Episode #26: Giving citizens a voice: 

European climate assemblies

In our 3rd season of How Green Is Your Deal?, we explore not only which decisions are made but also who makes them. 

In this episode with Aishwarya Machani, we explore how citizens’ assemblies are used to facilitate climate action and increase the legitimacy of the climate transition. Can citizens’ assemblies help bridge political divides? Do their recommendations lead to meaningful change? And what can they teach us about building more democratic and effective responses to the climate crisis?

This season is produced in collaboration with RETOOL, a HORIZON EUROPE project aiming to advance our understanding of how to address the twin challenges of responding to the climate imperative while strengthening and reinvigorating democratic governance.

About the guest

Aishwarya Machani is a Policy Analyst at the Grantham Research Institute focusing on climate governance and public participation. She is currently working on the RETOOL project.

Prior to the Grantham Research Institute, Aishwarya worked at Iswe Foundation where she advocated for global deliberative participation and helped to build the Coalition for a Global Citizens’ Assembly. Before this, Aishwarya was a Next Generation Fellow and Consultant at the United Nations Foundation where she supported the UN Secretary-General’s Our Common Agenda initiative and helped to build the Unlock the Future Coalition. During this time, she was also a columnist at World Politics Review focusing on the intergenerational dimension of global challenges.

Aishwarya is also a member of the Global Citizens’ Assembly Network, a collective that generates and disseminates research on the design, implementation, and evaluation of global deliberation initiatives. 

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About the podcast series

The von der Leyen I Commission set out to put the EU on a pathway toward a sustainable, low-carbon future with the launch of the European Green Deal. However, the Green Deal quickly found itself in rough waters as the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia's invasion of Ukraine risked derailing it all. 

To help you understand what the EU aimed at doing in the European Green Deal, how it is impacted by changing times, and what we can expect from the second von der Leyen Commission, GreenDeal-NET created a How Green Deal? In 20- to 30-minute episodes, host and researcher Jana Gheuens talks with leading climate experts about their views on the EU's climate transition. Topics include everything from carbon pricing, the role of climate activism and NGOs, to how to integrate climate action in all the EU’s policy measures.

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Click here to see the full series