Knowledge Curation in Climate Assemblies

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This briefing shows that the evidence provision stage in climate assemblies is of paramount importance to the formation of attitudes of participants and to their collective recommendation writing.

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Climate assemblies allow a diverse, randomly selected group of citizens a platform to formulate evidence-based recommendations for politically addressing climate change, and the question of how to curate knowledge – how to select, organize, and present evidence in climate assemblies – raises important problems that need to be addressed:

• How should the relevant thematic and scientific areas be demarcated – i.e., what counts as relevant evidence, and what does not?
• Who should make decisions concerning the selection and demarcation of relevant evidence, and how should decision-making processes be organized?
• How should experts, witnesses, or speakers be selected, and how should they be briefed?
• How can expert knowledge be communicated to citizens with different educational and cultural backgrounds and learning styles?
• Should assembly members take active part in the work of knowledge curation, and if so, how can they be equipped to do so?

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This briefing offers a survey of the current literature on knowledge curation within deliberative processes and climate assemblies before drawing lessons from 5 national climate assemblies across Europe on how to best organise knowledge curation.