On April 4th 2024, during the ECSA Conference in Vienna, a CLIMAS team composed of Eurecat and CambiaMO held a workshop where a group of citizen science pratictioners explored ways to generate incorporate citizen science into citizen climate assemblies. Citizen science integrates experiential knowledge and citizen perspectives into the development of scientific research as seen in examples related to air quality, mental health, mobility and climate change.

The workshop “Citizen Science in Climate Assemblies: Policy Recommendation Based on Citizen-Generated Knowledge” was hosted in the context of the most relevant conference on citizen science in Europe. It was focused on discussing how citizen science and the knowledge generated by citizens can be capitalized on deliberative processes for climate action like citizen climate assemblies. Moreover, this setting provided the perfect environment to experiment with citizen science projects and explore its potential to bring citizens’ voices into climate policy development.

For this reason, experts and practitioners came together to discuss:

  • The organization and structure of Citizen Climate Assemblies, a growing form of deliberative democracy that tackled climate change.
  • Living Labs (LLs) as facilitators that co-created and tested citizen science projects.
  • The potential for integrating citizen science methodologies into CCAs, ultimately empowering citizens to shape climate policy.
  • Citizen science projects to be integrated in the toolkit for citizen climate assemblies (the open call for projects is open until April 30th).
Overall, the workshop explored how Citizen Science aimed to generate new perspectives on citizen engagement in climate action and inform the development of the CLIMAS’ toolkit. The workshop actively incorporated key takeaways to be used in future citizen climate assemblies, further empowering citizens to participate in the fight against climate change.

A photo of the workshop that explored how Citizen Science (CS) supports policy making. From the left: Floridea di Ciommo (cambiaMO), Frràn Adrià, Julià Vicens (Eurecat)

CLIMAS Team at ECSA in Vienna – copyright @CLIMAS 2024

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