Citizens’ climate assembly, sustainability, and democratic innovation in an Anthropocene world

Abstract

The article contributes to research on sustainability at a time when humans and non-humans are more entangled than ever before. It focuses on the Danish national citizens’ climate assembly, which on the one hand appears as a genuine renewal that puts climate first but on the other hand is subject to a human-centered perspective that risks undermining the possibility of sustainability for all. The article examines the tension between these two trends, starting from discussions about the Anthropocene and its significance for democracy and the political. The article is particularly interested in examining how democratic innovations as a citizens’ climate assembly allow the non-human to speak – for example by including animals and plants in the deliberative process – and in this way contribute to a real ecologicalization of democratic deliberation. The article compares this possibility with the results from the research project “Democratic Innovations in a Green Transition,” which over the past three years has closely followed the Danish Citizens’ Climate Assembly through qualitative and quantitative studies. The article uses the results of the studies as a prism for a more general problem: That climate policy is developed and decided through democratic-institutional frameworks that do not align with the changed human-nature relationship that prevails in an Anthropocene world.