How to maintain public support and act quickly on climate policy

Josh Emden (JE): We've heard that the Labour government have talked about a ‘decade of national renewal' and has a very explicit clean growth mission. At the same time we know that the government will soon need to start decarbonising sectors (for example heat decarbonisation) that people will start to feel impacted by more directly in order to keep track with net zero targets. How do you maintain public support for what could be substantive policy interventions over a sustained period of time?

JE: On that point about showing it in their policies, we've seen how the government is moving quickly on things like planning reform to speed up developments like onshore wind and solar farm development. From your perspective, what would successful engagement actually look like in practice and how do you kind of encourage people to buy into a process that seems like it's moving so quickly?

There might be some areas where that just might not be possible, the obvious one being the sightliness of pylons, since it costs a lot more to reroute or to go underground. But in those cases, you still need to explain to people properly why these pylons have to go here and reassure them that the government will do what they can to help the community. People should be involved as equal stakeholders alongside industry and government when discussing how the net zero goal should be achieved.

JE: How would you get companies to commit to this?

RW: So this is something that the new government could literally pick up off Ed Davey's old desk from when he was secretary of state for energy and climate change back in 2015. Just before the onshore wind ban, he set up a taskforce to get community energy players to talk to the renewables industry about how to offer shared ownership and I was co-chair of that taskforce. We negotiated that developers should be required to offer a stake in ownership to local communities, for example through enabling them to buy a 10 per cent stake of the site through a co-op. The way that we envisaged it was that it would initially be a voluntary agreement, but that it would move to legislation if the developers didn't make an effort.

JE: We've talked about ways to engage with citizens but how do you also avoid a potential accusation of nimbyism and creating too much red tape?

By taking concerns seriously, you can develop a really good working relationship with people, which then prevents that sort of unhelpful blanket opposition. We've been talking about wind turbines but it's exactly the same with other policy proposals, whether that's low traffic neighbourhoods or heat pumps.

RW: Engaging the majority of people who may worry about climate change but for whom it isn't front of mind is the key here because it gives you a social mandate for change. At the moment, reflecting their views is mainly done through polling, but polling's too much of a snapshot. A better way is through the kind of deliberative research we do, like climate assemblies and juries, where you're actively recruiting those people, asking them to spend a decent amount of time on learning and giving their views, and you're normally paying them for their role as well.

This kind of work could be replicated by having a kind of standing panel or body, either at local or national level, ideally both. For example, at national level, you could have a citizens' climate panel, which worked alongside the same sort of timeline as the climate change committee. In this scenario, the climate change committee are the expert technocrats and the panel would work in conjunction with them to offer citizens' views. The climate change committee have actually already gone quite a long way down that route, and they are now using deliberative research as one of their ways of developing their carbon budget proposals. You could also institutionalise this model as a permanent panel that could sit within parliament.

JE: How do you make sure a panel like that is not perceived to be superseding democratic processes?

RW: You obviously have to recognise parliament as the sovereign body and so to be democratically sound, any kind of citizens' panel or deliberative forum would have to report to parliament. You can then put some safeguards in place, which require parliament to respond to it the same way that they do for the climate change committee, for example.

It's also worth saying that getting citizens involved in co-design of policy is second nature for other policy areas like health. For example, if you're designing a new approach for the management of a chronic condition like diabetes, for instance, you would always ask patients and their families. The idea of designing a service for diabetes without engaging patients nowadays is crazily old fashioned and paternal. Citizens' engagement for climate change needs to be just as normal and routine.

JE: How big or small should a citizens' climate panel be?

RW: There's no reason why you have to go really big with these processes. It's often better to have small numbers and having detailed discussions in a deliberative format tells you all you need to know. We've actually tested this. We did some research on public attitudes towards advertising of high carbon products and services. We compared the findings from a citizens' jury of 25 people and a poll of 2,000 people. The results from each were really consistent with each other.

JE: What are some examples of best practice you've seen when it comes to engaging citizens?

RW: I'd point to the journey the climate change committee has been on to include social research and particularly deliberative research in their advice to government. This started with Chris Stark's engagement in Climate Assembly UK, the national climate assembly that parliament ran in 2019 to 2020. He was involved in that, was sceptical beforehand but he actually said that the process taught him the importance of going out and talking to people, giving them the time and space to develop their views, and as a result, the climate change committee changed the way that it gathers its evidence for its advice to government and is now including deliberative research and social research.

So that is a really good model now and it allows them to give advice to government, which has been socially proofed and isn't competing against technical or economic analysis.

RW: There is a huge amount of climate misinformation online but to an extent that is filling a vacuum because for a long time politicians have not made the positive case for climate action and there hasn't been that kind of shared agenda.

We've just done a meta-analysis of all the recommendations of all the citizens' juries and climate assemblies in the UK that have taken place and the number one recommendation by far is a desire from participants for more information, education and leadership on climate. And people really feel this strongly and often end up asking: If we are facing a climate emergency, why aren't people talking about it all the time?