The Citizens Convention for Climate is a citizens' assembly held in 2019 and 2020 which discussed reducing France's carbon emissions by 40% from its 1990 levels in a spirit of social justice.[1] It was initiated in response to the Yellow Vest protests to the fuel tax.[1] The convention was modeled after a number of other deliberative experiments known as mini-publics. The members of the convention were 150 randomly selected citizens designed to be representative of the French public across six demographic dimensions: gender, age, socio-economic background, education level, location type, and province.[2] The convention was assisted by a number of committees including the governance committee, a team of experts who provided organizational guidance and assistance,[3] a guarantor college, which maintained the convention's independence,[4] and a legal board.[5] The members themselves divided into working groups on five issues within the topic of climate change: food, housing, employment, transportation, and consumption.[4]
The work of the convention was initially split into six sessions, with an additional official seventh session and three unofficial sessions: two virtual sessions in between the sixth and seventh session and an eighth session to evaluate the government's proposed climate bill.[1][6] The sessions were initially held every third weekend beginning the weekend of October 5, 2019. The fourth session was delayed by the pension protests in December 2019 and January 2020 and the seventh session was delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic.[1] The first session focused on defining the role of the assembly,[7] the second session focused on the biggest questions the convention would attempt to answer,[8] the third session involved many meetings with outside experts,[7] and the fourth session involved work within the five working groups and a visit from Emmanuel Macron.[9] The members finalized their proposals during the fifth session, presented them during the sixth session,[10] and voted on them in the seventh session.[11] In total, the convention approved of 149 proposals across the working groups, of which Emmanuel Macron promised to implement 146.[1]
The media reported an increasingly strained relationship between the members of the convention and parliament as the members of the convention felt that parliament was failing to pass their initiatives and be sufficiently bold in their proposals.[12] When parliament announced the bill written in response to the proposals of the convention, many members of the convention were outraged that it did not include many of their key provisions. During the unofficial eighth session, many members of the convention gave parliament a failing grade for its inability to enact their proposals.[13]
The convention attracted significant attention from scholars, particularly scholars of deliberative and participatory democracy.[14][1] There is a growing body of literature written by democratic theorists, many of whom observed the convention in person, on what the convention means for the future of democracy and evaluating the successes and failures of the convention.
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