Who decides for Nature? Embedding deliberative democracy in biodiversity renewal

Renewing biodiversity through a people-in-nature approach ExCASES Mission Who decides for nature? Embedding deliberative democracy in biodiversity renewal Who decides for nature? Embedding deliberative democracy in biodiversity renewal At a glance In 2022, three conservation charities came together to run the first ever UK citizens’ assembly on nature. As part of this unique and groundbreaking collaboration, the National Trust, Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF-UK) assembled 103 members of the UK public from all walks of life to create an action plan for nature, ‘for the people, by the people’. Their vision was expressed in 26 ambitious ‘Calls to Action’ targeting government, charities, businesses, individuals and communities.1 Who decides for nature presents the findings of an ExCASES ‘mission’ (rapid research project), which took a close-up look at the challenges, successes, lessons and deliberative legacy of the People’s Plan for Nature process, ‘the UK’s largest ever public conversation about the future of nature’.2 In keeping with the ExCASES agile and co-design model of working, the project employed an iterative process, using interviews and a workshop to draw on the expertise of 34 participants from inside – and outside – the People’s Plan for Nature process and nature sector. These participants included: the People’s Plan commissioning team and delivery partners, Assembly members, speakers and on-call experts; democracy experts and practitioners; legal, policy and inclusion specialists; national and local government officials; conservation sector representatives (including youth leaders); business and farming interests; and community engagement and participation practitioners. Using a newly launched evaluation framework, developed by the Knowledge Network on Climate Assemblies (KNOCA),3 the study evaluates the impacts of the People’s Plan for Nature, and offers lessons from the process for policymakers, practitioners and academics wanting to understand and integrate more inclusive and effective decision-making processes to bring positive outcomes for people and biodiversity renewal. Drawing on the expertise of the mission’s diverse participants, a spotlight is cast on innovative examples and recommendations are provided for how the sector can apply these lessons to pull together as a more holistic, deliberative democratic system to benefit people and nature. i Unsplash - Nick Fewings ii Key findings The People’s Plan for Nature created a powerful public mandate for nature action, showing there is an appetite and shared urgency among a representative cross-section of the population for a progressive environmental agenda. The process has raised the salience of pro-nature policy and pushed the boundaries of what ambitious action for nature could look like by proposing radical new pathways, such as calling for: access to nature as a human right, legal rights for future generations, a permanent Assembly for Nature, and a Director for Nature on every company board. 1 2 6 It has paved the way for more joined-up policies and cross-sectoral action for nature restoration, and accelerated a shift in attitudes about the value of citizens’ assemblies and deliberative democracy more widely. Deliberative activities should not be seen as one-off, democratically ‘curated’ events, but opportunities to embed equity and inclusion – and promote environmental justice – in wider governance structures. There is an urgent need for the nature sector to pull together as a holistic deliberative system, promoting a ‘people and nature’ approach in partnership with the public sector, businesses, communities and individuals. Leaders and funders should implement longer project horizons and funding cycles to demonstrate their commitment to transformative social and environmental change. 3 4 5 © Involve / Jemima Stubbs iii Embedding deliberative democracy in the nature sector Summary of lessons and recommendations Recommendations for building a holistic deliberative system for nature 1 Take a holistic ‘systems’ approach to restoring nature 2 Acknowledge and navigate disagreement and conflict 3 Place communities at the heart of decision-making 4 Cultivate a mindset of power with citizens 5 Centre marginalised and unheard voices 6 Engage publics and stakeholders in hybrid deliberative processes 7 Lead and collaborate across the nature sector – and beyond 8 Build an evidence base of public engagement and deliberative initiatives 9 Take a ‘peopleand nature’ approach 10 Recognise transformative change demands commitment, resources and time Lessons from the People’s Plan for Nature 1 Use an impact strategy and theory of change 2 Clearly communicate objectives and limitations 3 Engage in co-design to share the journey 4 Acknowledge the role of politics and power 5 Consider equality, diversity and inclusion at every stage 6 Demonstrate the integrity and value of the process 7 Highlight the importance of leadership buy-in 8 Connect deliberative and representative democracy 9 Co-deliver and collaborate to maximise reach 10 Take a cross-sectoral approach RENEW is a five-year partnership programme to develop solutions to one of the major environmental challenges for humankind: the renewal of biodiversity. We are in a biodiversity crisis. A million species of plants and animals are threatened with global extinction, and wildlife populations across much of the planet have been dramatically reduced. This is of profound concern because biodiversity underpins human existence. RENEW is working, with a sense of urgency, to reshape understanding and action on biodiversity renewal across scales, creating knowledge, and influencing national institutions, communities and individuals. Our focus is on a ‘people-in-nature’ approach, reflecting the two-way, dynamic relations between people and nature and the need to develop a relational approach to renew our life-support systems. Funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), the programme is a collaboration between the University of Exeter and the National Trust, and has been co-designed and developed with over 30 partners from a diverse range of sectors. Acknowledgements We would like to extend our warm thanks to those who helped us to scope and develop this research project, and who participated in our interviews and workshop, for their time, expertise, and insights. A further thanks goes to Alex Hunt, Rory Crawford, Kat Machin, Georgie Holmes-Skelton, Alice Moseley, Emma Zimmerman, Graham Smith, Ruth Gripper, Graham Roumieu and Xanthia Hallissey for their additional contributions. This work was supported by the Natural Environment Research Council funded Changing the Environment programme’s project ‘Renewing biodiversity through a people-in-nature approach (RENEW)’ (NE/W004941/1). List of participating organisations All the Elements, Citizens from the People’s Assembly for Nature, Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), Environment Agency, Green Party, Involve, Knowledge Network on Climate Assembles (KNOCA), Lawyers for Nature, London School of Economics, iswe Foundation, National Farmers’ Union, National Trust, Natural England, New Citizen Project, Plymouth City Council, Raven Network, Right to Roam, Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), Sortition Foundation, UK Youth for Nature, University of Exeter, Lancaster University, University of Westminster, Wildlife and Countryside Link, The Wildlife Trusts, World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) - UK. iv Who decides for nature? Embedding deliberative democracy in biodiversity renewal Author: Michelle Twena. Citation: Twena, M., Bissell, C., Bavin, D., Crowley, S., and Heard, M. (2025). Who decides for nature? Embedding deliberative democracy in biodiversity renewal. University of Exeter and the National Trust. RENEW, UK. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15315183 Design & infographics: Xanthia Hallissey. Cover image: © Graham Roumieu / People’s Plan for Nature. CONTENTS 1/2 vii 1 3 5 6 8 9 11 15 18 21 28 32 34 36 37 38 39 41 42 43 44 45 Executive summary Introduction Why we need to rethink who decides for nature Research rationale Citizens’ assemblies and deliberative democracy Aims and objectives Methodology The People’s Plan for Nature Impacts of the People’s Plan for Nature Public sector impacts Changes in society: NGOs/charities, businesses and publics New principles, systems and structures for acting for nature Lessons from the People’s Plan for Nature process Use an impact strategy and theory of change Clearly communicate objectives and limitations Engage in co-design to share the journey Acknowledge the role of politics and power Consider equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) at every stage Demonstrate the integrity and value of the process Highlight the importance of leadership buy-in Connect deliberative and representative democracy Co-deliver and collaborate to maximise reach Take a cross-sectoral approach 0 1 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 2 2.1 2.2 2.3 3 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 3.7 3.8 3.9 3.10 v © Involve / Jemima Stubbs 4 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 4.7 4.8 4.9 4.10 5 6 Recommendations for moving forward together to democratise nature Take a holistic ‘systems’ approach to restoring nature Acknowledge and navigate disagreement and conflict Place communities at the heart of decision-making Cultivate a mindset of power with citizens Centre marginalised and unheard voices Engage publics and stakeholders in hybrid deliberative processes Lead and collaborate across the nature sector – and beyond Build an evidence base of public engagement and deliberative initiatives Take a ‘people and nature’ approach Recognise transformative change demands commitment, resources and time Conclusion References 46 48 49 50 52 54 57 60 61 63 65 66 70 CONTENTS 1/2 vi©National Trust Images/Sophie Bolesworth Executive summary vii Unsplash - Shane Rounce Why we need to rethink who decides for nature The UK is one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world. The 2023 State of Nature report explains that almost a fifth of wildlife has been lost since the 1970s due to land use and climate change, and that the conservation knowledge required to reverse these declines is well established but now needs to be deployed urgently and at scale.4 But how can this be done in practice? It has become increasingly evident that environmental decline is fundamentally a social problem. Yet representative democracy is facing a crisis of trust, legitimacy and effectiveness in the UK and across the globe. Important societal (and non-human) voices are routinely marginalised or absent from decision-making processes, and ordinary people are increasingly disaffected by politics and the politicians who claim to represent them.5 Furthermore, those suffering the consequences of environmental degradation are often not the ones making the decisions. In response to these concerns, a new and more optimistic wave of participatory decision-making has swept across (mostly) wealthy nations, centred on the concept of deliberative democracy. This is the idea(l) that to be legitimate and effective, decision-making needs to be more equal and inclusive.6 Notable recent national processes in the climate-nature space have been the UK Climate Assembly (2020), the Irish Children and Young People’s Assembly on Biodiversity Loss (2022), the Welsh Nature and Us Citizens’ Assembly (2023), and the ongoing citizen workshops as part of the UK’s national Food Conversation. These deliberative initiatives have generally been driven by governments in response to the climate emergency (or specific constitutional concerns) and have taken the form of citizens’ assemblies: spaces for representative groups of citizens to come together in a facilitated process, to collectively learn, communicate and decide on matters of common concern.7 Despite their early promise, however, the impacts and effectiveness of such processes have been unclear or disappointing, partly because their outputs have been thrown back into the same political context from which they were born. Their recommendations are rarely woven into political agendas, enshrined in public policy or championed by society (with some notable exceptions).8 Understanding whether and why this is the case is essential for improving the design, desirability and impacts of future processes. In 2022, three conservation charities launched a deliberative process of their own. The People’s Plan for Nature was commissioned by the National Trust, RSPB, and WWF as the first national conversation about nature, culminating in a ground-breaking citizens’ assembly, the first of its kind convened by a coalition of environmental organisations. This ExCASES study takes a closer look at the impacts and lessons from the process. It evaluates its outcomes to help inform future initiatives and provides recommendations for embedding deliberative democracy in the nature sector (and beyond) to build on its legacy. 0. Executive summary “The People’s Plan for Nature2 Because the nature crisis affects everyone, everyone should have a say in how we solve it.” viii 1.1 Why we need to rethink who decides for nature The UK is now one of the most nature-depleted countries on Earth,4 and decisions being made now will be critical to reversing the alarming rates of biodiversity loss we are seeing. There is an increasing awareness that without incorporating a broader range of voices and interests in decision-making, we are unlikely to unlock the transformative pathways necessary to address these defining, complex and ‘wicked’ problems of our time.8,10 It is also increasingly clear that people’s feelings of connection with nature are waning. The UK’s level of ‘nature connection’ was 16th lowest in a study across 18 high-income countries,11 and humanity’s impacts and reliance on the rest of the natural world are often overlooked or lost in everyday choices.12 Almost half of the people responding to the People and Nature survey in England were ‘unaware’ of the threat to biodiversity or unconcerned about it.13 In the words of David Attenborough, ‘No-one will protect what they don’t care about, and no-one will care about what they have never experienced.’ Much current decision-making about nature – and the interests consciously or subconsciously informing these processes – are locked into what are known as ‘structural’ patterns, meaning that while people’s behaviours, practices, cultures and institutions are malleable, they are shaped and regulated by the social, economic and political systems already in place. These systems have often been historically determined by those who hold power and influence (e.g., owners or managers of land and assets), and whose interests, knowledge and needs have been prioritised over those of others. This has arguably led to the marginalisation of other important societal voices, and limited representation of the wider natural world. Nature has traditionally sat at the periphery of concerns of policymakers, business leaders and publics.4,14 Recent research shows that policymakers and civil servants are increasingly detached from the lives and experiences of everyday citizens. By their own admission, they are often informed by ‘a small pool of the same people or organisations who may themselves be far from the actual individuals on the ground, and usually not those that are implementing the policy or feeling the impact of it’.5 Not only do they report feeling disempowered to pioneer innovative solutions, but the instability of dayto-day politics serves to hamper long-term thinking.5 Trust and confidence in the UK’s system of government, and in politicians and policymakers, is also at an all-time low.15 This distrust of policymakers and communicators is said to be undermining both public demand and collective capacity to address environmental sustainability challenges, not least because a sizable minority do not believe these problems (e.g., climate change) exist in the first place.16,17 Rebuilding confidence is important because trust in institutions, scientists and environmental groups correlates positively with pro-environmental behaviours.18,19 The environmental sector faces significant challenges of its own related to diversity and representation; it is one of the least ethnically diverse of all professions, second only to farming.20 Participation and leadership, as well as perspectives on outdoor spaces, environmental education and human-nature relationships often fail to reflect the demographics, perspectives and experiences of broader society.21–23 Although this issue is widely acknowledged, there is still a need improve ethnic diversity and inclusivity across equity and empowerment metrics, such as developing targets and building capacity for people of colour to take on more senior and leadership roles24–26. 3 Unsplash - Ana Municio The People’s Plan for Nature In response to many of these problems, a recent wave of ‘deliberative’ processes has taken place globally to experiment with more inclusive and participatory styles of democratic governance. This has built on the idea that new spaces and methods are needed to bring together institutions, agencies, activists and citizens to deliberate on social issues.27 The motivation has been to improve legitimacy and equality by including citizens in making the decisions that affect them. These may be informal grassroots networks, longer-term collaborative dialogues/councils or highly structured deliberative processes, such as citizens’ assemblies, juries and panels.27–29 This research focuses on a particular example of deliberative governance: a citizens’ assembly known as the People’s Plan. Between October 2022 and March 2023, three environmental NGOs (eNGOs) – the National Trust, Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), and World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) UK – decided to embark on a citizens’ assembly of their own, launching the People’s Plan for Nature: ‘the UK’s largest ever National Conversation about the future of nature,’ to ‘build a groundswell of engagement and awareness,’ based on what communities were already doing.2 This culminated in the People’s Assembly for Nature, where 103 citizens from ‘all walks of life’ were chosen via a democratic lottery to represent the UK population in a structured, deliberative process to explore how best to address the nature crisis.2 4 © Involve / Jemima Stubbs Watch an introduction to the People’s Plan for Nature by Assembly members 1.2 Research rationale The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has tracked over 750 representative deliberative processes globally since 1979.31 A third of those running between 20213 related to the green agenda,32 and more than 200 climate assemblies have been held in Europe alone.33 Notable recent processes in the climate-nature space have been the UK Climate Assembly (2020), the Irish Children and Young People’s Assembly on Biodiversity Loss (2022), the Welsh Nature and Us Citizens’ Assembly (2023), and the ongoing citizen workshops as part of the UK’s national Food Conversation. Such fora have been promoted as innovative ways to ‘democratise’ decision-making by: creating more legitimate, popular mandates for change; increasing participation and representation in decisionmaking; enhancing civic education; and generating novel and effective solutions.34 In doing so, it is argued, they hold the promise of addressing some of the deficits of representative democracy by improving the quality, legitimacy and feasibility of environmental outcomes.35 What is less clear is how legitimate, credible and useful they are for those involved, and whether they actually represent a fairer and more effective way of making decisions.36 There are also questions as to whether these models maintain the same biases as existing ways of doing things, and how inclusive deliberative democracy is in reality for marginalised groups, both in terms of the composition of deliberative bodies, as well as more, ‘subtle forms of exclusion that suppress or discount historically marginalised groups’.37 Further, there is limited evidence for the ability of citizens’ assemblies to bring about systemic transformations, i.e., deep-seated changes to the underlying principles, goals and mandates that drive our motivations, practices and action for nature. Exploring these core issues were the focus of this mission. 5 “Mellier and Capstick, 202230 If citizens’ assemblies are intended to open possibilities for systemic transformations…there is a need to learn from past experiences where this has either taken place or not, and why.” © Involve / Jemima Stubbs 1.3 Citizens’ assemblies and deliberative democracy The concept of deliberative democracy is important for biodiversity renewal because it paints a picture of an ‘ideal’ context for decision-making. As such, it can be understood as a process and an aspiration. To break down the term, democracy refers to the need for equality and inclusion (translated literally as ‘rule by the people’ from the Greek term).6 Deliberation refers to a two-way process of communication involving weighing and considering preferences, values, and interests on matters of shared concern.38 This includes considerations about why people disagree. Both dimensions are relevant to decision-making about nature in light of ongoing perceptions (captured in several interviews conducted as part of this mission) that the sector has not always included or listened to the needs of local communities and publics. Deliberative democracy can be seen as a helpful benchmark against which to judge how inclusive and equitable governance processes are. The perspective suggests decisions should be made in a context of mutual respect, recognition, reciprocity, and sufficient equality of status between members to ensure everyone has the power to influence outcomes.38,39 These processes can take a range of formats, varying from being highly structured to more informal. Citizens’ assemblies, such as the People’s Plan, are an example of a very structured type of deliberative process. They fall into the category of a ‘mini-public’ because they have the following key characteristics: (a) participants are chosen at random by a democratic lottery (known as sortition) – so that in principle, every citizen has the same chance of being selected; and (b) the composition of the selected group is designed to broadly reflect the demographic characteristics of the wider population. They tend to follow a multi-stage process outlined in Figure 1, although in the case of the People’s Plan, the pathway for disseminating recommendations was less clear, as discussed later. 6 “Democratic processes always begin with inclusion, since collective agendas and decisions are only ‘democratic’ to the degree that those affected by collective outcomes are empowered to influence them.” Recruitment and onboarding of participants Submit recommendations Learning Deliberation Decision making Introductory briefings Presentations Q&A sessions Small groups Independent facilitators Discuss evidence and trade-offs Assess options Agree and vote on final recommendations Draft detailed recommendations In person or online meetings over multiple weekends Detailed recommendations and report sent to government (local, regional, national) or parliament Invitations sent to a random selection of the population Invitees register their interest Participants selected to match pre-determined demographic criteria Call to asses needs and extra support ? FIGURE 1: STAGES IN A CITIZENS’ ASSEMBLY PROCESS SOURCE: INSTITUTE FOR GOVERNMENT EXPLAINER 40 Beauvais, 20186 Volunteers participating in these processes can vary in number from around 12-30 in the case of juries and panels, to 50-150 for citizens’ assemblies. Events typically take place in a facilitated space over a period of time, to exchange and critique information and ideas relevant to issues of common concern, and agree on collective pathways forward. Being an ideal, the reality invariably falls short of these high standards. Some critics claim deliberative democracy doesn’t necessarily provide an easier environment for marginalised groups to participate, given that the same biases and hierarchies of privilege still apply.41 Nevertheless, measured against the status quo, deliberative democracy does at least try to mitigate against some of the core weaknesses of our current model of representative democracy by promoting procedural formats that limit coercive power, for example, by choosing participants that are less overtly partisan/biased, using independent facilitators or holding deliberations in public.42 In other words, we can’t influence who meets politicians, bureaucrats or CEOs behind closed doors or know exactly what they have discussed or how this shapes decisions that affect us, but within deliberative-democratic fora, we can at least consciously try to ensure there is higher degree of transparency, greater diversity of representation, and a fairer chance that marginalised voices will be present and heard. By accommodating a wider range of voices, knowledge and lived experiences, as well as incorporating time for learning and exchange, deliberative democracy can also create more conducive conditions for participants to consider complex problems, longer-term horizons, conflicting interests, and difficult trade-offs.43 Although everyone may not agree with the outcomes, there may be greater trust in the process. This may lead to a sense of empowerment for those taking part, greater acceptability of outputs from the wider population, and heightened confidence among decisionmakers to implement a progressive agenda if it is backed by a popular mandate. 7 © Involve / Jemima Stubbs 1.4 Aims and objectives Aim This mission aimed to explore how insights from the People’s Plan and other innovative participatory processes can be used to better integrate deliberative democratic cultures and practices within the environment and nature sectors. Objectives Who decides for Nature: 1) Explores the influence and impacts of the People’s Plan to date; 2) Shares lessons from the People’s Plan, and experiences from other participatory initiatives, to help amplify learning and apply deliberative democracy across the initiating organisations, the RENEW programme, and the sector more broadly; 3) Identifies how we can use learning from the People’s Plan to improve participation within organisations involved in biodiversity renewal to embed or ‘systematise’ deliberative democracy within their systems and culture. 8 © Graham Roumieu / People’s Plan for Nature 1.5 Methodology A critical case study approach was used to enable an in-depth study, with the aim of drawing lessons from the People’s Plan for future deliberative processes.44 The People’s Plan was seen as a ‘critical’ case due to its strategic importance as one of the first multi-eNGO-commissioned national citizens’ assemblies of its kind in the nature sector.45 This approach allowed ‘how’ and ‘why’ questions to be asked to enrich our understanding of citizens’ assemblies more generally, and constructively contribute to the development of deliberative practices and institutional innovation to support transformative social change for biodiversity restoration.46 The value of taking a systems approach to deliberative democracy We investigated lessons from the People’s Plan by taking a systemic approach to deliberative democracy.39,47 This involved seeing the process as just one (small) part of a broader system of environmental governance, with units “interacting together to produce a healthy deliberative system.”6,47 It had the advantage of enabling us to analyse how the process functioned within a constellation of other actors and institutions, and to consider the strengths and weaknesses of different parts of the system as a whole (and any gaps or biases it might have).47 The idea of ‘embedding’ deliberative democracy refers to exploring how the values and goals associated with deliberative democracy have been applied to wider practices, processes and systems for nature restoration. 