Watch video: In part seven of our 10-part video series, The Way Forward, Rod Oram looks at big new ideas that can lead our response to climate change
Making good, enduring decisions about complicated, long-term issues is a tough challenge for any community whether it’s a neighbourhood or a nation. Arguably the key to success is having constructive discussions among diverse people.
Giving people such ways to engage is the essence of deliberative democracy, a relatively new field in societal decision making. There are various ways to get a representative cross section of people together and to then inform and facilitate their discussion. Citizens’ assembles are perhaps the best known so far, having been used in the likes of Ireland, the UK and France in recent years.
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The best example yet of such an assembly in Aotearoa New Zealand is the subject of this 7th episode of The Way Forward, our Newsroom video series on the first seeds of transformative change in our responses to the climate crisis.
Watercare, Auckland’s water utility, initiated the assembly to get public guidance on a complex issue: what will be the best new source of water for the city post-2040? Having committed to building no new reservoirs or taking any increased volumes of water from the Waikato River, Watercare had various technical options but was very keen to hear the verdict of citizens.
To organise and run the assembly, Watercare formed a partnership with Koi Tū: The Centre for Informed Futures at the University of Auckland. After some two years of research and development of the process, the assembly ran over two months last year.
At the assembly’s conclusion, the participants delivered their verdict to the Watercare board: direct recycling of water was the best option. Notably, this was the most challenging option from a cultural and societal point of view. Yet the informed debate among the diverse participants had led them to their decision.
More background on deliberative democracy and the Watercare assembly is offered in this Newsroom article by Dr Tatjana Buklijas, a member of the Koi Tu team.
