Climate Assembly at the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Copenhagen

The University of Copenhagen is facing a green transition that requires all sectors and systems to be rethought. Specifically, the University of Copenhagen has a goal to reduce the university’s CO2 emissions by 50% by 2030. This is a goal that all faculties at the university must contribute to, including the Faculty of Social Sciences (SAMF). The Faculty of Social Sciences has decided to conduct a climate assembly with the participation of students and staff at the Faculty of Social Sciences. This is because the management wants to take the lead and develop and test methods for how we as a society can democratically implement the major changes required by the green transition.

The central question of the climate assembly is formulated by the faculty’s management and reads: “We need your help to recommend and prioritize how SAMF should reduce its CO2 emissions and ensure that SAMF actively contributes to society’s green transition.” Even though the climate assembly is not a typical citizens’ assembly where the participants are citizens of, for example, a municipality, but rather students and employees, the climate assembly must still live up to the OECD’s principles for good deliberative processes.

The task is thus both to test a new democratic form of involvement in decision-making processes in large organizations, but also to ensure the best possible transition to being a sustainable institution that dares to ask for help on how to rethink its practices from those who actually have to put them into practice in their everyday lives, namely the students and employees.

We Do Democracy designs, facilitates, and acts as the third-party secretariat for the climate assembly. All students and staff at the faculty are invited to participate in the climate assembly. Together with the research agency Analyse & Tal, we will conduct a stratified random draw so that the final group of 36 members in total will reflect the overall composition at SAMF in terms of gender and other relevant factors. To ensure an appropriate representation of employees in the assembly, employees will be over-represented. Over the course of four evening sessions from October to the end of November, the participants of the climate assembly will first be introduced to the issue and then work on developing recommendations to be submitted to the Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences. An expert group has been attached to the climate assembly to ensure that the climate assembly is based on neutral and objective knowledge. In addition, an impact group has been established, whose task is to help ensure that the recommendations have the greatest possible impact both at the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Copenhagen and in society in general.

The final recommendations of the Climate Assembly were handed over in early 2024 in a packed banquet hall – to the Dean and management of the Faculty of Business and Social Sciences. For Dean Mikkel Vedby Rasmussen, the Climate Assembly is a way to give new meaning to university democracy and the work for a green campus: “Organizing the Climate Assembly was an experiment in university democracy. And the experiment succeeded. I’m very happy about that. It makes me happy that we have found a way to channel the energy and ingenuity that exists at SAMF into a deliberative, democratic process. We will use this method again.” he said at the handover. Read more here at the University of Copenhagen and follow the project’s website.