The green transition requires many, large and complex initiatives. But how best to achieve the goal of transforming local and urban communities to greener and better urban life is neither one-sided nor simple. That’s why the City of Copenhagen is asking Copenhageners in a new Climate Citizens’ Parliament to help ensure that Copenhagen’s future is socially sustainable while cutting greenhouse gas emissions.
The Climate Citizens’ Parliament is one of the first steps in the City of Copenhagen’s Climate Plan 2035, which will be completed in 2026. The recommendations of the Climate Parliament must therefore be ready in advance, so that politicians can be advised by citizens’ work to create climate policy that better relates to citizens’ wishes and priorities in the area. Citizens will work together through a process of listening to experts in the field and each other to answer questions about what to do first to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and how to ensure that as many citizens as possible actively support the green transition process.
The citizens who are drawn to join the Climate Citizens’ Parliament are selected based on four criteria: age, gender, income and education. In addition, the members are also distributed in a way that aims to achieve the greatest geographical spread in the municipality and that there are different levels of climate engagement to represent the interests of the citizens of the City of Copenhagen in a broad sense. This is done in order to ensure that the recommendations of the Climate Parliament and the overall climate plan will meet the broadest support among the citizens of Copenhagen in general.
We Do Democracy facilitates the three years of the Climate Parliament with three different processes until 2026, where members gather to discuss key climate issues. The Climate Parliament will annually submit preliminary recommendations to the Danish Parliament until 2026, when the final recommendations will be ready. The Climate Citizens’ Parliament is one of several initiatives in the City of Copenhagen’s Climate Plan 2035.
Read more about the Copenhagen Climate Parliament here: https://klimaborgerting.kk.dk/