Residents of Tees Valley and County Durham back improved climate and nature education, ring-fenced carbon taxes, ‘green bonds’ and higher spending to hit net zero in first of four citizens' climate panels convened by IPPR
It is widely acknowledged the next stage of decarbonisation of the UK's economy is going to require much greater participation by citizens. Unlike the decarbonisation of power, the greening of heat, transport, and buildings is going to be far more invasive to everyday citizens' lives and, as such, will require effective engagement with the public and a broader social mandate.
The good news is that evidence to date suggests informed citizens have a strong appetite for bolder climate action, provided it is carefully crafted and communicated. The results of the UK's first national Climate Assembly - published last year - revealed significant public support for policies that can accelerate the development of a net zero emission economy, provided that local communities are consulted and the costs and benefits associated with the green economy are fairly shared.
Despite the broad consensus evidenced by the Climate Assembly, questions remain about whether this endorsement of decisive climate action extends to regions of the UK that depend heavily on high carbon industries, and therefore arguably face the most dramatic changes and biggest challenges over the coming decades as the UK works towards its net zero ambition. Groups like the Trade Union Commission have long made clear that the net zero transition needs to be designed with these communities and workers in mind if it wants to avoid the socio-economic harms of industrial transitions past. Some other groups have openly criticised climate policies, amidst warning they could lead to job losses in certain industries.
Thankfully, the results of a 'climate jury' comprised of residents of the Tees Valley and County Durham - a region which includes the largest integrated heavy industrial complex in the UK and produces three times the national average of carbon emissions - have today provided fresh evidence there is strong support for ambitious climate policies at a local and national level in areas where livelihoods depend heavily on fossil fuel industries. After spending more than 20 hours discussing net zero solutions and policies with each other and subject matter experts, 23 residents of the industrial region selected to form a 'climate panel' by think tank IPPR have called for a "swift and decisive, clear, and consistent" policy response to the climate crisis.
The 23 jurors, who were picked out of a pool of 4,000 applicants to form a group that was broadly representative of the region, concluded they were in favour or a climate response where communities were involved, power was devolved, and the cost of the transition was shared fairly.
"It must be swift and decisive, clear, and consistent," the jurors wrote in the introduction to a report published this morning that summarises the findings from the exercise. "It has to educate, inspire and involve people in the change required. There has to be lifelong learning about climate and nature - starting in school and then within communities."
The exercise in deliberative democracy is the first of four "citizens' juries" being organised by IPPR in areas of the UK that either have a heavy reliance on traditional, fossil fuel industries or have been scarred by poorly-managed industrial transitions of the past. The findings will inform the final report of the Environmental Justice Commission, the cross-party group convened by the IPPR to look into how the net zero transition can be delivered fairly.
Among the recommendations for local and national action are for government to introduce more opportunities for lifetime learning about climate and nature - both in school and beyond - while giving citizens more of a say in the environmental decisions that impact their local communities.
"People need to feel ownership of the action taken and committed to what comes next," the jurors wrote. "The action we take has to be a beneficial change in people's lives - it is something they want to be involved in, and will improve their lives. We need young people to be educated in these issues as they will be most affected."
Public understanding and awareness of climate issues and solutions could be ramped up through the launch of a National Nature Service that provides work and volunteering opportunities, an 'Attenborough Scholarship' that encourage young people to consider low carbon jobs, and an 'Attenborough Award' modelled on the Duke of Edinburgh award to teach young people about nature, the jurors said.
A national blueprint for low carbon work should be rolled out, they said, but this should be complemented by a scheme to give local authorities more power and capcaity to deliver locally-tailored climate and nature education programmes, in addition to training and skills plans catered to the needs of existing workers and young people.
Another key priority highlighted by the participants was for the costs of the green transition to be distributed fairly, with wealthier companies and individuals shouldering a larger burden of the costs associated with the transition to a clean economy than those with less resource. Carbon taxation should be introduced, they said, but incrementally and targeting the worst environmental impacts and biggest emitters, with revenues channelled into green projects for areas local to the polluting firms. Meanwhile government green funding should be ring-fenced, and ministers should turn to green bonds to kick-start low-carbon industries, they said.
"Businesses and investors need to be part of the solution," the respondents concluded. "Where they aren't willing to act in the way that's needed, they need to be regulated. They need to be incentivised to act, but there needs to be penalties if they don't."
The jurors recommended that investment in carbon capture storage (CCS) should be rolled out only where it is essential for industries like chemical processing, mirroring a similar trepidation around the technology reported by participants in last year's national Climate Assembly.