9 “Mansbridge et al., 2012 47 A system here means a set of distinguishable, differentiated, but to some degree interdependent parts, often with distributed functions and a division of labour, connected in such a way as to form a complex whole.” Unsplash - BoliviaInteligente Research methods A flexible and iterative, mixed-method approach was used and adapted over the course of the project in response to inputs from 34 participants. This included: • Documentary analysis, i.e., examining official organisational responses, progress reports, evaluations, and media outputs associated with the People’s Plan to inform and contextualise findings. An early literature review engaged with relevant theories and concepts, drawing on the advice and expertise of the participants involved in early co-design, to shape the direction and parameters of the study. • 28 interviews were conducted (April-August 2024) with: members of the People’s Plan’s commissioning and delivery teams; Assembly citizens; speakers and on-call experts from the Assembly; representatives from the nature and environment sector; academics specialising in participatory and deliberative processes; experts in law, policy, and inclusion; representatives from national and local governments; and community engagement practitioners. Interviews were recorded and transcribed. Specific attention was given to understanding the extent to which the process had served or impacted marginalised and under-represented communities, in keeping with guidance published by the Knowledge Network on Climate Assemblies, whose Impact Evaluation Framework for Climate Assemblies is used in this study (see below).3 The majority of interviews took place prior to the workshop, with several more occurring afterwards to gather a wider range of viewpoints. Information from interviews underpins the analysis and provides the basis for the arguments made. Where permission was granted, quotes are included (with the level of attribution left to the discretion of the interviewee). • A participatory workshop was held online in July 2024 with 16 participants, including 10 interviewees and six additional members, who were invited due to their specific expertise in: the People’s Plan process, EDI, citizens’ assemblies, and the use of deliberative democracy in a variety of settings (including government, business and civil society sectors). Participants were invited to share their experiences and learning from the People’s Plan, and draw on other innovative participatory processes, to collaboratively explore lessons from the People’s Plan, and give recommendations for how to ‘embed’ deliberative democracy in nature governance. • Participant observation was employed at the People’s Plan’s one-year impact event, Together for Nature, held in Manchester in April 2024. This provided an opportunity for informal conversations with the commissioning organisations, Assembly members, and community groups who had received funding from follow-on projects (i.e., Nature Neighbourhoods and the Save Our Wild Isles Community Fund). Attending the launch of New Citizen Project’s RAPID Democracy report (on 15th May 2024) also provided useful background about the philosophy underpinning the People’s Plan, and how it has been applied elsewhere.** • An impact evaluation was conducted using the recently launched Impact Evaluation Framework for Climate Assemblies, developed for the Knowledge Network on Climate Assemblies (KNOCA).3 KNOCA is a European-based network, which draws on the expertise of over 600 members from 39 countries to improve the design, quality and understanding of citizens’ assemblies on climate change and (increasingly also) the environment. These methods were triangulated (i.e. cross-referenced), to provide a more comprehensive, valid and credible picture, mindful to incorporate insights from those both inside and outside the process to ensure critical voices, and those who may have had a different frame of reference for judging the ‘success’ of the process, were included (e.g., it was evident that different participants placed different emphases on policy outcomes, inclusion/EDI, community engagement, and social change). Transcripts from interviews and the workshop were coded, and thematic analysis was conducted to draw out key areas of interest, consensus and divergence. A further round of triangulation took place in early 2025 to seek approval for citations (where participants had requested this), as well as to ask for updates on impacts, and validation for sections of text or diagrams. Ethical approval was given to this study by the Faculty of Environment, Science and Economy at the University of Exeter (ID 6147707). 10 **The organisation also rebranded from ‘New Citizenship Project’ to ‘New Citizen Project’ at this event. 1.6 The People’s Plan for Nature Origins of the People’s Plan for Nature The People’s Plan began as a collaboration between the RSPB and WWF, and later the National Trust, to co-create a public mobilisation campaign around the BBC television production, Wild Isles. This was the first documentary series presented by David Attenborough about nature in Britain. Members of the commissioning team had been inspired by the UK’s Climate Assembly in 2020 and Jersey’s 2021 Citizens’ Assembly on Climate Change, and Wild Isles was seen as a fresh opportunity for the charities to engage members of the public who were not necessarily their supporters, at a time when eNGO influence on politics had been on the wane, and trust in politics was low. The concluding episode in the Wild Isles series was co-commissioned by the three eNGOs to showcase their nature renewal activities and inspire the public to join their Save Our Wild Isles campaign. Defining objectives: ‘RAPID’ democracy The context within which the People’s Plan evolved was already unique compared with many other citizens’ assembly processes: it was instigated by three charities (as opposed to a public authority); it was inspired by and embedded within a public media campaign; and it was supported from the outset by a strategic framework known as ‘RAPID Democracy’. The latter was a process developed by the New Citizen Project to help restore trust and legitimacy between publics and decision-makers across the state, business and charity sectors, centred around the view that organisations need to see people less as ‘subjects’ and ‘consumers’, and more as ‘citizens’.48,49 It was therefore seen as the rolling out of a process to help democratise decisions about nature and a means of starting a conversation with these groups. Underpinning this perspective, was the imperative for public authorities, companies and organisations to make decisions with rather than for citizens across all five key stages of the decisionmaking cycle, i.e., Input, Recommend, Agree, Decide, and Perform (deliver the plan) (see Figure 2).49 The People’s Plan process was designed to represent the first two of these five phases (Input and Recommend), centred around the question of what should be done to protect and restore nature in the UK. 11 “The People’s Plan for Nature1 Created for the people, by the people of the UK – a vision for the future of nature, and the actions we must all take to protect and renew it.” Ideas invited and encouraged from everyone with a stake in the decision. Deep deliberation by a small, demographically representative group. Recommendations challenged and fleshed out before full commitment. The moment of commitment to a plan of action. Everyone equipped to support and deliver the plan. FIGURE 2: THE NEW CITIZEN PROJECT’S RAPID DEMOCRACY MODEL APPLIED TO THE PEOPLE’S PLAN FOR NATURE SOURCE: NEW CITIZEN PROJECT49 12 Providing expert input: balancing different opinions To counter potential claims of bias, and in keeping with best practice for running assemblies, an independent, 18-member Advisory Group was appointed (with two academic leads), to provide accountability, advice, scrutiny, and to, ‘ensure that Assembly members were presented with factually accurate, comprehensive, balanced and unbiased information’.2 They were chosen for their expertise and to be ‘representative of a broad range of ideological standpoints, representing different parts of society, including business, government representatives, academia, NGOs and civil society groups.’ “ Professor Rebecca Willis You need to answer the case that you’re not just pushing forward the existing agenda of an organisation. One of the main reasons behind deliberation is to make sure you hear from everybody, not only people who already have a voice in the process.” To offer a further firewall against potential claims of bias, independent delivery partners were recruited to support the process. Involve were hired to deliver the citizens’ assembly. As the process was led by eNGOs, it was felt there was a particular need to demonstrate impartiality and integrity, which was addressed by providing as much transparency as possible around governance, such as publishing the programme of activities, list of speakers, and recordings of expert presentations on the campaign’s website. As some of those involved reflected in interview, this required a genuine leap of faith from the commissioning organisations, and the project felt markedly different to others they had participated in. “ Member of the People’s Plan’s commissioning team Whilst we knew it was part of a wider campaign, we didn’t quite know what was going to come out of [the Assembly], so the process felt different as there needed to be a lot of trust in the…[outcomes].” The People’s Assembly for Nature that followed selected 103 members of the public via a democratic lottery, which was run by the Sortition Foundation to reflect the demographic profile of the UK population (in terms of age, gender, ethnicity, geography, urban-rural socioeconomic status, and agreement with the statement, ‘I feel part of nature’).2 The Assembly were given the opportunity to creatively engage with the 30,000 contributions received in the National Conversation, and invited to feed these perspectives into the citizens’ assembly process, which represented the Recommend phase. The process ran over four weekends between November 2022 and February 2023. The National Conversation provided Input to the Assembly via a four-week, creative visioning exercise about the future of nature, which invited members of the public to submit ideas and inspiration for how to protect nature and wildlife, online and in person at art centres, schools, football clubs and National Trust properties. Hear more about the National Conversation from participants An internal evaluation of the umbrella Save Our Wild Isles (SOWI) campaign conducted shortly after the General Election concluded that the People’s Plan and SOWI campaigns had impacted directly on public policy (e.g., being instrumental in bringing about the sand eels fishing ban), and claimed the rapport established between the commissioning organisations and policymakers through the campaign had laid the foundations for strong relationships with the new government when it came to power.51 It noted the People’s Plan (and Save Our Wild Isles) had been used by senior policymakers to justify more ambitious policies for nature (securing further nature-positive action beyond the Environmental Improvement Plan) and to support public access to nature (in relation to the Regeneration and Levelling Up Bill).51 Extrapolating cause and effects, and tracing policy change back to a specific event, is fraught with methodological challenges and uncertainties, and time lags will be inevitable where significant changes are likely to occur. Nevertheless, there are strong indications that new pathways to change have gathered momentum due to the combined effects of the People’s Plan, and a more favourable political context in the form of a more sympathetic government, not to mention relevant processes already in motion (e.g., implementation in England of Biodiversity Net Gain,57 and the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures, meaning that nature objectives would now be an important factor in property development planning and global finance flows). While the impact on formal politics, policy and institutions may have been limited so far, there is certainly evidence that the People’s Plan has informed the public debate, legitimised the nature agenda, and galvanised coalitions to support a more progressive and proactive approach to nature policy, practice and implementation. 19 2.1 Public sector impacts continued Unsplash - Elimende Inagella 2.1.2 Building public sector capacity to act Capacity-building impacts relate to changes in the skills, expertise and confidence state actors have to ‘act for nature’.3 High profile examples of People’s Plan impacts in this area include two Assembly members being elected as local councillors (a direct impact). Perhaps most significantly, however, the People’s Plan has served an important capacity-building function by producing a strong public mandate for nature action with comprehensive advisory recommendations, in the absence of this being provided elsewhere, which chimes with findings from other climate assemblies.58 2.1.3 New ways of acting for nature by the public sector Overlapping with findings in Section 2.1.1, there is also evidence of state actors demonstrating shifts in their understanding and interest in nature policy and action over this period. Perhaps the most important conceptual breakthrough has been the People’s Plan’s contribution to the noticeable movement in attitudes towards the value of using citizens’ assemblies and deliberative democracy, as voiced by Labour Ministers, MPs and advisors.55,56,59 Notably, Labour MP Clive Lewis has tabled a Private Member’s Bill proposing a climate assembly to determine future water industry ownership.60 Liberal Democrat MP, Liz Savage, also introduced the Climate and Nature Bill 2024-5, a Private Member’s Bill demanding that ‘policy and action on the climate and nature crises is science-led and peopleoriented’.127 This had support from the Green Party, Plaid Cymru, SDLP, the Alliance Party and Zero Hour, and called for a citizens’ assembly to help develop a joined-up strategy for climate and nature; however, the Conservative spokesman specifically objected to the citizens’ assembly element, saying, ‘That is not how decisions are made in this country, and it is not how decisions should be made in this country.’ 128 The bill did not progress after its sponsors came to an agreement with the government.127 At the same time, members of the People Plan commissioning team have shared that they have been invited to consult with policymakers on future potential deliberative exercises involving citizens (e.g., at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, and Scotland’s Futures Forum). 20 “Richard Benwell, CEO, Wildlife and Countryside Link There have been a lot of countervailing forces against the nature agenda recently, and to be able to point to something that suggests a popular movement in the opposite direction, has been useful.” 2.1 Public sector impacts continued © Involve / Jemima Stubbs 2.2.1 New societal ways of acting for nature The People’s Plan for Nature, and the People’s Assembly for Nature in particular, had powerful personal impacts on those involved. This personal transformation applied to the commissioning team, observers, and of course, Assembly members themselves, several of whom became ‘People’s Champions’ and changemakers afterwards. Many cited the impact of seeing so many people from different walks of life coming together on (more) equal terms – to collectively formulate a coherent national agenda for nature – as being moving, inspirational, and sometimes, life changing. Even the minority of citizens who were sceptical at the start of the process (some of whom continued to be so at the end), admitted the experience had expanded their knowledge, changed their behaviours, and deepened their understanding of the urgent need to act for nature. Several of those interviewed, from eNGO staff to observers and citizens, used the word ‘transformational’ to describe their experiences of participating in the process, and were able to describe a chain reaction of changed perspectives, new behaviours and a revived sense of social purpose to act for nature, which has reverberated across their personal and professional lives, and extended into the social sphere more widely. Some of these experiences are recounted by People’s Assembly members in Figure 4. 