Local Voices continues this week after a conversation with colleague and collaborator Kath Fisher who designed and facilitated this series of forums in regional Victoria. I asked her what she saw as the role of Citizen Climate Juries in our time, when climate issues are so little digested in the broad community.
‘Well firstly, I think that their value is to engage people who wouldn’t otherwise find out and make sense of the issue, and to encourage the kind of conversation they don’t ordinarily have with other people in their communities. Also Councils get to have a particular kind of engagement with their constituents that concerns a major area of uncertainty, and they find that their community members are struggling with the same things they struggle with in the council context. And depending on the media’s role, with the right kind of promotion, there is the opportunity to start a different kind of discussion in the communities themselves.’
So you’re talking about community supported change?
‘Yes. When people read about Climate Juries in the local paper, along the lines of: “Communities need to be engaged on climate change. We need to be hearing what ordinary people think, and we need a partnership between council and communities” it invites the same kind of trust in the common sense of citizens that we know is true of trial juries. They have endured for so long despite their flaws because of this trust in an unaligned group of people who don’t have an agenda. Here with climate change, if the Climate Jury is framed very well, we get the response of “A group of ordinary citizens after receiving information from expert witnesses and deliberating on it, thought this, and these are the recommendations they came up with.’ People can relate to that.
‘The framing of the Climate Jury is a real challenge in the design process – climate change is so charged and politicised and you get councils trying to get round this by using other terms. In Local Voices the term ‘a varying climate’ was used in framing the question for deliberation, even though climate variability and long term climate change are not the same thing. 
‘A challenge of the process is also the choice of experts. In Local Voices the Jury heard from Graeme Pearman, an eminent climate scientist, who is also very tuned into social issues and respectful of the lay community’s views. A lot of effort was put into making sure that the experts were relevant to local issues and lives. For example, in the Alpine Shire the Jury heard from an alpine resort tourism industry operator at risk of losing snow within the next 30 years, at Wangaratta someone from the wine industry who spoke of the impact of smoke on grapes. There was a speaker from North East Water, a speaker on mental health. Everyone was engaged by Sam Millar, from the Australian Youth Climate Coalition, who spoke with passion about his views as a young person and his experience of COP15.
‘Council officers themselves – it’s very hard for them to see themselves as experts – but when they do it makes all the difference, and gives the Jury a framework for their recommendations.
‘Some of my big questions at the moment, bearing on what Rob Carolane discussed, is that Council executive, Councillors and Officers will be very impressed, but the challenge for them is how to maintain and sustain that relationship. Local government works slowly, and the community may be very inspired and want change to happen quite quickly.’
Climate change is a big issue and it’s a lot to ask people to be across so many different aspects. The more focused the discussion the better, so that people can ask: “How do we respond to the future?”