On September 26th 2009 World Wide Views on Global Warming will give citizens all over the world a possibility to define and communicate their positions on issues and questions central to the negotiations at the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP15) in Copenhagen, starting two months later.
Decisions made at COP15 will shape the global climate policy for years to come and will strongly influence the economic, industrial, social and climatic development for us as citizens. It is therefore important to give citizens around the world an opportunity to contribute with their views on some of the key issues addressed at the climate summit.
World Wide Views on Global Warming will bring forward the views of citizens from all parts of the world.
The core of the method will be citizens meetings with 100 participants in as many countries as possible approximately two months before the climate summit starts.
The method used for the national citizen meetings has been constructed as a hybrid with elements from well tested existing methods. It will contain an element of authentic citizen expressions in terms of suggestions for individual/local/national/ international action, for which techniques from the ‘Citizen Hearing’, developed by the Danish Board of Technology, will be used.
Part of the programme of the meeting will be split into thematic deliberations, which will lead to on-the-spot voting on a set of pre-prepared questions. This includes elements inspired by
- ‘Deliberative Poll’ (Developed by James Fishkin)
- ‘Citizen Summit’ (Developed by AmericaSpeaks)
- ‘Voting Conference’ (Developed by The Danish Board of Technology).
- ‘Interview Meeting’ (Developed by The Danish Board of Technology).
- ‘Consensus Conference’ (The Danish Board of Technology).
Reporting inside an eLearning system based project intra-net. Common to the methods is the emphasis on deliberation and dialogue with citizens informed by input from various experts.
Citizens from a limited number of countries will be involved in the selection of the questions, for example by holding a focus group meeting on each continent. An international Scientific Advisory Board with selected experts and interested parties will be appointed. It will be consulted when selecting the questions to the citizens and making the introductory material.
The WWViews will take place approximately 2-3 months before the climate summit starts. This should allow enough time for results to become known to political decision-makers on COP15.
