Climate policy, youth voice and intergenerational justice: learning from Nottingham Youth Climate Assembly

ABSTRACT

In this paper, we examine how youth voices and meaningful action that emerge from deliberative practices are shaped, legitimised, and constrained by national and international policy landscapes. Our paper situates itself within the policy nexus of (i) the UK Government’s Sustainability Strategy in England (2022), and (ii) at the international level by the Berlin Declaration on Education for Sustainable Development (2021), where principles of participation, engagement, intergenerational justice, and learning are paramount. We explore the ground-level challenges for youth-led and community action centred on intergenerational justice, local partnerships and national and international policy. Our paper examines the first Nottingham Youth Climate Assembly and outlines the interventions implemented by the authors and the community groups that we worked alongside. We then consider the successes and challenges in conducting local-level deliberative democratic processes, before discussing the role of youth voices within action for climate change. Finally, we offer suggestions for improving future interventions.

KEYWORDS:

• Deliberative democracy
• citizens’ assembly
• intergenerational justice
• climate policy
• youth climate action
• intergenerationality

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Sortition UK do not provide a full breakdown of age groups present at the UK Assembly – instead, grouping all participants aged 16–29. Therefore this statistic was provided by one of the paper authors that undertook ethnographic observation at the event. The fact that this information is not formally recorded is testament to the tokenistic inclusion of young people under 18 in deliberative processes.

2 The details of the ‘Charter’ are available at: https://www.nottinghamcity.gov.uk/media/otthf3fs/nottinghams-2028-carbon-neutral-charter-3.pdf.

3 Sortition is a process of representative selection of participants used for citizens' assemblies and juries that deliberate key issues such as the climate crisis (see https://www.sortitionfoundation.org/).

4 https://www.citizensuk.org/chapters/nottingham/.

5 Available at: https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/policy-and-engagement/documents/youth-manifesto.pdf.

6 More about the planning process for this assembly can be seen here: https://www.nottinghamclimateassembly.co.uk/city-assembly – members of the NYCA sit on the oversight panel for the City Assembly, meaning they are actively participating in the decision making processes.