21 “Member of the People’s Plan commissioning team 103 individuals that are part of the process means 103 different stories. But for a lot of them, what you’ll hear is about this transformation in agency, which is really exciting.” 2.2 Changes in society: NGOs/charities, businesses and publics © Involve / Jemima Stubbs CLICK TO HEAR about the experiences of Assembly members in their own words “ David, CEO, Finance sector, People’s Assembly for Nature member “The Assembly did shift my behaviour and attitudes significantly on some political things, like the way I will vote in the next election. It’s also changed the activities I plan to work with as a CEO in infrastructure finance. I’m now trying to match organisations interested in ‘wilding’ with money. I am also volunteering in the nearest park. I find it quite therapeutic. I enjoy meeting the other people. It’s manual work which I don’t normally do. I wouldn’t have done any of that before.” “ Peter, Carer, People’s Assembly for Nature member Since the People’s Plan for Nature was published, I have continued to work alongside WWF, National Trust and RSPB to advocate the People’s Plan for Nature, including speaking in the House of Lords and to the National Trust magazine. I have made lifestyle changes, such as changing my diet, cutting out meat, fish and dairy. I rarely use the car now, and prefer to walk. It’s great for my physical and mental health; for any long or timesensitive journeys, I now use public transport… I’ve also joined my local XR [Extinction Rebellion] group to do a bit of protest and try to keep behind them wherever I can.” “ Shantyl, Executive Creative Director for Radio Nation Coventry CIC, DJ, Mentor and Youth Advocate I’ve grown up in a city…not going out in nature apart from once a year on school trips. I loved those times. Now I’m 50, I feel we haven’t got time. Since the Assembly, I’ve set up a Community Interest Company, and will be hosting a weekly radio show, ‘Nature Daze,’ where I’ll be involving other Assembly members, local businesses, environmentalists and farmers – asking what they are doing and what they intend to do to bring about change! Children are our future. I want to get nature into schools, on the national curriculum. We now have a team of media students from the local college contributing to Nature Daze. None of this would have happened without the Assembly. I’m forever a People’s Assembly for Nature member.” 22 FIGURE 4: IN THEIR OWN WORDS: EXAMPLES OF IMPACTS OF THE PEOPLE’S PLAN FOR NATURE ON ASSEMBLY MEMBERS SOURCES: INTERVIEWS WITH MEMBERS OF THE PEOPLE’S ASSEMBLY FOR NATURE 2.2 Changes in society: NGOs/charities, businesses and publics continued 23 Psychological research highlights that there are multiple roles and pathways for an individual’s behaviour to ‘spillover’ from one area of their life into others; and Assembly members have demonstrated particularly powerful behavioural changes or ‘spillovers’ in these roles as consumers, investors, organisational members, employees and citizens.61 Select examples include changes in their roles as: • Consumers – switching away from meat and dairy, and using more public transport; • Investors – using finance as a tool to support better investment choices for nature; • Organisational participants – joining eNGOs (e.g., 70% became members of the commissioning organisations afterwards, 20-30 citizens continue to be ambassadors), becoming activists and campaigners (e.g., some joined Extinction Rebellion), engaging in green community work (such as volunteering with community gardens), and undertaking media outreach (15 People’s Champions appeared in media features); • Employees – setting up a Community Interest Company to run nature radio shows (see Figure 4), switching to activities promoting nature-friendly finance; • Citizens – two have become local councillors, and some others have reported changing their voting intentions to support more environmentally-friendly candidates.51 Individual members of the commissioning team have also become institutional entrepreneurs within their own organisations, championing deliberative democracy and creating opportunities to amplify Assembly members’ voices, by giving them prominence within their communications, campaigning and advocacy work, and inviting them to speak at events such as the Westminster Roundtable and Save Our Wild Isles business events. At the organisational level, the three commissioning eNGOs have each published their own comprehensive responses to the People’s Plan, explaining in detail how they intend or have already begun to integrate its recommendations into their work.62–64 Interesting examples are the RSPB trialling free access to their reserves for 16-24 year-olds, and all three eNGOs committing to use the language and framing around nature preferred by the People’s Plan, with a shift in emphasis from nature ‘protection’ to ‘renewal’. The National Trust’s new strategy also includes ‘ending unequal access to nature’ by 2050 as one of its three core goals.65 With respect to impacts on the conservation sector as a whole, Wildlife and Countryside Link made direct reference to the People’s Plan in highlighting high public expectations of nature action and demand for an Environmental Rights Bill (with rights of access to nature) in their Nature 2030 report.66 A handful of other organisations also submitted written responses between April and June 2023, including the Earth Trust, The Food, Farming & Countryside Commission, the British Trust for Ornithology, the Church of England, and the Scottish Wildlife Trust. Wider public action motivated by the People’s Plan is harder to gauge. However, it received significant news and media coverage at the time.67 The BBC’s Wild Isles TV series also received 12 million views per episode; and 70% of viewers surveyed reported considering taking action for nature.51 2.2 Changes in society: NGOs/charities, businesses and publics continued 24 2.2.2 Building societal capacity to act 2.2 Changes in society: NGOs/charities, businesses and publics continued “ Ellen Bradley, Co-Director, UK Youth for Nature, People’s Assembly for Nature Observer A really exciting thing for me about observing the final Assembly was that it looked and felt different to other environmental conferences. The energy in the room was amazing. It felt like a really good opportunity to ‘break out’ for the environmental sector.” Strengthening expertise and knowledge – and improving capacity and resources for engaging in nature renewal by non-state actors (i.e., citizens, eNGOs, businesses and local communities) – was one of the areas where the impact of the People’s Plan process has been strongest. A significant achievement was creating what felt like a rare moment of convergence for parts of the conservation sector, and an opportunity to relaunch as a united front. This was notable given the challenges the commissioning team reported having faced in bringing even parts of their own organisations together. At the same time, there remained a view from some within the sector that the People’s Plan had been an expensive marketing exercise or felt the money could have been spent more wisely at the community level. As part of their commitment to deliver on the People’s Plan’s community-centred Calls to Action, the commissioning organisations jointly launched two related campaigns to build further legacy from the initiative, drawing on partnerships with business. The Save Our Wild Isles Community Fund raised £2.5m for local communities to act for nature via a crowdfunding initiative led by WWF and RSPB, with support from Aviva. Over 90% of those who took part said projects had made a difference to nature in their local area; over 80% felt more involved in their local community, and 97% believed their work would continue.68 Nature Neighbourhoods provides up to £25,000 in funding to 18 community groups in diverse neighbourhoods across the UK, with the aim of developing community leaders and supporting neighbourhood-level plans for nature and climate action. This has been a two-year collaboration between the three commissioning organisations, funded by the National Lottery Climate Action Fund and Co-op (2023-5). © Involve / Jemima Stubbs 25 2.2 Changes in society: NGOs/charities, businesses and publics continued “ Rory Crawford, Nature Neighbourhoods Lead, Member of People’s Plan’s commissioning team The People’s Plan for Nature was personally, massively transformational. We have also been able to follow the philosophy of the project in Nature Neighbourhoods, which is about community power, leaning into their agency, listening to them. And for them, not us, to set the agenda. So, for me, that’s really fulfilling.” The quote from Rory Crawford (Lead for Nature Neighbourhoods, and member of the People’s Plan’s commissioning team), explains the impact the People’s Plan process has had on him, as well as the way Nature Neighbourhoods is implementing the Plan’s philosophy to empower communities to engage with nature restoration. Early impacts from the programme are encouraging, with significant positive feedback from participants, who have been supported through an active partnership-building programme offering training in co-design, fundraising communications, and navigating working with local authorities (see the quote from the Zebra Collective who participated in the project, and Box 1 in Section 4 for an overview). The People’s Plan was also widely perceived by insiders and outsiders of the process to have landed well with the business community, and spurred their sustainability campaigns. The Save Our Wild Isles Partnership Business Advocacy Campaign had supported 220 organisations to host business film screenings to promote engagement and encourage change at senior level, and embed nature targets in transition plans (relating to the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures). The films reached 45,000 employees at companies such as Nestle, Pepsi Co, Aviva, PWC, M&S, Premier League, OVO, University of Cambridge, Cross Country Trains and Blackrock.54 The initiative’s Nature’s Workforce also provided guidance to support employees in starting conversations about nature into their workplaces, whilst the People’s Plan website provided guidance and tools for members of the public to engage their communities and local authorities in restoring nature locally. “ Debbie Freeman, Zebra Collective (Plymouth), Nature Neighbourhoods participant It cannot be overstated how beneficial it is to connect with so many vibrant projects across the UK. We have shared learning and experience that is invaluable to us. Allowing space and time for the network to connect is excellent. The connections being made are important for the growth of the sector.” © Graham Roumieu / People’s Plan for Nature 26 2.2 Changes in society: NGOs/charities, businesses and publics continued 2.2.3 New ways of understanding societal action for nature “ Professor Graham Smith, Chair of the Knowledge Network on Climate Assemblies The People’s Plan for Nature has been an inspiration to other actors elsewhere. Part of the reason that [the forthcoming Norwegian citizens’ assembly] exists is because the People’s Plan for Nature showed that civil society organisations could actually do this kind of work.” “ Member of the People’s Plan’s commissioning team I’ve certainly changed my thinking around the value and purpose of deliberative processes as a result of being so directly involved in this process. Seeing it in action has meant it is something I now advocate for internally and externally in a number of ways. And it is something that is now present in conversations internally in a way that wasn’t before.” There is considerable evidence that the People’s Plan has impacted on the way action for nature is understood by Assembly members, the commissioning team, and other civil society groups. Assembly members report gaining a deeper understanding about the need and means to act for nature, as well as greater commitment among the commissioners to engage citizens in their work. There have also been spillovers of a deliberative and participatory mindset into parts of the commissioning eNGOs (including leadership, in some cases), and a greater desire to involve the public in decision-making. This is exemplified by the WWF, who have been more closely engaging citizens in their advocacy work, and in the RSPB’s commitment to use People’s Panels in future nature campaigns. At the National Trust, a participatory approach was used to engage over 3,700 members of the public in developing its 10-year strategy, which puts people, nature and working in partnerships at the heart of its new approach. They have also been exploring holding a citizens’ assembly on culture and heritage, and there are hopes that the Nature Neighbourhoods project will provide confidence and proof of concept that the conservation sector is willing and able to put their knowledge and resources in service of empowering local communities to restore nature or more broadly to make their places better. ©National Trust Images/Paul Harris 27 The People’s Plan has also been an inspiration to actors in the UK and elsewhere. In the UK, the Food, Farming and Countryside Commission (FFCC) is leading The Food Conversation to engage hundreds of citizens in locally-organised workshops to consider the future of food, in response to the Plan’s call for a national conversation about food and nature; and the Oxford Nature Conversation are citizens’ juries being conducted in 2025 to explore local implementation of People’s Plan’s recommendations. In addition, the process has inspired citizens’ assemblies elsewhere in the world, as well as in other sectors. For example, in Norway, a consortium of NGOs led by SoCentral is undertaking Fremtidspanelet (‘The Future Panel’), a national assembly responding to the question, “How can we use our wealth to benefit the world, ourselves and future generations?” (with inputs from the People’s Plan commissioning team, one of whom sits on their Deliberative Advisory Group).69 The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) drew on the People’s Plan approach when developing their citizens’ assembly to inform policy on synthetic biology in relation to nature conservation (Resolution 123).70 Members of the People’s Plan commissioning team have also been invited to sit on the advisory board for a citizens’ assembly led by RSPCA on the future of animal welfare (Animal Futures: The Big Conversation), which is also applying the RAPID Democracy framework. 