The South Yorkshire Citizen’s Assembly On Climate- a participants view.

A guest blog by Ci Davis

Four years ago, I sat with some other people from Extinction Rebellion in the office of Cllr Mark Jones, and we placed our Third Demand to him, urging for a Citizen’s Assembly (CA) to address the Climate Emergency, that the council had just declared. 

Our representative democracy is clearly failing; something recognised by South Yorkshire Mayor, Oliver Coppard “Politics is in a bad way right now, people do not trust politicians, people don’t trust the political process”.  A failing democracy cannot take the big, bold, and necessary decisions that addressing climate change demands.  A CA is a means of breaking the log jam, both for politicians and the public.

A CA is a form of Deliberative and Participatory Democracy.  Deliberative, meaning that difficult issues receive long and engaged consideration.  Participatory, meaning that people who will be affected are involved in the process of considering solutions – so different from the once-in-five-year opportunity to put a cross in a box.  Democracy, in that the deliberation will be from an accurately representative section of the South Yorkshire region and not left to party political agendas.  It is doing politics differently, as Oliver Coppard said to “renew that trust and faith, that bond between our communities and the politics that we have in this country, and this community, so that people genuinely feel they are seen and they are heard and that the decisions that we take reflect their priorities”.

Last summer I was randomly invited, along with 30000 others in the region, to apply to be part of the South Yorkshire Citizen’s Assembly on Climate, to deliberate over the question of ‘How Should We Respond To Build A Thriving And Sustainable Future for South Yorkshire?’. 

Having answered a detailed questionnaire on location, identity, occupation, and beliefs, I was selected to become one of the 100 people, that truly represented the composition of the region, who would meet together, over five days this autumn, across our major towns and cities.

When we walked into the room and sat at tables among strangers, it was obvious that something was different.  We were valued, good coffee and cakes help, but so does good organisation.  Whilst our views on climate breakdown were mixed, from climate sceptics to those prepared to glue themselves to motorways, trust that we would listen to one another was never doubted; and we really did. 

In our everyday contact on social media, the discussions would have quickly degenerated into abuse; I’m sure we all have sensed that.  What I saw completely confirmed my belief, that when there is respect, and when change is not presented as an imposed threat, ordinary people really can be trusted to talk to each other, and to consider many new ideas; jury trials would never work if this weren’t fundamentally true.  Where this went further, was to offer some form of power back to us.  We were not only there to talk, but to weigh up pros and cons, to look at trade-offs, to think of expanding upon what we had heard, to consider what would help and what would not.  In other words, the things we are told to leave to our representative politicians, we were trusted to consider, and we offered back to them to act upon.

Over the sessions, we heard from dozens of people with experience in community, business, academia, health, and education.  From experts to farmers and school students, people with experience and knowledge that we don’t usually gain from.  After hours of listening, and discussing, we were set the task of creating ideas for action, and then at the final session, we voted on those to produce 14 points for Oliver Coppard to take to all the regional authorities to consider for implementation.  Some of these were simple, some may be difficult to weave into the authorities’ mandates, and some will be hard; we will have to hold them to the hard parts!

The CA has offered a glimpse of how politics can be done differently.  It has shown that working people, holding a range of ideas, can be trusted to work together, and we must be allowed to consider ways in which scarce resources are used to develop a route towards Net Zero by 2040.  Politics was not only discussed but it was done cooperatively and without abuse.

Participatory Democracy must now be established at the heart of our local governance.  This is possible, as Frome Council has shown for years, we now know that we can do it.  One Assembly will be an interesting experiment, but business as usual will render it insignificant.  The scale of the problem is way beyond one assembly and 14 action points.  Our representatives must now fight for the resources to improve the lives of working people as we transition, and those resources are there but very unfairly distributed.   Assemblies offer a real way forward as our economy faces such deep problems.  Our assemblies need to be free from the election promises of the representatives who organised them – this creates ambiguity over the independence, and I saw examples of this within the process.  But, at this moment let’s celebrate people doing politics differently, and let’s do this much more.

Ci Davis

Barnsley Assembly Member