We convened 20 international organizations at a Climate Democracy Forum. Here’s what we learned.
/As the climate crisis grows, governments around the world are failing to take adequate action. What would it look like for people on the ground to take the lead on climate policy?
A growing movement for climate democracy is putting this idea into practice. During the 2024 Climate Week in New York City, People Powered and the Ban Ki-moon Foundation hosted a Climate Democracy Forum to align this global work on climate participation and engagement. We convened leaders from 20 international organizations and funders, to build relationships, map the field, and prioritize actions to take our collective work to the next level.
Here are three key takeaways
1. Effective climate solutions cannot be imposed from above — they need to be built with impacted communities.
Climate advocates are demanding more participation in policymaking, but governments often struggle to productively engage people. To address this challenge, a growing field of organizations and funders is supporting climate democracy, participation, and engagement, to enable civil society, community members, and government to shape climate policies together.
2. Climate democracy efforts are disconnected, resulting in fragmented messaging, duplication of work, and missed opportunities for impact.
Many of the workshop participants had never met or encountered each other’s work. We mapped where we are supporting climate democracy, what practices we are supporting, and how we are providing support. While some groups provided similar support or resources, there were significant gaps. There is less support for some regions (e.g., Oceania) and climate democracy practices (e.g., participatory budgeting, arts engagement).
3. There are shared priorities for expanding climate democracy.
We created an initial analysis of the key strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats for the field. Based on that, we identified and prioritized initiatives to better align and connect our work, and increase its impacts on climate action. Priorities include:
Connect global finance architecture reform with citizen engagement
Learning calls & events with funder, government, and civil society networks, to increase access to climate democracy practices
Pooled fund to support inter-organization collaboration
Produce new communications content to address common concerns and fears
Consolidate & coordinate advocacy around big moments such as COP
Peer learning and mentorship opportunities for civil servants and advocates
Community of practice for climate democracy, grounded in and accountable to Global South groups
Strengthen commitments towards Indigenous stewardship, self-determination, and sovereignty
We are continuing to engage workshop participants in moving forward these priorities. If you want to support or contribute to these efforts, please contact us. See the workshop report for details.
Participating organizations
Accountability Lab; ACE Observatory; Ban Ki-moon Foundation; CS Fund; Democratic Society / NetZeroCities; European Climate Foundation; Ford Foundation; Global Partnership for Social Accountability (GPSA); International IDEA; National Democratic Institute (NDI); Open Government Partnership (OGP); Open Society Foundations (OSF); People Powered; SouthSouthNorth (SSN); Thousand Currents; Waverley Street Foundation; World Resources Institute (WRI); SFU’s Morris J. Wosk Centre for Dialogue
Do you want to launch or improve a climate action participatory program? We are now accepting proposals for the Climate Democracy Accelerator until December 1. Participants receive free training, publicity and grants up to $30,000!
See more Climate Democracy in Action!