2.2 Changes in society: NGOs/charities, businesses and publics continued © Graham Roumieu / People’s Plan for Nature 28 Experts in public deliberation have talked about the need for citizens’ assemblies to be ‘systemdisrupting’ rather than ‘system-supporting’.71 The People’s Plan rose to this challenge by creating space to propose notably ambitious and progressive changes to the foundational principles and goals underpinning our governance systems. It called for better integration of nature considerations within UK legal frameworks and policymaking across sectors, and stronger enforcement and tightening of existing regulations. As many of these proposals, if implemented, would span all three ‘types of impacts’ (ways of doing things, capacity to act, and ways of thinking about nature action), we have merged the three in our analysis here (and in Table 2 below). Overall, the People’s Plan’s Calls to Action demonstrated innovative, long-term and holistic thinking to a degree rarely achieved by politicians, corporations or indeed, the nature conservation sector itself. It has been noted that mini-publics run by civil society organisations are often better placed to create this space for a broader systems-thinking approach than government-run processes, which rarely have the freedom or remit to do so. Examples of changes proposed by the People’s Plan include: calls for government and companies to take a more joined-up approach to mitigating environmental impacts (in particular, across food, farming and environmental management), enforcement of the ‘polluter pays’ principle, equitable access to nature as a human right, a Rights of Nature perspective (i.e., giving natural entities the same legal protection as people and corporations), and exploration of the concept of a ‘crime against nature’ (also known as ‘ecocide’). There were also demands for a permanent Assembly for Nature (involving NGOs, industry and public members), and cross-party commitment to a UK Future Well-being Act, along the lines of the Welsh Well-being of Future Generations Act (2015), which legally obliges public bodies to collaborate to achieve economic, social, environmental and cultural wellbeing for the nation. More specific to the business sector, the Plan advocated all corporate boards have a Director for Nature (more on this in Section 4.5). 2.3 New principles, systems and structures for acting for nature © Graham Roumieu / People’s Plan for Nature Given that citizens’ assemblies operate within the systems they are trying to change, they are also limited in what they can achieve. There is invariably a trade-off between giving citizens free rein in terms of setting policy (as the People’s Plan process did to a relatively high degree), and creating a well-informed and implementable policy agenda with government take-up in mind. As a participant closely involved in the process explained, ‘It’s quite a difficult ask of the citizens to get across the scale of issue, and the geographical differences that exist between different [four nations’] jurisdictions’ (Member of the People’s Plan’s commissioning team). There was also open acknowledgment by the instigators that they were learning on the job in running one of the first charity-run, national assemblies of its kind. It was not entirely clear what an impact strategy might look like for an NGO-commissioned assembly, bearing in mind it would look very different to a more traditional, state-run citizens’ assembly. The need for an impact strategy and theory of change would therefore be the first lesson to come out of the People’s Plan process, which also echoes KNOCA’s recent guidance for civil society-run processes.76 As an interviewee outside the process expressed, ‘A citizens’ assembly can’t happen once, and then last forever. You’ve got to have a programme that then helps it come to life afterwards.’ Although the RAPID Democracy framework had been in place from the outset, the attention paid to the ‘Perform’ stage (i.e., delivering the Plan) had been limited (largely due to reasons out of the organisers’ hands). Having a better understanding of how a theory of change could have translated into an impact strategy, and whether/ how ‘insider’ and ‘outsider’ strategies could coexist (i.e., focusing on government and policy and/or seeking a public mandate and cultural influence),52 would therefore have been helpful. 35 Unsplash - Markus Spiske 36 3.2 Clearly communicate objectives and limitations Citizens’ assemblies are an ‘iconic model’ of deliberative democracy, but they are expensive, timeconsuming, and bear a significant opportunity cost. Some participants in the study felt the funds might have been better spent elsewhere, for example, on smaller-scale, deliberative or participatory community activities. A second lesson, therefore, is the value of being clear about objectives and the level of ambition involved, and effectively communicating what the assembly is trying to achieve, both internally and externally. This was evidently not entirely transparent to outsiders, some of whom were not aware of the system-change aspirations of the process; others questioned whether a citizens’ assembly was the right tool for the job. Implicit in this critique was also the need for the commissioning organisations to use their agendasetting and convening powers more carefully in determining the focus and parameters of the deliberative exercise, which ultimately represented a ‘closed space’.77 While deliberative events themselves might be open and transparent, ‘there are still many decisions that happen in closed spaces, particularly regarding the organization and design of the participatory process itself’.78 This was true of the People’s Plan’s commissioning phase, where some interviewees felt sidelined, yet called upon to communicate and promote engagement with their memberships after the Calls to Action had been published. We return to this in Section 4.4. “Member of People’s Plan’s commissioning team “What was different was the scale of ambition, the active effort and consciousness with which we were trying to draw in participants and reach such a different range of audiences.” Unsplash - Volodymyr Hryshchenko 37 3.3 Engage in co-design to share the journey Building on the previous lesson, a third message from this study is not to underestimate the importance of the preparatory stages, and to bring those you want to influence into the process as early as possible – ideally from design to delivery. This includes agenda-setting, observing, communicating, disseminating, and (ongoing) implementation. The imperative came part and parcel with the philosophy of the New Citizen Project’s RAPID Democracy approach, which promoted the idea of embedding the assembly within a national cultural event (BBC’s Wild Isles series), and broader ‘national conversation’; though in practice, it was unclear whether key messages reached beyond public audiences who were already sympathetic and engaged with the nature cause. Several commissioning team members mentioned their turnaround had been so tight (squeezed by a delayed sign-off at the start, and transmission of the Wild Isles series at the end), that they had less time to engage with business communities, policymakers and community organisations than they would have liked. Relationships and logistics could therefore have been better managed to engage stakeholders earlier in co-design, and to develop a more iterative and adaptive process, building in time to include a wider range of actors and reflect-and-revise based on collective learning along the way. For example, with more planning and resources, it might have been possible to co-create the ‘onward journey’ with Assembly members, rather than it seeming more like a bolt-on afterthought supported by Groundworks. As the Founder of All the Elements (a non-profit organisation seeking to increase diversity in the outdoors), explained, without clarity about how her community’s voices were being represented or what the specific benefits of being involved might be, it was hard for her community to engage with the process: ‘Without that, [my community] were just going to see it as another sector ‘thing’ that doesn’t engage them, that is trying to say that it does, but doesn’t really mean anything to them in practice.’ At the same time, her own experience of running a session with Groundwork for the People’s Plan had been a positive one. “Democracy practitioner You won’t get coverage if people don’t follow the story.” ©National Trust Images/Arnhel de Serra 38 3.4 Acknowledge the role of politics and power Pervading all of these lessons, is the need to consider the concept of power.71 This is a useful framing for unlocking how longer-term social transformation might occur, and involves asking the question: ‘Will increased engagement…risk simply re-legitimating the status quo, or will it contribute to transforming patterns of exclusion and social injustice and to challenging power relationships?’77 While the People’s Plan has undoubtedly opened new spaces for citizens to act for nature (especially in the societal sphere), and the design of the assembly itself was carefully curated to incorporate diverse representation and facilitated deliberation (with ‘experts on tap, not on top’),33 underlying political systems and institutions remain key to influencing the significance and reach of current – and potentially future – impacts. As one of the People’s Plan speakers explained a year after the event, ‘there were some really great ideas in there, and my sense was it was a robust and democratic enough process…but my immediate cynicism…is that it won’t go anywhere.’ Indeed, it was only once the Labour Government subsequently came to power (a year after the Plan was published) that more positive impacts began to filter through, largely because its agenda was more aligned with (and amenable to) the People’s Plan’s demands. Workshop participants pointed out that an ongoing challenge is how to frame ‘system-disrupting’ elements into future theories of change and strategies for deliberative processes. A member of the People’s Plan’s commissioning team admitted that ‘content was more about getting technical information and lived experiences across, and perhaps there was not enough about politics, trade-offs or different methods for achieving change’. This was echoed by a citizen involved in the process: ‘As Assembly members, we received a lot of information about the nature crisis, but maybe not about the politics’. “Workshop participant Impact is not all in design, it is in politics and power.” Unsplash - Jon Tyson 39 3.5 Consider equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) at every stage Being an ‘invited space’, deliberative events provide the opportunity to ‘do EDI better’. 77 This begins at the framing stage (e.g., will environmental justice be addressed? Also see Section 4.5), and follows on through the creation of participant lists, appointing an Advisory Board, inviting speakers, and deciding who should be involved in follow-up, all of which represent opportunities to disrupt existing power biases.78 It is important to acknowledge, however, that even the best-intentioned deliberative spaces can be exclusionary, and that citizens’ assemblies alone are not a panacea for achieving equality, diversity and inclusion. This is largely because the same patterns of advantage (or disadvantage) that participants hold in society will come into play in deliberative settings, for example, manifesting in the way a participant may appear or communicate.41 The commissioning team clearly put considerable thought and effort into this aspect of the People’s Plan process, inviting a remarkable variety of speakers, including many with critical perspectives.79 Attempts were also made to improve representation when selecting citizens’ assembly members, with additional invitations being sent out in deprived areas (due to poorer response rates), and minority ethnic representation being overweighted to promote fairness and a greater diversity of experiences and thinking. Targets were also set to ensure those who felt less connected to nature were sufficiently included.2 In keeping with good practice, Assembly members were paid for their time, travel and subsistence, and care was also taken to accommodate additional support needs (e.g., relating to mobility, childcare, and digital/technical access, and other reasonable adjustments). “Professor Graham Smith, Chair, Knowledge Network on Climate Assemblies “We should not expect a single citizens’ assembly to achieve all our EDI expectations. We need to weave in different forms of engagement.” ©National Trust Images/Sophie Bolesworth After the Assembly, feedback from participants about their experiences was ‘overwhelmingly positive’, with 89% of participants reporting they found it enjoyable and 87% being proud to have taken part.2 Those included in this study were keen to point out how inclusive the atmosphere had been, including for those with protected characteristics (e.g., belonging to marginalised groups, living with physical or mental challenges or being neurodivergent). Yet, there remained perceptions from some people who were peripheral to or outside the process that it could have been made more inclusive for them. For example, some of those who were asked to participate from the conservation sector did not feel they were invited early enough in the process to engage in co-design on their own terms. The process was also seen by some interviewees as being too focused on policy outcomes. Another felt not enough had been done to represent or demonstrate the benefits to minoritised communities: ‘Why would my community interact with the People’s Plan? What is being done to make them feel like it’s representative of them, and that they are part of it?’40 “ Member of the People’s Plan’s commissioning team Implementing the People’s Plan for Nature should be about us doing things in a different way, because otherwise we’ve missed the actual lesson from it.” Framing the Assembly process within the Save Our Wild Isles campaign was also viewed as reinforcing a discredited status quo, ‘You