthcoming developments of society. It is scientifically proven, that climate change is induced by human actions which makes it a joint problem that we all need to be aware of and act upon. Climate assemblies are emerging across multiple countries globally to address climate-related issues in deliberative democratic processes, and studies have shown that participants in these assemblies have changed their views and behaviour to be more considerate of environmental impact in their personal life after their involvement in the assembly. To accede to the urgency of the climate crisis, this thesis will investigate how citizens can be supported to develop local climate initiatives after their participation in formalised climate assemblies. The thesis presents three supporting processes, based on existing inspiration sources found through empirical material collected within the Knowledge Network on Climate Assemblies (KNOCA) through participatory methods. The implementation of the proposed processes has been discussed with a view to the Actor-Network Theory (ANT) analysis and the Multi-Level Perspective (MLP) to determine relations and involvement in preceding networks and potential opportunities for the processes to enter the regime of the socio-technical system. The main contribution of this thesis is thus to fill the current knowledge gap that exists within the area of citizens' post-assembly experience, with the aim of engaging and supporting the assembly participants to commit to developing local climate initiatives.

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