‘No one will protect what they don’t care about’: exploring conflict and collaboration in public climate engagement

Abstract

A dimension of public climate engagement that remains insufficiently addressed is the manner in which these efforts simultaneously tackle two wicked problems: democratic participation and climate change. Combining these problems compounds their complexity, creating new considerations and conflicts at their intersections.

With this dual-layered complexity in mind, I explore what we can learn from engaging with conflict in public climate engagement processes. This study takes a unique approach to the rise in citizen-centred involvement in climate action and policymaking, exploring how practitioners and participants in two case studies conceptualise and experience citizen agency and autonomy. Using a qualitative case study approach, the thesis contrasts a Danish regional climate assembly organised by local government with a place-based climate project sponsored by the Scottish government.

By examining these projects, I analyse how practitioners develop frameworks aligned with ideas of legitimacy and their projects’ positions relative to political systems. Using an understanding of how practitioners build scaffolding around their processes, I discuss some significant components of organisers’ scaffolds that bear on citizens’ experiences of autonomy and agency in their contributions to the engagement process. In particular, I focus on the influence of practitioners’ attention to social ecology, including cultural values, the contributions of facilitators, and how they design models of collaboration for participating stakeholders. By contrasting the Danish case study’s emphasis on standardisation and “best practice” principles with the tailored, place-based approach of the Scottish case, I reflect on how the projects’ responsiveness to citizen needs and concerns indicates different approaches to managing conflict and sharing power with their participants.

I explore different types of conflict within internal and external dimensions. The external dimension involves disagreements about the engagement format, such as discrepancies between process interests and participant expectations. The internal dimension covers disagreements around the content of the participatory process; here, climate action and policy. By analysing the two cases together, I establish a typology of conflict approaches within these dimensions. Practitioners’ conceptualisation of conflict approaches and their alignment with process aims can restrict or enable citizens’ ability to contribute their interests and perspectives to political decision-making. Against the backdrop of growing scholarly and political interest in using citizen-centred processes for “democratic” and “just” climate transitions, this study raises critical questions about how consciously engaging with conflict can enhance citizens’ agency and autonomy in participatory processes.