can’t have inclusion in any meaningful way, just because you might have Black and Brown bodies in the room, if you’re already concerned about disrupting the power dynamic, particularly when you have something that is quite white, middleclass, mainstream, BBC-led, and Attenboroughled’ (Dr Ria Poole, EDI practitioner and academic). An Assembly member also pointed out that more work could have been done to translate the Plan into a more accessible format; for example, simplifying language for different audiences and people with additional learning needs. We return to some of these issues in Section 4.5. © Involve / Jemima Stubbs 40 41 3.6 Demonstrate the integrity and value of the process As outlined earlier, in order to maintain accountability and transparency, the People’s Plan used experienced, independent delivery partners (who have also run state-commissioned assemblies). They also appointed an Advisory Group, who ‘were representative of a broad range of ideological standpoints, representing different parts of society, including business, government representatives, academia, NGOs and civil society groups’.80 Overall, by adhering to best practice industry standards, and generating a wide range of valuable impacts (see Section 2), the process is widely viewed among democracy experts and practitioners as demonstrating a high degree of integrity. Nevertheless, there have been questions of bias, with concerns raised from both the right and left of the political spectrum. Some policymakers and a small cohort of Assembly members represented in this study, felt the process could not claim to be impartial when it had been commissioned by three environmental NGOs. Questions were also raised, on the one hand, about why more businesses and farmers had not been invited to speak; and on the other, as to why more radical groups, such as Extinction Rebellion (XR), were not represented as speakers. This was in part owing to the conscious efforts of the commissioning team not to alienate the more conservative or mainstream actors they were seeking to influence (such as farming community and policymakers). It was also pointed out that additional food retail, farming and green finance perspectives were brought in towards the latter stages of the event at the request of citizens (demonstrating the need and value of taking a citizen-responsive approach). XR were only represented indirectly by the Assembly members who happened to belong to the campaigning eco-socialist movement. Nevertheless, there remains work to be done to address perceptions that civil society-run assemblies are less credible than state-run events, and to demonstrate the value of citizens’ assemblies among wider publics, particularly right-leaning members.33 As a democracy expert pointed out, ‘If you’re right-of-centre, you are less likely to support this form of policy making, and so you’re less likely to volunteer. And if you do, you’re more likely to be dissatisfied with the process, and we’ve got good evidence for that…people have differing views on civic engagement, which in turn affects their interaction with these processes’ (Professor Rebecca Willis). This was confirmed in an interview with an Assembly member who had a history of voting for right-of-centre political parties: ‘We only got one side of the story. Where was the single mother who’s saying, ‘I am more interested in how I am going to pay for the next bit of food than worrying about beetles?’ These people certainly exist because if they didn’t, we wouldn’t have a biodiversity problem. More effort could have been made to find that counter argument’. Although the member did point out he was part of a very small minority of Assembly members holding this position, this speaks to the wider societal challenge of raising public consciousness about the value and legitimacy of deliberative approaches, which would help to improve the diversity of those willing to participate and, in turn, further legitimise such processes. “Demos, Cross-party think tank, 20245 For participatory policy making to be successful, we need to demonstrate the rigour and value of the processes.” 42 3.7 Highlight the importance of leadership buy-in A mini-public’s level of impact is also a function of how much institutional buy-in there is with the process, and this applies as much to an eNGO-run initiative as to a government-led one. In the case of the People’s Plan, a key lesson has been that building coalitions within organisations takes time and relies on the support and goodwill of strategic allies, including within the initiating organisations and their senior leadership teams. “ Member of the People’s Plan’s commissioning team Elements of deliberative thinking are coming into our strategic thinking, and a desire for more citizen-led, citizen-engaged and citizenempowered action. A mindset change is beginning, which I can’t put down purely to [the People’s Plan for Nature], but I think it is assistive of us having done this. It’s an accelerant.” Experiences of how the People’s Plan has been supported and championed by management within the commissioning organisations have been mixed and are still evolving. There has certainly been an appetite to capitalise on the public mandate for pursuing the nature cause, as well as support for more participatory and citizenled practices at strategic level in some cases. To a degree, this was because the process played into changes that were already underway, but there was also a perception that the People’s Plan provided validation and justification for taking more progressive and inclusive pathways. At the same time, some participants were left with a feeling that opportunities for deeper learning about the need to listen to and empower citizens had been missed. “ Member of the People’s Plan’s commissioning team Having gone through a transformation and seeing the value of hearing from a cross-section of society, it felt we were missing the big lesson: what does it mean to actively listen to people, and to bring people into the conversation, to support them, to lean into their agency?” Unsplash - Lukasz Wojcik Unsplash - My Life Through A Lens 43 3.8 Connect deliberative and representative democracy Policy impacts are more likely to occur if public policymakers are brought as close to a deliberative process as possible. This helps them to understand its value, bear witness to the integrity of the process, and experience the transformative change often undergone by those involved. This was mentioned by several participants in this project as being a key challenge for the People’s Plan, owing to the Assembly being instigated by conservation organisations rather than being embedded within a public process. Although government-run assemblies often fall short of expectations when it comes to delivering policy change (and fall prey to the same political bargaining afterwards), they are more likely to be conferred greater legitimacy in many formal policy and public circles. Finding better ways to integrate representative and deliberative democracy was therefore seen as a way of improving the Plan’s public policy uptake, as one of the project’s participants advocated, ‘Include policy-makers within the process throughout so they can understand the issues and be able to ask questions – this is helpful for buy-in later when actions need to be taken’ (Dr Ria Poole, EDI practitioner and academic). Another participant pointed out that citizens’ assemblies taking a more bottom-up pathway, can also be seen more positively, as a way to redirect power away from formal public institutions, circumvent elected representatives’ waning legitimacy, and embed deliberative democracy by building individual and societal efficacy,81 which was in many ways a key strength of the People’s Plan process. “ Member of the People’s Plan’s commissioning team As an advocacy professional, what I would say is that commissioning [a citizens’ assembly] by NGOs meant we didn’t have that immediacy of connection into government and decision-makers…we had to create a whole advocacy operation just getting [the Plan] in front of people and getting them to take it seriously.” 44 3.9 Co-deliver and collaborate to maximise reach The unique experiment of the three eNGOs collaborating in the People’s Plan also conveyed the power of each partner playing to their strengths. For example, with their different memberships, they were able to reach slightly different audiences (the National Trust also reaching a cultural and heritage audience, for example). Individual members of the core team also brought different expertise to the commissioning team, such as expertise in strategy, communications and advocacy. This unusual collaborative effort also created capacity-building opportunities within the commissioning organisations and delivery partners in the process of organising the deliberative event, and in the follow-up. Indeed, the planning and aftermath were shown to be as important for building coalitions as the Assembly itself, and some of the personal and institutional relationships built across the organisations have outlived the assembly process. Even where senior staff have since moved into new roles within different organisations in the sector, they have retained their entrepreneurial zeal to amplify the Plan’s Calls for Action and advocate for deliberative democracy. In spite of this positive collaborative trajectory, there was certainly scope to have built stronger coalitions across the nature sector as a whole to maximise impacts. It is also notable that the three organisations progressed their political and advocacy campaigning independently of the Save Our Wild Isles and People’s Plan processes, which may also have been a limiting factor. However, they did join forces in the run up to the 2024 General Election to support the Restore Nature Now march and Nature 2030 campaign, which demanded ‘radical new commitments’ and a five-point plan for nature from politicians.82 “Member of the People’s Plan’s commissioning team If we just were a little bit less territorial as a sector when we go out and work on these things…I feel we could have got further.” © Involve / Jemima Stubbs Nature Neighbourhoods The project was designed as a follow-up to the People’s Plan for Nature’s community-centred Calls for Action to support the development of neighbourhood action plans for nature and climate. It is a two-year partnership (2023-5) between National Trust, RSPB and WWF, funded by the National Lottery Climate Action Fund and Co-op. Delivering Nature Neighbourhoods has involved: • Working with 18 community organisations in diverse neighbourhoods across the UK. • Giving communities ownership of design, development and delivery, and up to £25,000 in funding per neighbourhood. • Building capacity of diverse local communities by providing development opportunities to 400 community leaders and convening a peer-to-peer support networks. • Working with Voluntary, Community and Social Enterprise ‘anchor’ organisations to build capacity of diverse communities. • Training and empowering system actors at the local level to enable greater capacity for community participation and community-driven actions for nature. • Building capability of project partners to support community action for climate and nature, improving collaboration at scale. BOX 1: SPOTLIGHT ON COMMUNITY-CENTRED PROJECTS RUN BY LARGE CONSERVATION ORGANISATIONS SOURCES: INTERVIEWS AND DUCIE ET AL. 2024 86 The programme aimed to “bring people and communities together to help nature flourish where they lived and worked”. Using a community organising approach, 44 Wildlife Trusts were supported over two years (2022-4), to engage 1,600 communities who were less traditionally likely to access nature in developingnature connection. It was funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund. Actions to deliver the programme included: • Listening exercises to understand the, “barriers, challenges, needs and wants of communities.” • Building relationships with community groups, associations, schools, and others. • Developing a package of online/offline information resources. • Providing training for Wildlife Trust staff and in-person learning. • Contributing to ‘Share Learn Improve’ sessions (a reflective process to share problems or successes, and learn from each other to improve collective practice. • Supporting communities to progress local projects to improve nature outcomes. • Delivering training to support communities to lead local action for nature (Pioneers Programme, in Scotland only). Nextdoor Nature 51 Spotlight on Innovation 1: Community-centred projects for people and nature 52 4.4 Cultivate a mindset of power with citizens Another opportunity raised by an interviewee was for organisations to make more use of participatory budgeting as part of their programme design. This is a process of democratic deliberation where publics decide how budgets should be allocated, which has been widely used in Europe and Brazil.87,88 Member of the People’s Plan’s commissioning team Workshop participant We’d love to see participatory budgeting as part of our programme design, especially where communities are involved in the implementation or are the beneficiaries of the funding.” “How do we work with citizens and build power with them rather than using them to further our own power?” “ “ Experts on deliberative democracy have increasingly pointed to the need to ‘normalise’ citizens’ voices being taken seriously in decision-making. As a democracy practitioner highlighted, ‘institutionalisation of deliberative processes is important. If the public has more of an expectation of this form of decision-making process, and expects outcomes to be taken seriously, it will have greater impact.’ However, acknowledging that politics and power represent challenges and structural limitations is also critical. Many participants in this research called for decision-makers to move away from a mindset of ‘power over’ citizens towards a viewpoint of ‘power with’. This demands a shift away from reliance on opinion polls, focus groups and consultations, to engaging publics in ongoing coconstitutive processes that transform publics and decision-makers alike. As a workshop participant explained, this requires awareness-raising about the value of participatory initiatives in contrast to taking more transactional, campaigning approaches. Member of the People’s Plan for Nature’s commissioning team Unbottling the genie of citizenship means a whole change of power relations. And it is very difficult for the sector to reset itself.” “ Section 3.4 introduced the need for greater power literacy (i.e., unpacking the different ways in which power overtly and covertly shapes biodiversity governance), which may involve considering hidden biases and exclusions, questioning whose knowledge ‘counts’, and creating new spaces to incorporate a wider diversity of voices and viewpoints.78,81 Gaventa’s, ‘Power Cube’, shown in Box 2 is a useful tool for undertaking power analysis and increasing power literacy.77 It demonstrates the explicit and implicit power play in different formal and informal spaces, settings, and structures, and how these dynamics underpin the way people see themselves, what they value, and the meanings they apply to the world. By becoming mindful that each of these dimensions of power matter for biodiversity renewal, stepby-step – like solving a Rubik’s cube – it is possible to move closer to achieving transformative change. The tool is useful for cultivating power ‘with’ citizens as it moves beyond understanding surface issues and conflicts of interest to explore more subtle ways power can be expressed and addressed. It has been applied to examine power dynamics in stakeholder engagement in various conservation projects (including in the National Trust’s Hatfield Forest), and has been further developed as a Guide for Activists and Changemakers.78,89 SPACES OF POWER Closed: Decision-making behind closed doors, e.g., government, board rooms Invited: Spaces accessible by invitation, by right or by non-state actors, e.g., political parties, donors, civil society organisations Claimed/created: Instigated spaces, e.g., social networks and movements, community organisations, protests, occupations FORMS OF POWER Visible: Observable decision-making, formal rules, structures and authorities, e.g. Parliament, AGMs, public media Hidden: Agenda-setting influence to put issues on (or off) the table, e.g., lobbying, advocacy, social media, private networks Invisible: Beliefs about what is acceptable; socialisation can perpetuate exclusion/inequality, e.g., capitalism, patriarchy, rights of nature LEVELS OF POWER Local: Local authorities, community groups and eNGOs National: National and devolved governments, businesses/farming, third sector, civil society organisations Global: International fora and networks, e.g., Convention on Biological Diversity, IUCN, Business for Nature, Global Nature Fund LINKING SPACES, FORMS AND LEVELS OF POWER LEVELS SPACES FORMS Global National Local Visible Hidden Invisible Closed Invited Claimed/ Created Like solving a Rubik’s cube “Transformative, fundamental change happens…in those rare moments when social movements or social actors are able to work effectively across each of the dimensions simultaneously.” BOX 2: SPOTLIGHT ON POWER ANALYSIS: THE POWER CUBE77 SOURCE: GAVENTA, 200677 53 Spotlight on Innovation 2: The Power Cube as a tool for social change 54 4.5 Centre marginalised and unheard voices The next recommendation is founded on the idea of environmental justice, which calls for the meaningful inclusion of all people in environmental governance, ensuring negative impacts do not fall disproportionately on marginalised groups.90–92 It also places a responsibility on the current generation to maintain a healthy environment for this and future generations. The perspective speaks to concerns that current decision-making about nature often excludes a raft of voices, experiences and interests, notably: people from minoritised ethnic backgrounds, LGBTQIA+ individuals, young people, people living with disabilities or in poverty, future generations, and nature itself.21,93–96 Attention and resources are therefore needed to enhance the deliberative capacities of these individuals in informal deliberative initiatives (such as citizens’ assemblies), as well as formal political decision-making spaces (including executive board, government, and community leadership levels).41 These efforts should be informed by an understanding of intersectionality,97 which recognises the added complexity around accessing decision-making spaces for people who are multiply marginalised. This framing also chimes with recommendations from participants, who advocated creating safe spaces, where groups with protected characteristics can engage in processes designed specifically with their needs and interests in mind. These are sometimes referred to as ‘enclave’ deliberative processes, affinity groups or ‘third spaces’.9,98 This involves going beyond ‘formal’ inclusion99 to specifically create better environments for building solidarity, empowerment and political efficacy within marginalised or un-/under-represented groups.100 The latter point is predicated on a warning not to treat everyone equally if we want them to participate equally because marginalised groups and those with language/information processing difficulties may require extra support prior to and during the event, which should be tailored to their specific needs.77 This may involve creating opportunities to build rapport and capacity with other group members in advance or providing targeted mentoring and facilitation during a process, which are examples of ‘informal’ inclusion.99 A range of communication styles could also be incorporated in deliberative contexts, such as storytelling, narratives, testimonies,101,102 and legislative theatre.103–105 Examples from the environmental sphere have so far mostly taken the form of assemblies with children and young people, including Ireland’s Children and Young People’s Assembly on Biodiversity Loss; Ireland’s Youth Assembly on Climate, Scotland’s Climate Assembly and Children’s Parliament, the Copenhagen Youth Climate Assembly, and the (more permanent) National Youth Assembly of Ireland. More recently, an interviewee pointed out that practitioners and civil society organisations have begun scoping assemblies dedicated to people of colour. In the private sector, the Body Shop recruited a Youth Collective to sit on their board, who represent a range of minority ethnic backgrounds, LGBTQIA+ identities, and other marginalised personal characteristics (and with consideration for the balance of extrovert and introvert members).106 Members reported this had the positive benefit of acting as a cultural gateway for more diverse thinking under the guise of a ‘youth’ initiative. For those wishing to involve children and young people in citizens’ assemblies, KNOCA have produced comprehensive guidance.107 ©National Trust Images/Trevor Ray Hart 55 There is also a considerable body of literature demonstrating that deliberation can support the effective representation of future generations by creating incentives and spaces for longer-term thinking, and opportunities for co-ordinating initiatives across generations.108 Representing future generations and nature obviously poses additional challenges – but also presents opportunities.109 Innovative methods are emerging for incorporating ‘unheard voices’ into decision-making. For example, inspired by Iroquois philosophy, Missions Publiques have been exploring how to apply the ‘Seventh Generation Principle’, whereby decisions must be made with consideration for the needs and impacts of populations living seven generations ahead. They also join Moral Imaginations in experimenting with visualisation and meditative techniques. The Future Design movement have introduced creative intergenerational role play as a model of participatory decision-making in Japanese cities.110 Elsewhere, resources have been developed to support the use of Council of All Beings rituals, which embody the principles of deep ecology.111,112 The Welsh Wellbeing of Future Generations Act goes a step further by creating a legal obligation for public authorities to consider the long-term impacts of their decisions on social, cultural, environmental and economic wellbeing. More groundbreaking still, the ‘Rights of Nature’ approach, ‘suggests that Nature, including ecosystems and species, should possess legal rights and the capacity to engage in the legal system through human representatives’.113 Lawyers for Nature propose three ways of implementing this approach. First, substantive rights could be given to nature (equivalent to human rights). Second, procedural law could allow nature to be represented as a legal entity, as companies are already. Third, the concept of guardianship could be evoked, encouraging individuals to take on informal or legal guardianship of a specific species or ecosystem (such as a river). This would allow people to advocate for the entity within the existing legal framework (along the lines of parental guardianship), taking on a duty of care and bringing those responsible for harming the entity to account within the existing legal system. This has been demonstrated by the River Roding Trust, which gained charitable status to restore the River Roding for public benefit (see Box 3). In a corporate context, Faith in Nature have worked with Lawyers for Nature and the Earth Law Center to more formally apply the concept of guardianship, giving nature a seat on their executive board by appointing a Nature Director in 2022.114–116 Inspired by this model, House of Hackney followed suit, extending the scope of the Director’s role to incorporate ‘Mother Nature and Future Generations’ (Box 3). There is considerable scope for other charitable organisations, businesses and even public bodies to follow suit, and eNGOs are in a particularly good position to explore how they could build and support local, regional or national networks of guardians. “ Brontie Ansell, Lawyers for Nature We are appalled today that in the past it was acceptable for women to be ‘spoken for’ by men in society. One day in the future, I think we will be appalled that we didn’t include nature’s voice - we just decided for nature and didn’t see the inherent bias.” Unsplash - AbsolutVision Nature on the Board: Giving unheard voices a seat at the table In 2022, Faith in Nature became the first company in the world to put ‘Nature on the Board’. This involved applying aguardianship model whereby nature’s voice was represented by a Director acting for its interests (in this case, a lawyer, followed byEden Project’s Head of Biodiversity). Several companies have since followed suit, and anational park also appointed Nature to their Board of Trustees in 2023. • Thesepioneeringinitiatives define ‘Nature’ asincluding human beings(including staff wellbeing). House of Hackney have created a Director for Nature and Future Generations, adopting the Indigenous People’s,‘Seventh Generation principle’ of decision-making, which incorporates the wellbeing of future humans, plants and animals. • The legal frameworkis developed on a bespoke basis for each organisation, but usually gives Natureparticipatory and representation rights (e.g.,voting, agenda-setting), access to a budgets,plus time and resourcesto conduct research andenlist the help ofexperts. Guardianship: The solution to pollution? The River Roding Trust was established in 2019 by a community of boat dwellers, who had begun residing along the previously derelict and litter-choked upper river. • The groupacquired charitable status to: “preserve, protect and restore the River Roding for the public benefit and to undertake and carry on projects and activities of a charitable nature related to the river which will assist in promoting recreation, protecting the environment and educating the public about the history of the river.” • The Trustundertakes a guardianship role to represent the river. It engages the local community ineco-education and activities to clear refuse, monitor water quality and wildlife, plant trees,manage flooding,create paths, and undertake habitat restoration. BOX 3: USING GUARDIANSHIP TO REPRESENT UNHEARD VOICES SOURCES: LAWYERS FOR NATURE, AND THE RIVER RODING TRUST 117 56 Spotlight on Innovation 3: Representing nature and future generations 57 4.6 Engage publics and stakeholders in hybrid deliberative processes New forms of deliberative governance are also starting to emerge which provide opportunities for ‘publics’ or specific cohorts within a defined population (such as employees, local communities, members, stakeholders) to engage with decision-makers – and each other – in innovative ways. These are sometimes referred to as ‘hybrid’118 or bespoke processes because they enact deliberative democratic principles, but implement them in more flexible or partial ways (in contrast to highly formulaic and structured processes like citizens’ assemblies, which share certain key characteristics. Using bespoke participatory and deliberative methods can support environmental decisionmaking, and have the advantage of being flexible and cost-effective. They can happen over longer periods of time (e.g. citizens’ panels and councils), bring publics and stakeholders together in separate, parallel processes (‘hybrid’ arrangements) or take place in a shared space (e.g., ‘Future Design’ introduced in Section 4.5).110,119 The UK public participation charity, Involve, list almost 60 different examples, and New Citizen Project present a range of tools, which they show can be targeted at different stages of decision-making processes.49 In the public sector, mini-publics have been used in creative ways by MPs in Australia to better understand citizens’ perspectives about pending political decisions, and the Scottish government have used a citizens’ panel to explore minimum income guarantees. Perhaps most comprehensively, in Erlangen, Germany, politicians, NGOs, city-owned companies, civil servants and citizens were all engaged in parallel processes feeding into the development of the city’s roadmap for achieving climate neutrality.120 In the private sector, an interviewee recounted that a Dutch pension provider has used citizens’ assemblies to feed into decision-making on future investments, and an international charity has also used sortition to appoint members of staff to an internal advisory board. Another interviewee pointed to the Coop’s National Members’ Council, which consists of elected members championing collective and corporate values. “ Workshop participant We need to figure out how to integrate citizen and stakeholder forms of engagement in ways that are complementary.” Unsplash - Timon Studler 58 A further interesting initiative, which we feature as a Spotlight on Innovation, is the Rethinking Water project. This involved a series of citizens’ juries run by the Environment Agency between 2021-2. Despite being standard ‘mini-publics’ to a degree, they stand out as having ‘hybrid’ features due to their explicit multi-sectoral stakeholder involvement in co-design and post-event engagement with outputs. The idea stemmed from a realisation that public bodies often had technical accountability, but lacked local mandates and policy coherence, and that those conventionally involved in consultations were not usually representative of local communities. As Box 4 elaborates, five citizens’ juries were set up around water catchments in different regions of England to generate recommendations and create local visions to support the Agency’s goal of delivering clean air, land and water. The project was designed in collaboration with public, private and eNGO stakeholders, and produced outputs that have been used by communities and the Agency to lobby for change and a more holistic, strategic approach to water management at the local and national levels. As the quote from the Project Lead confirms, the model provided a useful means for engaging the public, rebuilding relationships between stakeholders where they had been tense, and reframing the way water management was perceived and navigated by stakeholders, communities and policymakers. “ Toni Scarr, Rethinking Water Lead, Environment Agency It really showed that anybody from any background could grasp quite technical information if you gave them time, you explained it to them, and they had the opportunity to question you. And it showed us, where there’s controversy, [deliberative democracy is] really useful to open the discussion. It reframed the question.” 