Climate citizen gathering in Greve Municipality

Municipal climate action is necessary to transition to a green and carbon-neutral society. That is why Greve Municipality was the first in Denmark to conduct a climate citizen assembly. A Climate Citizens’ Assembly is based on OECD standards, where ordinary citizens are drawn by lot to make recommendations to the city council on what the transition to a climate-friendly municipality should look like.

The citizen assembly was asked a core question by the city council in Greve, which formed the task description of the citizen assembly. The core question was: “We need your help to envision a future in Greve Municipality where we together transition to a CO2-neutral and green everyday life.

We Do Democracy was the lead facilitator and third-party secretariat for the Citizens’ Assembly. In collaboration with the city council, we established a political mandate, drafted the core question and designed the process, and conducted a citizen draw prior to the citizens’ assembly. In addition, we ran the citizen assembly itself, which took place both physically and digitally.

• Almost 40,000 citizens aged 16 to 99+ were invited to participate in the citizen survey. 357 citizens wanted to participate in the process.
• 36 citizens were recruited based on the selection criteria: age, gender, education level and residence in the municipality. Thus, the citizens’ assembly was representative of Greve Municipality.
• The members of the Citizens’ Assembly presented their recommendations on April 4, 2022 in the City Hall in front of the members of the City Council.
• The city council subsequently chose to incorporate the citizen assembly’s recommendations into the municipality’s climate action plan

Read more about the climate citizen assembly and the evaluation of the process – conducted by Analyse & Tal in collaboration with the University of Copenhagen. And read the final recommendations here.