Citizens’ Assembly on UN Sustainable Development Goals

The UN Sustainable Development Goals cut across all sectors of society. Therefore, they can only be realized if different branches of society work together. It was based on this realization that Rudersdal municipality set up a citizens’ assembly to look at how we can translate the goals into local action through interaction with citizens, businesses and associations.

The municipal council decided that the citizens’ assembly should work with the following core question, which at the same time served as the assembly’s task description: “What should life in Rudersdal look like in a sustainable future where we realize the SDGs together?” The citizens were asked to come up with recommendations on how to put the SDG’s into practice around the municipality.

We Do Democracy was the lead facilitator and third-party secretariat, running the citizens’ assembly. We designed both the core questions and the overall process in collaboration with the municipal council and the administration. Finally, We Do Democracy facilitated the various meetings in the citizens’ assembly, which took place both physically and digitally. In this way, we guaranteed the integrity of the process.

• 45,000 citizens aged 16 and over were invited to participate in the citizen assembly. Over 890 citizens wanted to participate in the process.
• 37 citizens were recruited based on the selection criteria: residence, age, gender and education level, so that the citizen sample was representative of Rudersdal Municipality.
•  On April 28, 2021, the members of the Citizens’ Assembly presented their overall recommendations to the city council. The recommendations will act as a guideline for how Rudersdal will reach the SDG’s in the future.

Read more about the Citizens’ Assembly here