Citizen Participation in Global Environmental Governance

About this book

On one day in 2009, in 38 countries around the world, 4,000 ordinary citizens gathered to discuss the future of climate policy. This project, 'WWViews', was the first-ever global democratic deliberation - an attempt to enable ordinary people to reach informed decisions on and impact the global policy process. This book - which analyses the experiences and lessons from this ground-breaking event - marks the beginning of a new kind of democratic politics, providing practical lessons on how to increase the impact of global deliberation projects within the media and on official policy processes.

The authors explore important themes for participatory approaches from the local to the global: the role of deliberation within global governance; methodology and practice; participant selection; policy impacts; engaging the media; how policy culture affects deliberation uptake; capacity building and knowledge transfer; process evaluation; content and argumentation analysis; and, gender, race and class aspects. The global aims of the WWViews project, along with the opportunity to evaluate the same process in different national and cultural contexts, makes this a hugely valuable and informative study for all those interested in democratic deliberation and environmental governance from the small to the international scale.

Contents

Preface I. Introduction 1. Toward a New Concept of Global Governance 2. The Story of WWViews II. Understanding the Trend of International Deliberation 3. The Creation of a Global Voice for Citizens - The Case of Denmark 4. Crossing Boundaries with Deliberation: But, Where Are We Going? III. Evaluating the WWViews Process and Results 5. Deliberating or Voting? - Results of the Process Evaluation of German WWViews 6. Reflecting a Citizen Consultation Project from a Technology Assessment Perspective - the Case of Austria 7. Consumerism and Citizenship in the Context of Climate Change IV. Discussing Cultural Variation and Local Engagement of Expertise 8. Representativeness and the Politics of Inclusion: Insights from WWViews Canada 9. WWViews in the Global South: Evidence from India 10. Linking Citizen Participation and Education in Sciences - The Case of Uruguay 11. Adapting Citizen Consultation in a Small Island Context - The Case of Saint Lucia V. Studying Policy and Media Impacts 12. WWViews and Lobbying in Finnish Climate Politics 13. Political Influence in the Context of Australian WWViews 14. Seeking the Spotlight: WWViews and the U.S. Media Context VI. Conclusions 15. Deliberative Global Governance: Next Steps in an Emerging Practice List of Abbreviations Appendix 1 Comparison of International Deliberations List of Contributors

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Biography

Mikko Rask, PhD in Environmental Strategies and Technology Assessment, is Senior Researcher at the National Consumer Research Centre Finland. He has experience of several national and EU projects on technology assessment, foresight and sustainability policy. He has published widely on these themes, taught courses in futures studies and lectured on science, technology and risk studies in several universities. He was the country coordinator of WWViews Finland. Richard Worthington is Professor of Politics at Pomona College, USA, where he chairs the Program in Public Policy Analysis as well as the Program in Science, Technology and Society of the Claremont Colleges. He chairs the Board of Trustees of the Loka Institute, which advocates democratic approaches to scientific and technological policies and practices, and has been a consultant to leading companies in the global information industry. He has written widely on environmental activism, science policy, and politics in the Americas, including Rethinking Globalization: Production, Politics, Actions (2000). Dr. Worthington coordinated the 5 WWViews sites in the USA. Minna Lammi, PhD in Political Science from University of Helsinki, is Head of Research at the National Consumer Research Centre in Finland. Her research focuses on the construction of consumer society and the interconnection between consumerism and citizenship. She has been published in the International Journal of Consumer Studies amongst others and has edited several books.