Climate Assemblies Seek Citizen Participation in Latin American Solutions

The Climate Assembly in Bujaru, Brazil, debated between April and May this year on bioeconomy, family farming and cooperatives to influence the design and implementation of local policies on climate change. Credit: Delibera

By Emilio Godoy
MEXICO CITY, Aug 29 2024 (IPS)

Danilo Barbosa had never taken part in political processes until his name was drawn in a lottery to join the climate assembly of the municipality of Bujaru, in the Amazon region of Brazil.

“It was a good experience, a very important channel. People participated, they wanted to talk about the important issues and to have visibility about their concerns. Since people make a living from agriculture, that’s why I wanted to address this issue,” Barbosa told IPS from the municipality of Blumenau, in the southern state of Santa Catarina, where he lives temporarily.

Barbosa, 29, was part of a group of 50 people, chosen at random, to take part in the Bujaru climate assembly and discuss the opportunities and challenges of the climate crisis in the area and how to influence the process of designing and implementing related public policies.

The cultivation of rice, beans, maize and cassava, as well as livestock farming in deforested areas, are the main economic activities in the area, in the northern state of Pará.“There is talk in these times of political disaffection, in a hyper-individualised world, but when you open the doors so that people can participate, give ideas, there is a great desire to be present. We will see the results later": Ignacio Gertie.

For this reason, “we want agriculture that does not affect the environment and looks after the jungle. We need to protect biodiversity. That’s why it’s important that they consider our vision for the municipality, we want to help it grow,” said Barbosa, an administrative and accounting assistant in the real estate sector.

The climate assembly, under the subject Sustainable Bioeconomy: Paths and Options to Generate Jobs, Income and Quality of Life in Bujaru, resulted from a process between August and October 2023 that invited Amazonian cities to participate. Sixteen municipalities from six of the nine Brazilian Amazonian states responded.

During five sessions between April and May this year, the assembly deliberated on how to strategically position themselves and access opportunities in favour of sustainable performance and the bioeconomy, on issues such as forest management, monocultures, deforestation and synergy between technological innovation and ancestral knowledge.

By the end of August, the group will submit to the municipality, of 24,300 inhabitants, their recommendations, which include the design of a municipal agricultural plan with goals and indicators, the promotion of cooperatives, ecotourism and rural tourism.

Climate assemblies are mechanisms of deliberative democracy, discussion and reflection, promoted so that the citizens of a locality assume a central role in decision-making on the impacts of climate change and specific measures to address them.

By promoting local action, they address community-specific issues, because they know the local problems well, and they urge governments to include their concerns.

As such, these meetings sprouted from 2019 in Great Britain, France and Spain, spreading throughout Europe with varied results.

In Latin America they are still new, although the region has a participatory tradition, such as community boards with different names, which decide on local issues, and neighbourhood meetings to design participatory budgets.

Bolivia and Honduras have legal frameworks for public participation, while Bolivia and Colombia have institutional channels for popular participatory involvement, according to data from the non-governmental International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (International IDEA), which promotes citizen participation initiatives.

In 2016, Uruguay was a pioneer with the Decí Agua initiative on citizen deliberation to provide input to draft the National Water Plan, instituted two years later.

In Chile, the Citizens’ Climate Assembly in the southern region of Los Lagos met between May and August 2023 to make recommendations to the regional government on environmental education, energy efficiency and water management, which were delivered the following November.

Similar processes in Brazil and Colombia have shown the importance of citizen participation in the political debate, but had no direct impact on the design of public policies to address the climate crisis.

Experiments

In addition to Bujaru, other Latin American cities are organising their own procedures with the same objective, part of a regional project that the international network of (Re)emergent assemblies is promoting in four Latin American cities.

In the northern Mexican state of Nuevo León, a Climate Assembly was elected on Thursday 22nd to deliberate and issue recommendations in four meetings, with the aim of improving the territory’s environmental policies and prioritising actions to adapt to the climate crisis in the metropolitan area of Monterrey, the capital.

