Forward Together? - Feasibility study on deliberative participation in climate governance

International commitments, social demands and resistance: Climate policy is under considerable pressure. Conflicts over social justice, burden-sharing and the pace of change complicate political decisions and jeopardize their acceptance. In this situation, new forms of democratic legitimacy are needed that go beyond traditional participatory processes.

The involvement of citizens' panels is particularly valuable in climate policy, a field with long-term implications and short-term conflicts of interest. The need is great: there is currently a lack of structurally anchored, democratically legitimized participation formats at the federal level that are regularly and effectively integrated into legislative processes.
 

We want to create a basis for the permanent and systematic integration of deliberative participation in German climate policy. The aim is to ensure that the public's perspective is regularly and bindingly included in key climate policy decision-making processes, especially when updating climate protection programs.

The feasibility study therefore develops various realistic scenarios for how citizen and stakeholder participation can be embedded in existing procedures and designed in a meaningful way. These scenarios are examined in terms of political practicability, legal feasibility, costs and potential impact.
The results will be incorporated into a possible amendment to the Climate Protection Act – or serve independently as a blueprint for future participation formats at federal, state and international level.

The focus of the implementation is on the development of concrete scenarios. To this end, the project team will analyze at which points in the legislative and consultation process participation would be possible and meaningful - especially with regard to § 9 (3) KSG, which regulates participation in the updating of climate protection programs.

To develop the scenarios, expert interviews, workshops with relevant actors (e.g. from politics, administration, science, civil society and participatory practice) and in-depth literature analyses will be conducted. At the same time, a legal opinion will be obtained to assess the legal feasibility of individual models.

The project is carried out by Klimamitbestimmung e.V., an organization with many years of experience in the field of deliberative participation.