Luke Murphy, associate director and head of the Environmental Justice Commission at IPPR, said the findings from the first citizen's jury underscored the public's desire to be more involved in action to tackle the climate crisis, adding that demand for decisions to be devolved away from Westminster and put into the hands of local authorities and communities broadly echoed the findings of the Climate Assembly UK.
"The really striking thing is the appetite for public sector involvement, and the fact the public are really interested in the transition and want to not just be consulted or lightly engaged, but they genuinely want to be highly involved," he said. "The kind of appetite and the desire for more public information and education at all levels has been really strong."
The participants concluded that locally tailored policies were more likely to lead to fairer and better outcomes, and recommended the government increase local control of industrial strategy, education, and planning to ensure all building projects ensured a net gain for nature. Citizens juries and policy-making panels that include a range of local stakeholders should be a major component of environmental decision making, they said. For their own region, jurors said that hydrogen, infrastructure for heating, and giving over disused land for renewables were among the most promising climate solutions.
Meanwhile, participants called for more cooperative and worker ownership of assets such as clean energy companies and argued that communal green spaces should be encouraged in order to give citizens a greater stake in natural assets and emissions reduction efforts. Providing more opportunities for people to access and care for nature would be critical over the coming decade, they said.
Murphy emphasised that deliberative democracy had a number of benefits for policy makers. The exercises help inform the public of changes that lie ahead, help policymakers clinch a public mandate for proposals, and also ensure that policies align with local needs and can be effective, he said.
"We need to be engaging the public so they understand the changes and can determine what they're going to be and what their priorities are and help policymakers in those decisions," he added. "It will help policies garner more public support because people will feel like they've been engaged. We would argue it leads to more effective policymaking; people know their local communities and local areas and can spot things that are going to work and are not going to work."
Murphy said that he expected all four panels to collectively underscore the need for policy makers to pay close heed to localised decarbonisation challenges and leverage the particular opportunities found in different regions. A more "place-based" decision making approach that gives more power to local authorities will improve the effectiveness of policies, he said, suggesting the government's beleaguered Green Homes Grant scheme would not have faced so many issues if local authorities had been given more responsibility for designing and running the initiative.
"We would argue that one of the reasons the national Green Home Grants scheme is in such a mess," Murphy said. "Though the investment was welcome, it doesn't recognize that that kind of scheme needs to take place at an area level, with local government in the driving seat working with local partners on area, area by area, street by street, and we need that much more localised approach. These kinds of citizens juries can help drive that and help incorporate the public views into their priorities into kind of locally-based policymaking."
Murphy suggested larger businesses would also benefit from convening citizen's juries when crafting transition plans and net zero strategies. "They should become part of the kind of standard part of the policy process," he said. "They are resource-intensive in the short term, but they will pay for themselves in the longer term, in terms of the design of policies and understanding people's priorities."
IPPR intends to complement the findings from Tees Valley with the results of three other citizen's jury exercises underway in other locations facing specific decarbonisation challenges, including Aberdeenshire, where the local economy depends heavily on oil and gas, Thurrock, a commuter town in Essex that relies on light industry, and the South Wales Valleys, a region that has suffered from badly-managed industrial transitions in the past. All the findings will be incorporated into the Environmental Justice Commission's final report, which is due this summer.
Former Conservative MP, Laura Sandys, one of the political figures chairing the IPPR's Environmental Justice Commission, said the findings demonstrated that "investing in low carbon businesses of the future are a win-win for the economy, jobs and environment".
Her co-chair Hilary Benn, Labour MP for Leeds Central, said the results of the first climate jury provided "invaluable insight" into how the UK's climate and nature crises could be tackled. "They want government at all levels, business and civil society to be ambitious but they are also crystal clear that we must address wider inequalities and that the public must be involved in the process every step of the way," he said. "The jurors have also put forward a number of great ideas which include the creation of a new ‘Attenborough Award' to inspire the next generation."
Co-chair and Green MP Caroline Lucas also highlighted the findings' strong emphasis on decision making that involves local communities. "There's a real appetite for an ambitious approach to addressing the climate and nature crises, provided that those policies also increase equality, improve wellbeing and put local communities in the driving seat," she said. "Co-producing plans with local people isn't an optional 'nice to have' - it's critical to a successful outcome."
With huge swathes of the economy gearing up for radical transformation over the coming decade, the lessons from IPPR's first citizens jury should provide solace to decision makers looking to deliver a green agenda; once again, the public have made it resoundingly clear that they are overwhelmingly in favour of strong climate policies. However, they should also serve as a warning. Citizens are clamouring for climate and nature education, and want to be more involved in and better informed about environmental policies, suggesting the success of decarbonisation over the coming decade could hinge on a sensitive overhaul of the way policies are crafted, communicated, and administered.