気候政策に関する市民会議：その背景と意義

抄録

A remarkable trend in the current promotion of public discussion on climate change issues is the introduction of randomly selected citizens' assemblies. In 2019, France and the UK officially announced the launch of citizens' assemblies to discuss the transition to a carbon neutral society, while the Irish government consulted its multipurpose citizens' assembly in 2017 for recommendations on climate policy. This should be regarded as a global trend, rather than merely a local phenomenon, in that it has roots in the development and application of mini-publics techniques over the last few decades around the world, including the World Wide Views project, which has aimed at realizing participatory environmental governance on a global scale. The author's recent trial of a two-day citizen panel on “Decarbonization Transition and the Quality of Life” held in Japan demonstrates that a randomly selected citizens' panel can effectively provide the members of the public with an opportunity to become informed, deliberate on climate change issues, and collectively envision carbon neutral transitions. However, conclusions from a particular citizens' panel may largely depend on its conditions. To take full advantage of this method, it is important to iterate such meetings in different settings and share their results for wider public debates.