Bosque Iglesias, a climate advocacy consultant with the non-governmental Instituto del Sur, told IPS that a group of people were invited and an open application form was set up.

“We wanted people to feel called to participate. We prioritised areas in five polygons with heat islands, where there are voices that suffer most from the crisis and tend to be relegated in the public debate. The call has been challenging, because in the first week they came little by little,” he said from Monterrey.

In the draw on Thursday 22, the 50 people in the assembly were chosen from 542 candidates from 11 municipalities in the metropolitan area. Starting in September 7 they will tackle 11 of the 140 lines of action of the state’s climate change programme, supported by the Ministry of the Environment of Nuevo León.

The agenda includes water treatment, monitoring of urban green spaces, mobility and construction of green infrastructure.

In the Argentinian city of Mar del Plata, “it was decided to focus on the climate issue… We have to think of multidimensional, multidisciplinary and participatory solutions, with the challenges that our governments have. Unlike Europe, we have less budget and other more urgent priorities”: Ignacio Gertie.

In 2022, Nuevo León, especially Monterrey – which had 1.14 million people, or more than five million with the suburban area – faced a severe water crisis. The municipal administration declared a climate emergency in 2021, being the first Mexican city to do so. In 2024, heat waves hit the metropolis.

From 13 to 22 August, a climate assembly in the city of Mar del Plata, in Argentina’s southeast Atlantic, discussed recommendations for a new climate action plan for the district of General Pueyrredón, of which it is the capital.

The group addressed training, awareness-raising and community-driven policy-making, solid and liquid waste management, reuse of materials and recycling, as well as disaster prevention and preparedness.

Ignacio Gertie, project leader at the non-governmental Democracia en Red, told IPS that there is a growing demand and need for institutional openness to citizen participation, which is reflected in experiences like the one in the Argentine tourist city.

“It was decided to focus on the climate issue… so we have to think about multidimensional, multidisciplinary and participatory solutions, with the challenges that our governments face. Unlike Europe, we are less resilient, with smaller budgets and other more urgent priorities,” he said from Mar del Plata.

The city, which in 2022 had over 682,000 people and belongs to the Argentine Network of Municipalities facing Climate Change, is drawing up its local action plan to face challenges such as the water situation and heat waves.

Another regional experience is the climate assembly of the Colombian city of Buenaventura, in the southwestern department of Valle del Cauca, with growing climate challenges. It started meeting to deliberate and issue suggestions on the collection and transformation of solid waste in the area.

Its port on the Pacific Ocean, the largest in Colombia and one of the top 10 in Latin America, faces water risks, loss of biodiversity, temperature increase and ocean acidification, as well as coastal erosion, for which the city has had a Territorial Climate Change Management Plan since 2016, currently in the process of being updated.

Pioneers

The first wave of European climate assemblies provides evidence that citizens are willing and able to arrive at climate recommendations that are decisive for the population.

In France, authorities have implemented approximately 50 % of the recommendations or an alternative measure that partially implements the proposal, according to the study ‘Deliberative Democracy and Climate Change’, which Idea-International and the governmental French Development Agency released in June.

In Bujaru, Barbosa, who will return to his municipality in September, is ready to monitor the implementation.

“We will verify if they take into account the recommendations in the plans. It won’t be immediate. We talked about the importance of implementing measures in the area” for the benefit of the population, he said.

Mexico’s Iglesias and Argentina’s Gertie are confident that the citizens’ process will continue to contribute to climate action.

“The challenge is institutional follow-up. It is a major task of the assembly to stay coordinated in order to demand it. Having a group of actors to follow up is key. We hope to weave a joint advocacy agenda and become strong in the collective, and be a relevant subject in the face of the crisis,” Iglesias predicted.

For Gertie, the road ahead is to organise more processes. “There is talk in these times of political disaffection, in a hyper-individualised world, but when you open the doors so that people can participate, give ideas, there is a great desire to be present. We will see the results later,” he stressed.