Copenhagen Climate Citizens’ Assembly

As part of the City of Copenhagen’s Climate Strategy 2035, which comes into force from 2026, the Technical and Environmental Administration has chosen to initiate a deliberative citizen involvement process that will provide a broader insight into how Copenhageners imagine the good Copenhagen life with far less CO2 emissions. Initially, the Climate Citizens’ Parliament will explore how the City of Copenhagen can help its citizens get started with the sustainable transition in their own everyday lives. Copenhagen wants to live up to the OECD’s principles for deliberative processes when designing the citizens’ parliament.

The Copenhagen Climate Parliament runs over 3 years. In the first year, the members are tasked with answering the core question: “What does a good Copenhagen life look like with far lower greenhouse gas emissions from the consumption of food, housing and transportation, and how can we best get there together?”. Over six sessions in the first year, the members had to work together to develop recommendations that respond to the core task and hand them over to the citizen representation, which will consider the recommendations as one of several inputs to the city’s Climate Strategy.

In the second year, the Climate Citizens’ Council members – consisting of new and former participants – met over a total of 5 sessions and developed recommendations on how communities of action can fulfill the visions and wishes of the Climate Citizens’ Council for a more sustainable everyday life. In addition, the parliament has developed 5 concrete pilot projects for how the city can get started with communities of action.

We Do Democracy is behind the design and facilitation of the Citizens’ Parliament. The task has been to ensure a good working process for the citizen parliament that lives up to OECD standards for deliberative processes, and that the Climate Parliament reaches its goal with recommendations that provide the city with knowledge about citizens’ priorities and wishes for the transition of Copenhageners’ consumption in the future.

The recommendations from the Copenhagen Climate Parliament years 1 and 2 include visions for an everyday life with less consumption and more sharing in communities, policy recommendations on system change and cultural values, housing, transportation and food, as well as insights on communities and how to launch initiatives to change the motivation and consumption habits of Copenhageners. You can read all the recommendations on the Climate Parliament website.