58 ©National Trust Images/Chris Lacey Rethinking Water Between 2021-2, the Environment Agency (EA) ran parallel online citizens’ juries in five different regions of the UK to help prioritise their work towards achieving their ‘EA2025’ goal of delivering healthy air, land and water. The deliberative process was designed to support a more holistic and locally-mandated approach to managing river catchments, and was structured around the question: ‘How do you connect with water in your local environment, and what needs to be changed in the future to benefit people and wildlife?’ • After triallingyouth panels,and working with deliberative democracy experts, the EA appointed local and advisory panels and engagedInvolve to carry outfive citizens’ juries around theRiver Ouseburn(North East),River Wharfe(Yorkshire) and theThames Valley(Chilterns),River Thames Estuary(South East), andWindermere(Lake District). • National and LocalAdvisor Panelswereinvolved in co-design, andcomprised a range of public, private and third sector organisations. Nationally,these included, RSPB, Yorkshire Rivers Trust, Rivers Trust, Northumbrian Water, National Farmers Union, Salmon and Trout Trust,Ofwat, Natural England, Shellfish Association, Consumer Council for Water, and Universities of Durham, Leeds and West of England. Further groups were engaged locally. • Efforts were made to improve the diversity of representation by recruiting a higher proportion of young people (including 16+), broadening geographical regions to include more deprived urban areas, and where residents from lower indices of deprivation were absent, visitors were included to improve the range of experiences and backgrounds of participants. • Each of the five juries produced context-specificrecommendations. • Impacts have included:creating five civic mandates, whichlocal communitieshave used to influencelocal authorities and water companies, andthe EA has used to lobby ministers; improvingtrust between the EA and participating organisations;strengthening relationships between participating stakeholders; stimulatinglocal organising,capacity-building and engagementwith local decision-makers (and the EA) on strategy and funding. BOX 4: THE ENVIRONMENT AGENCY’S RETHINKING WATER CITIZENS’ JURIES SOURCES: INTERVIEW AND THE ENVIRONMENT AGENCY121 59 Spotlight on Innovation 4: Citizens’ juries involving stakeholders in co-design 60 4.7 Lead and collaborate across the nature sector – and beyond The need for leadership and partnerships between organisations acting for nature were recommendations made by the People’s Plan,2 and were reiterated by several interviewees, in particular, in light of the challenging funding climate and culture wars. Alongside strategic direction, many felt dedicating time, resources and training was necessary to successfully manage partnerships, deliver deliberative and participatory processes, and integrate lessons into governance structures. Even learning the language of participatory processes was highlighted as being a potential barrier that would need to be overcome (The Wildlife Trusts have consciously worked on this with their leadership teams as part of the Nextdoor Nature project). Others mentioned creating complementary, cross-organisational sets of training and toolkits to support, inspire and empower other organisations, communities and individuals to renew biodiversity would be useful (as Nature Neighbourhoods and Nextdoor Nature have begun to do). “Member of the People’s Plan commissioning team The conservation sector is guilty of replication – how do we sit together as a mosaic?” Member of the People’s Plan team You need leadership in an organisation to make things like the People’s Plan for Nature stick. People don’t always have the time to incorporate it into their day-to-day, into that extra 5-10% that you might have on the edge of your desk, which is disappearing for a lot of the sector anyway because of capacity, money and everything else.” Properly prioritising, managing, resourcing and coordinating deliberative democracy within governance systems applies as much to public authorities and funders as to environmental organisations. The OECD makes clear that ‘For institutionalisation to be possible, public authorities should invest to ensure sufficient capacity in the civil service and civil society to commission and deliver representative deliberative processes, as well as sufficient funding’.29 “ Unsplash - Vardan Papikyan 67 “Richard Benwell, Wildlife and Countryside Link Getting a better model of citizen engagement and deliberative democracy going is such an exciting opportunity, and the People’s Plan for Nature process has opened that door well.” Deliberative democracy is an aspiration and a direction of travel. This study concludes that the People’s Plan for Nature can be viewed in much the same way: as a process and a journey on the right track. It has already demonstrated a high level of ambition for system change for nature renewal, and delivered tangible impacts across policy and societal spheres, but there remain challenges and opportunities for embedding deliberative democracy further in the nature sector and beyond. The project has shown that deliberative initiatives, such as the People’s Plan, can play an important role in addressing some of the widely recognised deficits of representative democracy. It argues the case that democratic deliberation provides an alternative and complementary approach by improving the quality, legitimacy, and feasibility of environmental decision-making processes and outcomes.35 In terms of the quality of decision-making, the People’s Plan has offered the opportunity to convene citizens and experts in a rapid, yet transformative, exercise in mutual communication and learning, and to unpick why current ways of working are not delivering for nature or people. It has created a facilitated space to collectively produce 26 comprehensive Calls to Action across eight pertinent themes, targeted at a range of actors. By explicitly mitigating power imbalances, and creating new and more transparent spaces to bring diverse voices together, it has equipped and empowered citizens, communities, conservation organisations, businesses and policymakers to advocate and act for nature (as seen in Section 3). Further, by generating a publicly mandated blueprint for nature action at a time when other public arenas were not open to progressing these issues, the process has performed an important agenda-setting function. To be legitimate in the longer-term, however, decision-making across the sector and at all levels needs to be made more equal and inclusive. The People’s Plan has shown the power and value of more diverse voices being brought to the decision-making table and has provided the opportunity to ‘do EDI better’. However, it also raises the question of how a legacy of going ‘beyond’ inclusion will be maintained outside the best practice ‘bubble’ of the citizens’ assembly model, and how it can be integrated into environmental governance structures more broadly. The study concludes that only by going beyond formal inclusion and embracing creative and diverse communication styles can a wider range of voices be authentically engaged and amplified. This requires creating better environments for building solidarity, empowerment and political efficacy within marginalised and under-represented groups, and finding innovative ways of including unheard voices, such as future generations and nature itself: for example, via guardianship models and appointing directors for nature and future generations to company boards (discussed in Section 4.5 and Box 3). In addition, those in positions of power need to be willing to ask difficult questions, navigate trade-offs and accommodate those who might not share the same perspectives or lived experiences. 5. Conclusion With respect to the feasibility of delivering effective outcomes for people and nature, there are strong indications from participants in this study that a positive legacy has already emerged. Despite its imperfections, the process has undoubtedly promoted civic education, paved the way for more ambitious and joined-up policies for nature restoration, and accelerated a shift in attitudes about the value of citizens’ assemblies and deliberative democracy more widely (prompting others to follow suit, in the UK and abroad). The People’s Plan has also raised the salience of pro-nature policy and pushed the boundaries of what ambitious action for nature could look like: by proposing radical new pathways such as access to nature as a human right, representation of future generations, a permanent Assembly for Nature, and a Director for Nature on every company board. It has empowered a fresh cohort of citizens, whose deliberative muscles have newly been flexed and whose appetite for change is now matched with a sense of agency about how they might achieve this. Thanks to the People’s Plan, there is now a coalition of organisations in the conservation and environment sectors who are more committed to working with citizens, communities and businesses in multi-partner and cross-sector collaborations. Though there remains some way to go before this becomes embedded, it is undoubtedly a substantial step forward. This research has also shown how the People’s Plan has heightened the level of awareness, trust and confidence among a significant cohort of decisionmakers and societal actors to implement a more nature-positive agenda. Through follow-on projects, communities have been given training, resources and opportunities to develop and realise their own visions of nature and green spaces in their local neighbourhoods. At the same time, we can see that the uptake of the People’s Plan’s Calls to Action, and the model of deliberative democracy it advocates, will ultimately depend on the prevailing political climate as the outputs of the process are fed back into the political systems from which they have emerged. In the words of Professor Graham Smith (Chair of the KNOCA network): ‘We need to figure out how assemblies can best be embedded with other parts of the political system that themselves may need to be reformed and restructured.’33 To this end, Figure 8 presents a summary of ten key lessons and recommendations from the People’s Plan process (detailed in Sections 3 and 4) to demonstrate how we can collectively build on this legacy to better mainstream the principles of deliberative democracy into broader environmental governance. Pervading these recommendations is the central need to understand how a holistic, deliberative system might work in practice. Findings from this study suggest that this involves creating greater consciousness about who decides for nature; namely, who is included, who is marginalised, and who is missing. Only by casting a more power-critical eye on existing biases in the ways – and places – decision-making systems operate (referred to as ‘power literacy’ in Section 4.4), will it be possible to develop innovative and appropriate means of addressing them. Further, a more normative approach is needed. This means cultivating a mindset of power with citizens, centring marginalised and unheard voices, and taking a community-based and ‘people and nature’ approach. In turn, this can create opportunities to incorporate environmental justice and embed principles of inclusion and equality. Finally, using more experimental and reflexive methods, including flexible/hybrid deliberations to create safe spaces (‘enclaves’), and building an evidence base of where public engagement works best, can provide a stronger justification for deliberative processes being linked to responsive environmental governance (explored in Sections 4.5 and 4.8). We hope findings from this work offer food for thought, valuable examples of innovation to draw from, and inspiration to adopt more inclusive, deliberative and participatory approaches to deliver the positive outcomes for people and nature we so urgently need. 68 Unsplash - Javier Allegue Barros FIGURE 8: SUMMARY OF LESSONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS 69 Embedding deliberative democracy in the nature sector Summary of lessons and recommendations Recommendations for building a holistic deliberative system for nature 1 Take a holistic ‘systems’ approach to restoring nature 2 Acknowledge and navigate disagreement and conflict 3 Place communities at the heart of decision-making 4 Cultivate a mindset of power with citizens 5 Centre marginalised and unheard voices 6 Engage publics and stakeholders in hybrid deliberative processes 7 Lead and collaborate across the nature sector – and beyond 8 Build an evidence base of public engagement and deliberative initiatives 9 Take a ‘peopleand nature’ approach 10 Recognise transformative change demands commitment, resources and time Lessons from the People’s Plan for Nature 1 Use an impact strategy and theory of change 2 Clearly communicate objectives and limitations 3 Engage in co-design to share the journey 4 Acknowledge the role of politics and power 5 Consider equality, diversity and inclusion at every stage 6 Demonstrate the integrity and value of the process 7 Highlight the importance of leadership buy-in 8 Connect deliberative and representative democracy 9 Co-deliver and collaborate to maximise reach 10 Take a cross-sectoral approach References 70 Unsplash - Brad Weaver 1. 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