12 Months, 1 Question: January 2021

The urgency of the climate crisis is testing the limits of traditional representative democracy and its ability to steer deep social change. All over the world, new forms of deliberative democracy are emerging which give people an opportunity to participate in finding new solutions and a sense of hope in our capacity to tackle these urgent environmental problems.

In the month of January, we will explore different experiences of deliberative democracy. We will consider their advantages in comparison with traditional representative democracy to fight against climate change. We will also look at the limits of these broad and participatory mechanisms for deliberation and for decision-making. There are many questions to debate during the course of this month, among them will be: can representative democracy deliver on climate? how to ensure that deliberative democracy is truly representative? Can representative democratic institutions become more participatory? Can deliberative democracy mechanisms work on the global scale of the climate crisis? And so much more…..