Climate assemblies and the public: An analysis of UK cases

Climate assemblies (CAs) are being increasingly used to engage citizens in climate change policy making. Consequently, their design and operation are focused on optimising their influence on policymakers. Less emphasis is placed on how, and to what extent, CAs influence the wider public. This is an important gap as it has been suggested that CAs could stimulate public deliberation about climate change action and attitudes. Public support could also increase pressure on decision-makers to act on an assembly’s recommendations. Given the small numbers of participants typically found in CAs, implementation of their recommendations is more legitimate if broader public support is secured. Research to date has focused on citizens’ assemblies generally, rather than CAs specifically. Given the complexity and importance of the climate issue this gap needs to be addressed. Moreover, much of the existing research is based on experiments with hypothetical results. Research focused on high profile natural cases is therefore essential. To fill these gaps, we assess the relationship between CAs and the public through an analysis of Climate Assembly UK and Scotland’s Climate Assembly. These are two of the first national CAs and attracted media coverage. We conducted public opinion surveys on both cases. We find that public awareness of both CAs was low. Despite this, the idea of CAs contributing to climate policy is broadly supported by the UK and Scottish publics even by some people not concerned about climate change.