Learning By Doing at the Austrian Citizen’s Climate Council

A world that is able to confront its civilizational challenges through principles of co-intelligence and wise democracy is a tantalizing promise that can only be achieved through innovation and learning. Two of the CoIntelligence Institute’s close colleagues Martin Rausch and Andy Paice seized an opportunity this year to be involved in such innovation through their collaboration with  Der Klimarat - The Austrian Citizens’ Climate Council. 

How did it come about?

In Austria, the “Volksbegehren” (petition for a referendum) is a direct democracy tool that enables citizens to impose on Parliament a mandatory review of their request, if supported with at least 100,000 signatures.

A climate activist Katharina Rogenhofer put forward a Volksbegehren Climate petition with a number of demands for climate measures including the holding of a national Citizens’ Council on Climate Change (an example of a Citizens’ Climate Assembly, a recent democratic innovation that is gaining popularity in Europe as a means of bringing citizens into the heart of decision making for climate action.) 

The petition received over 400,000 signatures (a huge figure considering Austria has a population of less than 10 million.)  As a result of this, from January to June this year the Austrian Citizens’ Climate Council, a representative sample of approximately 100 citizens selected by sortition (random selection) came together over 6 weekends (one weekend per month for six months) to learn, discuss and finally deliver to the Austrian parliament their recommendations for climate protection.  

Martin and Andy’s involvement

Martin Rausch, CII associate and co-designer of the Wise Democracy Pattern Language cards and website, was called upon by a consortium consisting of three organizations (ÖGUT, Pulswerk and PlanSinn) to be part of the organising team that eventually won the bid to run the council. Martin’s role was to document the process as a videographer and provide facilitation support.

Having spent some time with Tom Atlee exploring a variety of wise democracy methods and processes, Martin felt the digital democracy platform Polis could be a very useful tool that would complement and enhance the climate council’s work. 

So he got in touch with me, Andy Paice (CII Board member), as he knew I had run a few Polis conversations in the UK with local government, particularly in connection to Climate Assemblies. We discussed how Polis might be incorporated into the design of the Citizens’ Council to give this mini-public of Austria a better understanding of how the wider society felt about climate measures and to give all Austrians a chance to input into the deliberations with their own ideas.

The organising team liked the idea, and Martin and Andy ended up working together on this project to create an opportunity for all Austrians to have their say and to inform the Citizens’ Climate Council in making its recommendations. 

Using a transformational tool for democracy 

The principles of co-intelligence highlight the importance of creating a holistic picture of how communities and societies think and feel. Polis is a tool that does just this. So we were delighted at this fantastic opportunity to infuse the workings of a large scale national democratic forum with an online tool with great potential to transform our processes of decision making. 

So in mid April I made a long train journey from London to Salzburg and joined Martin and the Klimarat for their fourth weekend session. Here facilitators supported the participants in creating statements to seed five national Polis conversations on the climate related themes of Energy, Consumption and Production, Food and Land Use, Housing and Mobility.

The conversations were launched nationally on 27th April when it appeared as the top headline on the front page of Kronen Zeitung, Austria’s most read daily newspaper. “Vote on Climate Protection - Austrians can join the conversation for 10 days”

The national Polis conversation lasted almost 2 weeks and was publicised as “der Klimarat fragt dich um rat” (the Climate Council asks you for advice). Thousands of statements were submitted and the 5 conversations received over 800,000 votes on those statements. 

On the 5th weekend in Vienna the Climate Council reviewed the results as part of their final deliberations before making their recommendations which were handed over to the Austrian Parliament on July 4th. 

Sharing our insights

Needless to say, Martin and I learned a lot about designing a large scale public conversation with the aim of maximizing co-intelligence. We’ll be sharing our learning with you here over the coming weeks. 

Here’s what’s coming up:

• A case study with details of how Polis was used to inform the Citizens’ Council, what the results revealed, the vision of what we were hoping to achieve by using Polis and what transpired.

• An appraisal of the whole process of the innovative Austrian Climate Council through a wise democracy lens.

Stay tuned for a more in-depth case study …