2023 Award "Best Practice in Citizen Participation"

17th Edition

Phase 6 of 7

Publication Preparation 18/09/2023 - 06/11/2023

Process phases

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Milan: Permanent Citizens’ Assembly on Climate

Official proposal

01/06/2023 17:53

The Permanent Citizens’ Assembly on Climate is a citizens body established by the Municipality of Milan in the framework of the implementation phase of the City Air and Climate Plan, with the supervision and technical assistance of AMAT - Agenzia Mobilità Ambiente Territorio and the Consorzio Poliedra - Politecnico di Milano.

The Assembly is inspired and informed by principles of deliberative democracy and is composed of 90 citizens, who are drawn by lot to proportionally represent the population of the city. Each participant is in charge for 6 months; every 3 months, half of the Assembly is renewed so as to allow the involvement of new participants while also keeping the work of the Assembly going without interruptions.

The Assembly’s mandate is to supervise, accompany and integrate the implementation of Milan’s Air and Climate Plan at least up until 2030. The Plan defines the strategy the city has adopted to reduce GHG emissions, improve air quality and fight the effects of climate change by that date. The main objective of the Assembly initiative is thus to engage non-organized citizens and give them the opportunity to contribute to the definition of the city’s climate policies and actions for the next decade, while doing so in the most inclusive and representative way.

In order to allow the voice of citizens to actually affect the concrete development of the strategy, first citizens are provided with detailed evidence on the Actions foreseen by the Air and Plan thanks to the support given by municipal technicians, officers and policymakers. Each participant has then the opportunity to join facilitated Working Groups upon the main areas of the Plan and to elaborate, together with their peers, Proposals - that is to say recommendations and new Actions for the Plan. Citizens’ Proposals are voted on twice a year and those which are approved by at least 2/3 of the Assembly’s participants are collected within an Annual Report that is submitted to the Municipality. The Administration has then two months to either accept or reject its content, always providing reasons for their choices.

After 6 months from the launch of the Assembly’s experience, in May 2023 8 Proposals were drafted by the Working Groups and 5 of them were approved to be included in 2023’s Report for the Municipality. The end of 2023 must be awaited to see what impact these Proposals will have on the actual implementation of the climate strategy and actions.

At the end of their experience, leaving participants are asked to fill out an evaluation survey and are presented with new opportunities to extend their commitment to support the Municipality’s climate action plan on a voluntary basis. The very first group of participants that is now leaving the Assembly is considering forming an association that should later oversee the Proposals implementation phase.

Finally, a group of independent associations, experts and observatories on practices of deliberative democracy has delivered to the Municipality a monitoring plan for evaluating the deliberation activities of the Assembly itself.